Italian Fascism Research Articles

Antifaschismus als Antitotalitarismus? Francesco Luigi Ferrari (1889–1933)

Outside Italy, little is known of the anti-Fascism of Francesco Luigi Ferrari, one of the closest allies of Sicilian priest and Christian Democrat Luigi Sturzo. Based on his most important publications before and after his exile (1926), the contribution pursues this crucial question: Did Ferrari, in ways similar to Sturzo’s, combine anti-Fascism with anti-totalitarianism? How did he comparatively classify Italian Fascism as a movement and a regime? To which analytical categories did he reach back for this purpose? Did he change his attitude over time?

Militarizing Monopoly: Game Design for Wartime

Abstract This article tells the story of how Monopoly, a familiar object, was militarized on the eve of World War II. It will trace how game makers working for both Allied and Axis nations redesigned Monopoly to address their own political contexts, ranging from the Great Depression to Italian Fascism to Nazi German POW camps. To understand how different nations mobilized Monopoly for wartime, we first must turn to the historical origins of its design.

Pinocchio illustrations in the fascist period: history of implicit propaganda

The contribution aims to investigate the influence that the italian Fascist period had on the iconography of images, including the illustrations of Children’s Literature, using the representation of Pinocchio as an emblematic image for this reflection. Often, in fact, we look at the Great History leaving out the unofficial history, that of mass culture, which more than anything else gives us back the common feeling of the society between the World Wars, opening us to the complexity of a period in which the stories of those who lived in it dissolve. The contribution will therefore attempt to historically and socially frame aesthetics in the Fascist Period by retracing the relationship between images and propaganda and analysing, through the social and cultural context, the illustrations of Pinocchio and the educational and iconographic influences exerted on an entire generation of children and young people, adopting Avventure e spedizioni punitive di Pinocchio fascista as a paradigm.

Accounting for hegemony. Fascist ideology and the shifting roles of accounting at the University of Ferrara and the Alla Scala Opera House (1922–1943)

Accounting researchers have shown how accounting is implicated in the creation of power relations. Most studies assume a unidirectional relationship between the ideological beliefs of those in power and accounting practices. The study adopts Gramsci’s understanding of power relations to analyse how Italian Fascists enlisted accounting information to ensure that two important organisations, the University of Ferrara and the Alla Scala Opera House, would become a conduit for the diffusion of Fascist ideology. The article shows how there is not an uncomplicated, unidirectional relationship between ideology and accounting. The illusorily neutral appearance of accounting allows it to be adapted to play different roles and acquire different meanings even in the achievement of the same set of ideological beliefs. The study also shows how Gramsci’s thought offers an alternative reading of power relations to that of Foucault and Marx and considers a set of ideological beliefs which are scarcely analysed in accounting history studies.

Collecting Mussolini: The Case of the Susmel–Bargellini Collection

Heritage Studies has dealt with Italian Fascism in different ways but paying little attention to the movable items linked to the regime, such as paintings, sculptures and memorabilia. Over the last decade, private collections linked to the Mussolini iconography have emerged, owing to a renewed social acceptance of it and more items of Mussoliniana being readily available. Due to the reluctance of experts to confront this issue and the expansion of private museums in Italy, spontaneous initiatives have sprung up including a permanent exhibition of Mussolini iconography as part of the MAGI’900 Museum in Pieve di Cento, which consists of approximately 250 portraits of the Duce in different media. The nucleus of the original collection once belonged to the historian Duilio Susmel and was part of a large documentary collection put together during the 1960s and 1970s. Susmel hoped it would become a museum or a centre for Fascist studies, but ultimately it remained in his private villa near Florence until the 1990s. The archive is now split between Rome and Salò, and the Mussoliniana was purchased by Bargellini, who added busts, paintings and knick-knacks. Since 2009 it has been on display in a section of Bargellini’s museum entitled Arte del Ventennio. Therefore, the Italian State tolerates its existence but sadly it is ignored by most experts, despite the study opportunities it offers.

