- University of Pisa, Storia, Post-DocUniversità di Verona, Dipartimento di Culture e Civiltà, Post-Docadd
- European History, Italian (European History), History of European Socialism and Communism, History of Italian and European Antifascism, History of Historiography, Storia, and 13 moreHistory, Russian Studies, Cold War, Soviet History, World War II, History of Communism, Central and Eastern Europe, First World War, Fascism, Eastern European Studies, Habsburg Studies, Ukrainian Studies, and Interwar Period Historyedit
The Lectures The World Crisis of 1914-1918, delivered by the French historian Élie Halévy in Oxford in May 1929, represent «a model of explanation which in its profundity and suggestiveness has never been rivaled» (F. Stern).... more
The Lectures The World Crisis of 1914-1918, delivered by the French historian Élie Halévy in Oxford in May 1929, represent «a model of explanation which in its profundity and suggestiveness has never been rivaled» (F. Stern). Surprisingly, however, they have been mostly
neglected by the huge bibliography on the Great War. This article
will thus analyze the development of Halévy’s conception of the
«world crisis of 1914–1918» against his own biographical and intellectual
backdrop; then it will try to rethink Halévy’s contribution in the
light of the most recent historiography on the topic.
neglected by the huge bibliography on the Great War. This article
will thus analyze the development of Halévy’s conception of the
«world crisis of 1914–1918» against his own biographical and intellectual
backdrop; then it will try to rethink Halévy’s contribution in the
light of the most recent historiography on the topic.
Research Interests:
This essay attempts to examine established visions of postwar in Istria, through the methodological perspectives of recent (post-) Habsburg historiography, starting from the category of "national indifference." Instead of focusing on the... more
This essay attempts to examine established visions of postwar in Istria, through the methodological perspectives of recent (post-) Habsburg historiography, starting from the category of "national indifference." Instead of focusing on the clash between "Italians" and "Slavs," it focuses on the chaotic dynamics of the post-1918 transition and the resulting violent conflicts in a rural context that was anything but nationalized. By appropriating Italian-speaking nationalism and reconfiguring the persistent Habsburg heritage, the new fascist movement managed to mobilize peasant masses on political-ideological grounds that contributed to radicalizing local rifts and conflicts. Aimed against "internal enemies" identified as "Austrians," "Bolsheviks" and "Slavs," Istrian fascism worked to establish total loyalty to the new state order.
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In spite of the recent transnational turn, there continues to be a considerable gap between Fascist studies and the new approaches to the transitions, imperial collapses, and legacies of post-World War I Europe. This article posits itself... more
In spite of the recent transnational turn, there continues to be a considerable gap between Fascist studies and the new approaches to the transitions, imperial collapses, and legacies of post-World War I Europe. This article posits itself at the crossroads between fascist studies, Habsburg studies, and scholarship on post-1918 violence. In this regard, the difficulties of the state transition, the subsequent social unrest, and the ascent of new forms of political radicalism in post-Habsburg Trieste are a case in point. Rather than focusing on the "national strife" between "Italians" and "Slavs," this article will concentrate on the unstable local relations between state and civil society, which led to multiple cycles of conflict and crisis. One of the arguments it makes is that in post-1918 Trieste, where the different nationalist groups contended for a space characterized by multiple loyalties and allegiances, Fascists claimed to be the movement of the "true Italians," identified with the Fascists and their sympathizers. Accordingly, while targeting the alleged enemies of the "Italian nation" (defined as "Bolsheviks," "Austrophiles," and "Slavs"), they aimed to polarize the Italian-speaking community along different political fault lines to reconfigure relations between the state and civil society.
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Research Interests: European History, Eastern European Studies, European Studies, Imperial History, Fascism, and 13 moreNationalism, Conservatism, Eastern European history, Nationalism And State Building, Empires, Fascism and Modernism, History of Nationalism, History of Conservatism, Italian fascism, Far-Right Politics, far-right politics Europe, Extreme and Far Right, and Fascismo
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Far from exclusively challenging Europe's present and future, the current cri-ses are also changing its relations to the past. The analogy with the 1930s has been repeatedly evoked as a key for understanding the current European crisis.... more
Far from exclusively challenging Europe's present and future, the current cri-ses are also changing its relations to the past. The analogy with the 1930s has been repeatedly evoked as a key for understanding the current European crisis. Nevertheless , history, even the 'history of the present' (as paradoxical as it may seem), is always an essay in comparison and contextualization. The aim of this paper is therefore to rethink today's European crises within a broad historical perspective by proposing a historiographical overview of the crucial transitional periods in the twentieth century, such as post-1989, post-1945, and post-1918. Moreover, it intends to conduct a critical assessment of some master narratives of twentieth-century Europe and their effort to combine in many contradictory ways the post-1914 catastrophes with the post-1945 reconstruction. It is particularly designed to re-frame the 'history of the present' from two points of view: 1. how do some master narratives conceive the both catastrophic and progressive experiences of the twentieth century and the ways in which they still affect and shape the present? 2. in what sense and to what extent is it possible to understand over time the dynamics of both destruction and reconstruction, destabilization and stabilization, disintegration and integration?
