The training and education of propagandists in the ‘repubblica dei partiti’: internal-circulation periodicals in the PCI and the DC (1946–58)

Abstract

This article takes into consideration the practices and techniques of political communications of the leading Italian parties in the early years of the republican period. Often considered antiquated or retrograde with respect to those in use in the more advanced western democracies, the methods of propaganda and ‘in-the-field’ mobilization, however, proved well suited in terms of permitting the development of a deeper-rooted social presence for the better organized mass political parties, as well as helping to establish forms of political participation that were destined to characterize Italian life for decades to follow. This essay, in particular, presents the internal-circulation periodicals through which the national Press and Propaganda sections of the Italian Communist Party and the Christian Democratic Party supervised and organized the training and education of nonprofessional activists: from these sources it is possible to determine to what degree the role of the propagandist and the techniques of communications served as the terrain for a clear exchange between the two opposing fronts in the ‘civil cold war’ in Italy during the forties and fifties.