„Niespełniony pisarz, który został historykiem”. Jerzy Wojciech Borejsza (22 sierpnia 1935 – 28 lipca 2019)

The purpose of the article is to present the scientific biography of Professor Jerzy Wojciech Borejsza, an expert on the history of the 19th and 20th centuries, and to characterise his achievements and views on historiography. Borejsza was one of the most prominent experts in the Polish revolutionary movement and emigration after the January Uprising. Later, he was interested in the history of Italian fascism, Adolf Hitler’s worldview, including his attitude towards the Slavs, and the Soviet version of the totalitarian regime.

Fascist foodways: Ricettari as propaganda for grain production and sexual reproduction

Food connects people and land, a link that the Italian Fascist regime exploited through their seizure of local culinary culture for the promotion of national demographic goals. This article traces the connections between the regime’s concurrent drives for food production and sexual reproduction. It will show the propagandistic potential of recipes, and also the limits of top-down dietary change under dictatorship. Ricettari, propagandistic recipe pamphlets, blended public politics and private practices into a heady cocktail, one that cast autarkic cookery and sexual reproduction as valuable contributions to the Fascist state. These documents establish a clear link between the regime’s demographic policy and the autarkic campaigns in favor of Italian grain production. Cooking, the professed subject of ricettari, conveyed political neutrality—it falsely marked the documents as feminine and innocuous. So too did design: small and light, these stapled leaflets could be easily rolled up and stuck in an apron pocket. Portability thus insured that these documents could cross the threshold from the public rally to the private kitchen. Once there, they could directly address women, and attempt to modify their daily habits in ways that would change the body from the inside out. At stake in the ricettari lies a broader contribution to Food Studies in terms of food and politics: this unique form of ephemera reveals that the Italian Fascist regime took a pronatalist approach to cuisine.

Friend or Foe? Representations of WWI in Italian Fascist Cinema

Abstract The present essay investigates the representation of the First World War in Italian fascist cinema by analyzing some of the major films about the war made during the Fascist regime and, notably, Marco Elter’s Le scarpe al sole (1935), Giovacchino Forzano’s 13 uomini e un cannone (1936) and Oreste Biancoli’s Piccolo alpino (1940). The films will be examined from an original and specific angle, devoting special attention to their portrayal of the Austrian enemy. Little consideration has been paid so far in scholarly research to this aspect. The essay will specifically address the question, investigating the changing representation of WWI and, particularly, the metamorphosis of Austria from foe to friend in Italian cinema in the course of the twenty years of Fascist regime. In doing so, the essay will place the above films against the background of the Fascist regime’s foreign policy, with special regard to the Italian-Austrian politics of friendship during the 1930s, followed at the end of the decade by Italy’s alliance with Nazi-Germany and the birth of the Rome-Berlin axis.

A History of a Reaction of the Mareko People Against the Italian Invasion and the Five Year Italian Rule-in South Central Ethiopia

The prime objective of this paper is to explore a history of reaction made by Mareko people against the Italian invasion and the five year occupation. The paper also uncovers the role played by Mareko and other integrated ethno-linguistic individual patriots who fight against Italian occupation and rule at the then Mareko woreda (district). At the eve of the Fascist Italian aggression Mareko people were lived under Mareko woreda (district) which was under the administrative division of Shawa tekely gezat (division of country). Butajira town was the administrative site of the then Mareko woreda. Like other nation, nationalities, and peoples of Ethiopia, fighting class from Mareko people marched in Maychew and other battles to defend their county from Italian aggression. Even though the final battle at Maychew was unsuccessful, they actively resist Italian rule. To speak frankly the then governor of Dobena Sub- district and his officers peacefully submitted and became a leading collaborator, but the majority of Mareko people resisted for the Italian rule. The resistance was mainly led by Warѐqѐ Mareyamѐ, spiritual leader of Mareko people in Mareko land, and qegnazmach Tuji Anjilo outside Mareko land. Subsequently the Italian Fascist officials established military camp at Koshe kebele the center of Dobena sub-district. This paper presents how and why the Italian divide- rule policy failed in the area under the study. Keywords: aggression, Mareko people, resistance, collaboration, Italian rule. DOI: 10.7176/HRL/53-01 Publication date: April 30 th 2021

