Soviet and Russian Historiography of Fascist Italy: A Brief Review

Abstract

The history of the study of fascist Italy in our country has 100 years. This period can be divided chronologically into two unequal parts. The first is Soviet, when the Marxist-Leninist approach prevailed, and the second is modern Russian, the main feature of which is the variability of approaches, as well as the access to declassified documents from Soviet archives as a result of the “archival revolution”. Over the past century, Soviet and Russian researchers have achieved great success in studying the internal and foreign policy of the fascist regime, the regime's relationship with various social strata of Italian society, it’s relations with traditional institutions such as the church, or the monarchy; the participation of fascist Italy in World War II, the resistance movement; trends in the Italian historiography of fascist Italy. The study of the phenomenon of fascism is of great practical importance, both from the point of view of the study of mass movements and totalitarian regimes of the first half of the twentieth century, as well as from the point of view of the genesis of the Second World War, but also in the context of exposing the criminal nature of fascism and countering its revival in the form of neo-fascist movements. This article does not pretend to be a comprehensive coverage of Russian historiography, but it attempts to highlight the main issues that Soviet and Russian historians have been working on for a last century.