The story of «Nuova Rivista Storica», one of the oldest Italian historical magazines,during the Great War, the Postwar period and the rise and fall of the Fascistregime

Aim of this essay is to analyse the pivotal moments and features of Fascist Italy’s policy toward Austria from Mussolini’s conquest of power in 1922 to the destruction of the independent Austrian State in 1938. By using and comparing Italian and Austrian diplomatic documents and memories we tried to clarify some of the most controversial aspects of Italian-Austrian relations in the Twenties and in the Thirties: from the nature of the cooperation among the Heimwehren, the Christian-Social Party and the Fascist regime, to Mussolini’s attitude toward Habsburg political restoration and Austro-German union, as well as to the interdependence between the Fascist policy towards the German speaking people in Alto Adige-South Tyrol and the course of Italian-Austrian and Italian-German relations

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it seemed the United States was the only global Power able to influence the geo-political outlook and aimed at exporting the values of democracy and free market. However, Moscow and Beijing did not accept what they called hegemonism, since both claimed a first-class role in the global scenario; therefore, they started working together for a multilateral world, establishing quite a close relationship within the frame of the so-called Shanghai Five, involving also four former Soviet republics of Central Asia. This area had become pivotal for access to energy sources and saw conflicting interests at stake. While the Russians wanted to safeguard their monopoly market and pipeline facility network, the Chinese pursued diversification of their oil and gas supplies. On the other hand, Washington aimed at keeping the door open to American companies. The scenario closing the millennium was very different from what had occurred ten years previously. Apart from economic contrasts, there was the ideological challenge dominating the international debate. The White House spoke about democracy and human rights, thus making such values one of its foreign policy aims. On the other side of the Pacific, China and Russia promoted stability, territorial integrity and national sovereignty as main pillars of the new XXI century challenges, to which the struggle against separatism and terrorism was added. In a few words, though not described as an alliance oriented against any country, the 2001 Shanghai Cooperation Organisation seemed to portray a world once again divided into two blocs

The article contains an analysis of the UNRRA activities in Italy, with special attention to welfare assistance programs (food aid and public health to refugees, Displaced Persons, and childcare as well), with regards to the critical social situation in post-war Italy. The study correlates primary press and archival sources with secondary literature and various documentation issued by the same Agency. The time period of the analysis spans from 1944, when UNRRA Italian Mission was constituted, and 1947, when its activities were terminated

In this study, the publication policy of «Antalya» newspaper, which caused a diplomatic crisis between Turkey and Italy in the early 1920s, for Italian representatives and organizations in Antalya and its effects on Turkish-Italian relations are examined. The main sources of the study are documents obtained from «Antalya» newspaper (1923- 1924) and the Republic of Turkey Presidency State Archives. At the root of the Italian opposition, heavily committed in 1923 and 1924 in «Antalya», is the presence of a reaction to Italy’s potential imperialist policies. Requests from Italian authorities to stop the newspaper’s anti-Italy publications received a negative response from Turkey, citing press freedom. This should also be considered as an attitude towards the potential growing Italian danger in the Eastern Mediterranean. Among the main findings of the study, it is seen that «Antalya» influences Antalya public opinion and local administrators with its methods of setting agendas, creating and framing the news in terms of the way it presents the news. On the other hand, with its ability to set an interagency agenda, it has managed to draw the attention of the Istanbul and Ankara press to the Italian issue. The un-censoring of the publications of the Antalya shows that a liberal press regime was implemented in Turkey at that time.

The work presents a reflection on some aspects of the German-Italian economic and commercial relations between the two conflicts, specifically in the Thirties. Its purpose is to offer an interpretation that better allows to understand also the political and diplomatic dynamics that led to the creation of the Axis (1936), to that of the Pact of steel (1939) and to the entry of Italy into the Second World War (1940). As one of the main references, this work uses the book by Per Tiedtke, Germany, Italy and the International Economy 1929-1936. Co-operation or Rivalries at Times of Crisis?, Marburg, Tectum Verlag, 2016. However here the time span covered is larger, reaching almost the date of the Italian entry into the war and adding some ideas about the role of Great Britain. The connections of economic policies and economic aspects to international and foreign politics are highlighted, too, in order to understand whether and to what extent the latter were influenced by the first ones. The purpose of the work is in fact to show that the economic factors played a not so marginal role in the political choices of the two countries, notwithstanding the declaration of the “superiority” of politics that the two regimes were offering to the rest of the world. The nature of German-Italian economic relations, in fact, exactly because of the structure of the two economies, remained almost the same throughout the period from 1929 to 1939-40, with no significant alteration created by the rise to power of Hitler, the creation of the Axis, the military alliance or the invasion of Poland. They kept going along the path that had been undertaken some decades earlier, when Germany was already significantly stronger than Italy and could exploit that strength to its own advantage, designing the “lemons for machines” trade model that put Berlin in the position of firstly undermining Italian economic positions in South-East Europe and then building in that area a “solo” hegemony. For many (mainly political) reasons Rome could do nothing more but waiting for “better days”, but – as this work shows through the examples of the trade and clearing agreements, of the coal supplies, of South Tyrol and of the Balkan issues – the Italians tried to defend their interests and – more or less publicly – tried to resist to the German escalation to the top of the continental economy