Bolshevism in the political thought of Adolf Kliszewicz

Adolf Kliszewicz (born 1879) was one of the leading publicists of the Second Polish Republic connected with the Christian-conservative trend. He was a publicist for many conservative magazines, including Przegląd Powszechny, Nasza Przyszłość or Ateneum Kapłańskie. The article concerns views of Adolf Kliszewicz on the doctrine and political system of Bolshevism. It should be noted that Kliszewicz based his analysis of Russian communist thought on the background of political tendencies that began to dominate in Europe. For him, Italian fascism and German national socialism were the reference point for reflections on Bolshevism. Additionally, the Polish journalist saw in the Russian communist doctrine the great danger of national and state existence. Radical socialism, as he treated Bolshevism, was an expression of the perversion of man and his enslavement by materialistic ideology.

The Very Grounds Underlying Twentieth-Century Authoritarian Regimes: Building Soil Fertility in Italian Libya and the Brazilian Cerrado

AbstractThis article analyzes the role of soil in the making of authoritarian regimes and illustrates twentieth-century practices and discourses related to fertility across the globe. It compares two different approaches to and understandings of soil fertility: the first emerged in North Libya under Italian Fascist rule (1922–1943), the second in Central Brazil during the civil-military dictatorship (1964–1985). We compare two soil-forming processes that changed physical and chemical properties of the original matter and were embedded within specific ideologies of modernization. In both cases, state agendas of agrarian production played a paramount role not only in socioeconomic projects but also as an instrument to suppress opposition. Technocratic and political aspects of building and maintaining fertility were interwoven, although in different patterns in the two countries. We show how the rejuvenation of land bled into the regeneration of communities through processes that anchored the self-definition and development of these authoritarian regimes, and argue that attempts at landscape transformations through agricultural activity and strategies of fertilization are inescapable features of dictatorships. In so doing, we elaborate the concept of “authoritarian soil.” The juxtaposition of these non-synchronous cases reveals how agricultural modernization developed throughout the twentieth century. Our study is rooted in environmental history and contributes to the ongoing dialogue between that field and science and technology studies. Its cross-temporal, comparative methodology draws upon sources and historiographical debates in English, Italian, and Portuguese.

\u201cThe rebirth of the West begins with you!\u201d\u2014Self-improvement as radicalisation on 4chan

Among the discussion threads devoted to racism, conspiracies, and fascist dogma on 4chan’s notorious ‘Politically Incorrect’ board, there is also a small but significant number of posts on the topic of far-right self-improvement. These posts speak in a style that blends the language of self-help and fitness with far-right propaganda and conspiracies, and are designed to turn the movement from aimless online ‘shitposters’ into survivalists and soldiers. This article describes the unique form of self-improvement advice known on 4chan as the ‘iron pill,’ and considers the role that self-improvement plays in radicalisation among the far right online. It addresses how this plays into the history of fascism, looking in particular at the concept of the ‘New Man’ in Italian fascism, and discusses how a political narrative of conspiracy and resistance to imagined tyranny is used to motivate self-improvement, and how this in turn builds and cements radicalisation.

The Reception of Petrarch\u2019s Africa in Fascist Italy

In his 1877 Storia della letteratura (History of Literature), Luigi Settembrini wrote that Petrarch’s fourteenth-century poem, the Africa, ‘is forgotten …; very few have read it, and it was judged—I don’t know when and by whom—a paltry thing’. Yet, just four decades later, the early Renaissance poet’s epic of the Second Punic War, written in Latin hexameters, was being promoted as the national poem of Italy by eminent classical scholar, Nicola Festa, who published the only critical edition of the epic in 1926. This article uncovers the hitherto untold story of the revival of Petrarch’s poetic retelling of Scipio’s defeat of Hannibal in Fascist Italy, and its role in promoting ideas of nation and empire during the Fascist period in Italy. After briefly outlining the Africa’s increasing popularity in the nineteenth century, I consider some key publications that contributed to the revival of the poem under Fascism. I proceed chronologically to show how the Africa was shaped into a poem of the Italian nation, and later, after Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia, of Italy’s new Roman Empire. I suggest that the contestations over the significance of the Africa during the Fascist period, over whether it was a national poem of Roman revival or a poem of the universal ideal of empire, demonstrate more profound tensions in how Italian Fascism saw itself.

