This essay demonstrates that it is impossible to appreciate the actions of the Italian communist Emilio Sereni without considering his Zionist background. Anyone who is interested in understanding the complexities of communism in the past century and to avoid simplistic conclusions about this ideology will benefit from the study. The problem at stake is that researchers often approach communism in a monolithic manner, which does not adequately explain the multiform manifestations (practical and theoretical) of that phenomenon. This ought to change and to this extent this essay hopes to contribute to that recent strand of historical research that challenges simplistic views on communism. More specifically, by analysing the Management Councils that Sereni created in postwar Italy, we can see that many of their features in fact derived from, or found their deepest origins in, his previous experience as a committed socialist Zionist. The study, then, also relates Sereni to and looks at the broader experiences of early twentieth-century Zionism and Italian communism in the early postwar years.

The ‘école barisienne’ refers to a group of intellectuals, active between the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1980s, who brought their academic and political activity together in order to bring the cultural heritage of Italian communism up to date and to construct a new theory of the revolution. Interpreting the student movement of 1968 as the historical agent of a social and political revolution, their intention was to transform the Italian Communist Party (PCI) into a ‘partito-società’ (‘party-society’) that could take hold of the new generation’s demand for democracy and overturn the hegemony of Christian Democracy, understood as the ‘partito-Stato’ (‘party-state’). This article retraces the life of this intellectual grouping, from the education of its proponents, marked by the Southern Question as a national question, through to the demise of their project. Specifically, it examines the relationship between the research activity of the école, highlighting some significant analytical categorisation used in its historiographical output, its political activity, and the national position of the PCI.

Situated on the border between the capitalist West and Communist East, and with the largest Communist party in Western Europe, Italy found itself at the centre of global ideological struggles in the early Cold War years. A number of Italian writers and intellectuals who had joined the PCI (Partito Comunista Italiano) during the Resistance had hoped that the party would play a central role in the post-war reconstruction of Italy and were attracted to the Soviet Union as an example of Communism in action. This article centres on accounts of journeys to the USSR by Sibilla Aleramo, Renata Viganò and Italo Calvino. It will argue that although their writings portray a largely positive vision of the USSR, they should not be dismissed as naive, or worse, disingenuous travellers whose willingness to embrace Soviet-style Communism was based on a wholescale rejection of Western society and its values (see P. Hollander's 1998 [1981] work, Political Pilgrims: Western Intellectuals in Search of the Good Society). Rather, the article shows how their accounts of the USSR shed light on the writers' relationship with the PCI and argues that the views expressed in the travelogues emerge from the writers' personal experiences of war and resistance, a fervent desire to position themselves as anti-Fascist intellectuals, and their concerns regarding the direction that Italian politics was taking at a pivotal moment in the nation's history.

The debate surrounding German Social Democracy during the era of the Second International represents an important chapter in the historiography of post-Second World War Italy. At the same time, it also marks some crucial moments in the political and intellectual life of Republican Italy. This article aims to show the close relationship between the investigation of the past and the ongoing political struggle that has characterised research on this issue. Study of the topic was practically monopolised by left-wing historians, who, in dealing with the history of German Social Democracy, aimed also to direct the political strategy of workers’ parties. Considering the studies appearing after the 1956 crisis and in the mid-1970s, such a goal seems evident. It was only during the 1980s that the research opened itself to different perspectives – no longer influenced by ideological controversies.

What makes democratic institutions work efficiently? Robert Putnam argued in Making Democracy Work that a mixture of political participation and immersion in associative and social networks in the community, conceptualised as ‘civic community’ or ‘social capital’, is the explanation. Ever since its publication, many questions have arisen about the validity of Putnam's theory. Among the most relevant concerns stands the influence of the Italian Communist Party on Putnam's empirical tests. This paper aims to fill the gap left in the literature by testing Putnam's hypothesis against the political party in the regional government and the PCI's electoral support. Supporting Putnam, this paper finds that variations in the quality of democratic governments in Italy's regions are a function of civic community even after adjusting for the presence of the Italian Communist Party.

This essay will compare the model of the communist family during the era of Palmiro Togliatti's ‘partito nuovo’, beginning with the famous ‘svolta di Salerno’ in 1944, with the model outlined when the Italian Communist Party (PCdI) was first founded in 1921. The sources used vary, spanning memoirs, literature, the press and autobiographies of political activists. The aim of this essay is to expand the research on the ‘communist tradition’; to examine the characteristics of both its theoretical thinking and pedagogic structure; to explore the nature of its propaganda; and to study the individual experiences of activists.

The Italian political crisis of 1993–1994 and the new political dynamics to which it gave rise, and which persist today, have strongly shaped both public debate and historiographical reflection on the Italian Republic. This article assesses the impact of the political changes of the post-1994 period (and notably Berlusconi's entry into politics) on the debate over the so-called First Republic, with regard to: Italian national identity in the post-Fascist period; the functioning of the political system, especially in relation to the role of the political parties; anti-Fascism and its internal divisions; communism and anti-communism.

This article examines the launch of the Tribuna elettorale and Tribuna politica programmes on Italian television (1960–1961), seen in the context of the country's broadcasting history and the changes in the political spectrum and governing alliances at that time. The changing face of political communications and leader–viewer relations may be the most interesting side to the Tribune, but also the most heavily studied. This article chooses instead to reconstruct the steps and reasons that led prime minister Fanfani in the autumn of 1960 to force through his decision to give all political parties airspace for political propaganda. The article argues that the Tribune programmes were only partly innovatory, a kind of ‘revolution that never was’. They were a first step towards democratising the public broadcasting corporation, but maintained firm links with the past and above all sought to legitimiste ‘government television’, as well as delaying structural reform of the medium in the face of mounting pressure on many sides. For the Christian Democrat (DC) and the RAI management, the Tribune programmes were a clever compromise solution, giving in terms of pluralism of information what they were not prepared to concede in terms of pluralism of management.