Drawing from documents recently become available in the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation (AVP RF) and from other Russian Archives; based also on Russian historiography and the press of the time, the article aims at suggesting a first reconstruction of the relations and the collaboration between Fascist Italy and Communist Soviet Union in the Twenties and Thirties, in the field of Aeronautics. An aspect that the two regimes had in common was the propaganda use they were able to make of aviation, that became a constituent part of the regimes’ image within the country and abroad. The Eastern Mediterranean crossing, that brought Italo Balbo and his pilots to Odessa, sanctioned the unprecedented friendship between the two regimes. Furthermore, the Russian unpublished documents give us an image of Balbo as he was perceived by the Soviet diplomacy, offering also the Soviet view of the struggles inside the Fascist regime. Moreover, the Russian sources confirm some inaccuracies and mistakes reported in Ciano’s Diary, as highlighted in recent studies

This paper aims to analyze Yugo-Anglo-American relations during the first phase of the Yugo-Soviet rapprochement, which took place between 1953 and 1955. To this purpose, it is necessary to study some important events occurred in 1952, when a number of negative factors started to affect Yugo-Western relations, months before Stalin’s death and Khrushchev’s overtures to Tito. The failure of the military talks held in November 1952 had deep negative consequences on Yugo-Anglo-American relations. The US and Great Britain aimed to achieve some important goals by “keeping Tito afloat”: firstly, to encourage a joint military planning with Yugoslavia, in order to strengthen the Southern flank of NATO; secondly, to exploit the Yugoslav example as a sort of “wedge” to undermine the cohesion of the red Bloc; lastly, in the very long term, to favor a “regime change” in Yugoslavia, through the progressive democratization of the political life and free elections. From the very beginning, Tito and his closest associates judged Western economic and military cooperation as widely unsatisfactory for Yugoslavia, even if it was essential for its survival. In their opinion, the Western aid proved to be a form of political pressure, aimed at reducing Yugoslavia’s independence without providing a full guarantee in terms of security. As a consequence, when the USSR changed its approach towards Yugoslavia, Tito was eager to set up new relations with Moscow, and to develop his foreign policy towards equidistance and non-alignment. Given the Soviet not-so-hidden effort to reassert ideological and political control over Yugoslavia, the Yugo-Western relations retained a great importance for Yugoslavia; however, in Tito’s mind, these relations had to change deeply. In the new scenario, he needed political support and economic aid from the West, while military cooperation became useless, if not harmful, to his purposes. For the US and Great Britain, the problem was that all Western projects about Yugoslavia depended on a stable and fruitful military cooperation. Therefore, during the years analyzed in this paper, Yugo-Western relations continued to develop, but new problems arose: while the Western side tried to keep the military cooperation alive, Tito moved staunchly towards equidistance, refusing military commitments. The illusory successes kept in 1953-1954 (namely the Balkan Pact, the London memorandum on Trieste and many agreements in the economic and military field) could not prevent a progressive weakening of Yugo-Western relations, that ended up with the official recognition of East Germany and with the definitive interruption of military aid, both decided by Tito at the end of 1957. These traumatic events, however, had their roots in the slow but steady worsening of Yugo-Western relations that occurred between 1952 and 1955, in consequence of the Yugo-Soviet rapprochement.

Caucasian diaspora was formed when refugees came from their native lands in Northern and South-western Caucasus, as a consequence of the extermination and expulsion policies that were implemented by the Tsarist Empire. In the last decades of the Ottoman Empire, displaced Caucasians not only represented a considerable proportion of the Muslim population in Anatolia, but also came to occupy a large part of the Ottoman state apparatus, especially in the army. This paper provides due preliminary information on this scarcely known topic that pertains to millions of people in modern-day Turkey, the majority of which are Circassians. During WWI, individuals and communities from the Caucasus acted as loyal and willing Ottoman Muslims, but, at the same time, they strove to return to their lost native lands. Following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire and the Mudros truce, many Caucasians had a prominent role in the “Turkish national struggle”, but were reluctant to abandon the irredentist perspective; many others joined the loyalist, anti-nationalist camp and it was a Circassian, the Circassian par excellence, Ethem Dipsheu, who openly challenged Mustafa Kemal’s leadership inside the nationalist movement. Before the foundation of the Republic, some Circassian communities who had reportedly committed betrayal were punished with deportation from the Marmara Sea region to Eastern Anatolia. In this way Mustafa Kemal warned both the powerful Caucasian lobby inside the establishment and the whole population of the “new Turkey”: nothing other than complete commitment to the Turkish nation would be accepted and the expression of separate identities would be totally forbidden. Hence, the Circassians were the first victims of the Kemalist regime’s massive repression. With few exceptions, the Caucasians bowed their heads, whereas many Kurds did not.

In the aftermath of the 1929 crisis, the United States looked with interest at the social models of European nations to work out a strategy in order to escape the hardships of the moment. The Democratic Roosevelt administration enacted the New Deal, which in many aspects shared some similarities with the corporatist reforms introduced by the Fascist regime. In particular, the President’s Brain Trust and the diplomats in Italy showed a great deal of interest towards the “Third Way”, until the drift in foreign policy led to un unbridgeable gap between the two nations