Antyamerykańska trauma i nostalgia za komunizmem we włoskiej wojnie o pamięć na przykładzie twórczości Giorgia Gabera

Anti-American Trauma and Nostalgia for Communism in the Italian Memory War as Presented in Giorgio Gaber’s Work
 Although the contemporary Italian memory war originally stems from a debate around the trauma of the 1943-1945 civil war between Italian Fascists and the Resistance, it’s almost equally crucial aspect remains that of the two conflicting narratives of the early Cold War period (1945-1948). One of those is the dominant memory pattern, imposed by the ruling Christian Democratic Party (pro-American and anti-Communist), opposed by the alternative and marginalized view promoted by the Communists (anti-American and pro-Communist). Giorgio Gaber (1939-2003), a famous Italian cantautore (singer-songwriter), is one the exponents of anti-American trauma and nostalgia for communism within the latter narrative. In his two famous texts, America and Some used to be Communists, he offers precious insights into these aspects of his generation’s own memory and their ancestors’ post-memory of the post-war period.

After Many Gods

In January 1928, The Dial published T. S. Eliot’s review of Personae: The Collected Poems of Ezra Pound (1926). Even as he acknowledges his indebtedness to his fellow American poet-critic, Eliot seems bewildered by Pound’s belief system, which in his estimation is a heady mix of mysticism, occultism, pseudoscience, and Confucianism. With a touch of exasperation, he ends the review by asking provocatively, “what does Mr. Pound believe?” Although he would never give an answer that Eliot would find satisfying, Pound would revisit the question time and again in his prose and poetry. In the process, he reveals more about his eccentric set of creeds than even Eliot might have bargained for. Striving to synthesize a range of philosophical and polytheistic traditions, Pound would cast off the Presbyterianism of his early youth. From the 1930s onward, his deepening affiliation with Italian Fascism and near-cultic devotion to Mussolini would add yet another layer to his spectrum of beliefs. With Eliot’s query in The Dial functioning as a recurring point of reference, this essay examines Pound’s religious beliefs as a shifting panoply of mythico-theological, aesthetic, and political ideas. The picture that emerges is as complex as it is difficult to pin down, blurring the boundaries of what constitutes “faith” itself.

Italian Fascism in the thought of Polish nationalists (1922-1938)

Italian Fascism in the thought of Polish nationalists (1922-1938)

“An Unfulfilled Writer Who Became a Historian” : Jerzy Wojciech Borejsza (22 August 1935 – 28 July 2019)

Jerzy Wojciech Borejsza was the son of communist activist Jerzy Borejsza, referred to as an ‘international communist’, and Ewa nee Kantor. His grandfather Abraham Goldberg was one of the leaders of Polish Zionists. Borejsza described himself as ‘a Pole of Jewish origin’. His personality was greatly influenced by the Second World War experiences, including the pogrom of Jews in German-occupied Lwow in July 1941 and the tragic events of occupied Warsaw. As a result of the decision of the communist party authorities, in 1952, Borejsza was sent to study in the Soviet Union, first to Kazan, then to Moscow. This made it impossible for him to study Polish philology in Warsaw; Borejsza, therefore, chose historical studies. After returning to Poland in 1957, he undertook research on the history of Polish emigration after the January Uprising (1863–4). He was also interested in the history of the Polish socialist movement and its connections to socialism in Western Europe. Later, Borejsza intervened in the historiography of the Crimean War (1853–6), intending to bring this forgotten armed conflict back to light. He coined the phrase ‘the beautiful nineteenth century’, in contrast to the twentieth century as a time of hatred, extermination, and the Holocaust. Initially, Borejsza worked at the Polish Academy of Sciences (1958–64), then at the University of Warsaw (1964–75). In the early 1970s, he began research on Italian fascism and Italy’s unsuccessful attempts to create a fascist International. He also conducted research on the worldview of Adolf Hitler, formulating the view that, apart from anti-Semitism, another vital component of the Fuhrer’s racism was anti-Slavism. Borejsza was the author of a textbook on totalitarian and authoritarian systems in Europe in 1918–45 (entitled Schools of Hatred). After the anti-Semitic campaign launched by the communist authorities in March 1968, he was removed from the University of Warsaw (1975). From then until the end of his life, he worked at the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. In the years 2004–12, he was also employed at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun. In the last years of his life, he researched Russian archives, dealing with the history of communism as a totalitarian system and the Comintern’s attitude toward Poland and Stalinist persecution of Polish communists. Jerzy W. Borejsza was an outstanding Polish researcher of the history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He also witnessed the tragic history of the century of extermination.

СОВРЕМЕННЫЕ ПОДХОДЫ К АНАЛИЗУ ФАШИСТСКОГО 20-ЛЕТИЯ В ИТАЛИИ В ОТЕЧЕСТВЕННОЙ ИТАЛЬЯНИСТИКЕ

The paper deals with the problems of the history of Italian fascism which are today in the center of the attention of Russian historians. In particular, historiography of the phenomenon of fascism and the anti-fascist movement in Italy, Italian fascism in the context of Italian identity, the specifics of Church-state relations in fascist Italy.

Foreign Policy and Peacekeeping Initiatives of the Vatican in the Second Half of the 1930s — Early 1940s in the Reflection of the Soviet Press

In the extremely difficult international situation of the second half of the 1930s, relations between the USSR and the Vatican occupied a very insignificant place. This is partly why the sources that would cover this problem more prominently are very scarce. Under these conditions, the Soviet press becomes an important and still insufficiently appreciated source. With the general strict censorship of the press of this period, it allows us to identify various, but sometimes quite significant nuances of perception of the Vatican policy in the Soviet Union. The first event that influenced some reassessment of the image of the Vatican was the VII Congress of the Comintern, held in 1935, which put forward the tactics of a united front, which assumed, among other things, cooperation with confessional organizations of workers, and even with the petty-bourgeois strata of the population. In the light of this new tactic, a certain line is beginning to be drawn, albeit almost imperceptibly and even, perhaps, unwittingly, between the Vatican as a political force and the national structures of the Catholic Church. A more noticeable reassessment of the image of the Vatican took place in 1938, when the differences between Italian fascism, German Nazism, on the one hand, and the Vatican, on the other, on racial problems and on the issue of the persecution of the Catholic Church became obvious and could not fail to attract the attention of Soviet diplomats and, following them, the Soviet press. The subsequent election of Pope Pius XII to the papal throne in 1939 allows us to strengthen this line and enrich it with attention to the Vatican's peacemaking policy. But the conclusion of the Molotov — Ribbentrop pact once again returns the image of the Vatican to its supposedly political conjuncture, but this time in the interests of the other side, which has now become the main opponent of the USSR, i. e. England and France. And only the German attack on the USSR allows for a brief moment to see the possibility of forming a different image of the Vatican, an opponent of racism and fascism in all its manifestations. A careful reading of the press allows us to draw a preliminary conclusion about the absence of a clearly developed and formulated position of the governing bodies of the Soviet Union in relation to the Vatican, which varied, albeit slightly, depending on changes in the foreign policy interests of the Soviet state.

Global Sounding Options for Libyan Independence. 1937

Many figures of the Libyan national liberation movement, after the defeat of the Italian fascist colonial troops were in exile where they tried to fight a political struggle. The article deals with the activities of the “League for the protection of Tripoli and Cyrenaica” with its headquarters in Damascus, headed by the Bashir Saadawi. It was created in 1928, united many members of the Libyan diasporas in the Mashriq, and in 1937 proved itself by another anti-fascist appeal, which was recorded by Comintern staffers in Moscow. This struggle is placed in the broad context of global ideological and political confrontation and the work of the Comintern in the Arab East. The article presents the international reaction to the Anti-Comintern Pact of 1936-1937 of the countries of the fascist “axis” united against the “communist threat” in the context of the redistribution of the North African colonies. The article analyzes the possibility of contacts between the League and the Comintern in the wave of opposition to Italian colonialism. The fascist Alliance was gaining strength and preparing for war. Italy was no exception: if was going to fight for its possessions in North Africa, where its interests were disputed by Britain, which also tried to use the energy of Libyan patriots in exile, especially in Egypt. Thus, the League could well be seen by the Executive Committee of the Communist International as a tactical partner in opposing to both sides, namely the Italian fascists and the British imperialists.