Research Interests: History, European History, Eastern European Studies, European Studies, History of Ideas, and 10 moreContemporary History, Historiography, Post-conflict Reconstruction and Development, Political Science, History of Historiography, Transition, Post-War Reconstruction, Postwar Europe, Tony Judt, and Stabilization and Reconstruction
This essay focuses on the complex and layered attitudes of Mussolini and of the early Fascists towards the Russian Revolutions and Bolshevism within the European and global contexts of 1917-1922. It particularly analyses the connections... more
This essay focuses on the complex and layered attitudes of Mussolini and of the early Fascists towards the Russian Revolutions and Bolshevism within the European and global contexts of 1917-1922. It particularly analyses the connections and convergences with the Italian revolutionary syndicalists and with the Russian socialist revolutionary exiles in Italy. Mussolini's and early Fascists' perceptions and interpretations are understood in the light of two fundamental (but controversial) historiographical categories: on the one hand, the «European civil war», implying multiple transnational conflicts within Europe; on the other hand, the «Eurasian crisis», describing the post-war collapse of the continental Empires and its destabilising effects. Seen in this way, the representations of the Russian Revolutions and of Bolshevism fueled Fascist aggressively transformative project of the Italian nation-state and accordingly presented Fascism as a potentially European model of reaction to the post-war crisis.
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This paper aims at reframing the issue of the origins of the Italian Fascism through a East central European comparative lens. The Upper Adriatic case study will provide a vantage point for analysing the connections between post-war... more
This paper aims at reframing the issue of the origins of the Italian Fascism through a East central European comparative lens. The Upper Adriatic case study will provide a vantage point for analysing the connections between post-war crisis, Habsburg legacies, and the ascent of the Fascist movement.
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This paper will deal with two relevant issues in the intellectual history of twentieth-century Europe: 1) the relationship between socialism, antifascism and antitotalitarianism; 2) the possibilities of a democratic revolution in the... more
This paper will deal with two relevant issues in the intellectual history of twentieth-century Europe: 1) the relationship between socialism, antifascism and antitotalitarianism; 2) the possibilities of a democratic revolution in the midst of the Second World War. In order to analyse them, I will focus on Leo Valiani's biography and thought between 1939 and 1944, when he left the Communist Party and became a prominent figure of the " Partito d'Azione ". A special attention will be paid to the ways in which Valiani's antitotalitarian and revolutionary socialism was tied to the complex legacies of the Italian antifascist group " Giustizia e Libertà ".
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How did intellectuals react to the economic crisis of 2007–2008 and its long-term backlash? What did they learn from the main twentieth-century political and social experiences, in order to make a new sense of the traditional cultures of... more
How did intellectuals react to the economic crisis of 2007–2008 and its long-term backlash? What did they learn from the main twentieth-century political and social experiences, in order to make a new sense of the traditional cultures of the Left?
In order to answer these crucial issues, this proposal will analyze the paths of the well-known historians E. Hobsbawm and T. Judt and their apparently similar, but actually different reactions to the crisis. First, I will focus on their respective books: How to Change the World (2011) and Ill Fares the Land (2010). On the one hand, Hobsbawm’s critical approach to the post-1991 world, shaped by his lifelong fidelity to Marxism and his persistent sympathy for the Russian Revolution, was connected to his catastrophic vision of the end of the both conflicting and collaborative dynamics between capitalism and socialism. On the other hand, Judt’s re-thinking of the social-democratic tradition, compelled by the global transformations of the social question, was inspired by his connections with the East Central European dissidents’ anti-totalitarian liberalism and by his critical approach to the engagement of the French intellectuals. Second, I will investigate their different interpretations of the „Golden Age“ of post-1945 Europe (with special regard to the long-term impact of the crisis of 1929 and to the influence of Soviet communism) and of the causes of its crisis. Third, I will show how, in spite of their common reference to Marx, late Hobsbawm’s and Judt’s historical visions – respectively combined with determinism and moralism – provide opposite ways of coping with the legacies of the 20th century and of criticizing the language of neoliberal economy within the Left.
In order to answer these crucial issues, this proposal will analyze the paths of the well-known historians E. Hobsbawm and T. Judt and their apparently similar, but actually different reactions to the crisis. First, I will focus on their respective books: How to Change the World (2011) and Ill Fares the Land (2010). On the one hand, Hobsbawm’s critical approach to the post-1991 world, shaped by his lifelong fidelity to Marxism and his persistent sympathy for the Russian Revolution, was connected to his catastrophic vision of the end of the both conflicting and collaborative dynamics between capitalism and socialism. On the other hand, Judt’s re-thinking of the social-democratic tradition, compelled by the global transformations of the social question, was inspired by his connections with the East Central European dissidents’ anti-totalitarian liberalism and by his critical approach to the engagement of the French intellectuals. Second, I will investigate their different interpretations of the „Golden Age“ of post-1945 Europe (with special regard to the long-term impact of the crisis of 1929 and to the influence of Soviet communism) and of the causes of its crisis. Third, I will show how, in spite of their common reference to Marx, late Hobsbawm’s and Judt’s historical visions – respectively combined with determinism and moralism – provide opposite ways of coping with the legacies of the 20th century and of criticizing the language of neoliberal economy within the Left.
Research Interests:
This article reconstructs the personal and intellectual friendship between two cosmopolitan intellectuals such as Andrea Caffi (1887-1955) and Nicola Chiaromonte (1905-1972): they met in exile in Paris in 1932. After a brief... more
This article reconstructs the personal and intellectual friendship between two cosmopolitan intellectuals such as Andrea Caffi (1887-1955) and Nicola Chiaromonte (1905-1972): they met in exile in Paris in 1932. After a brief recapitulation of their previous biographies, and an overall presentation of their participation in the revolutionary anti-fascist group 'Giustizia e Libertà' (GL) in the thirties, this article provides a detailed analysis of their dialogues and disagreements in the forties and fifties on the topics of socialism and revolution, anti-fascism and anti-totalitarianism, utopia and history. A particular attention is devoted to their contribution to the debates in the antifascist journal of GL (published in Paris, 1932-1935) and in the radical journal of Politics (published in New York, 1944-1950). Examined from close to, the friendship between Caffi and Chiaromonte appears as a sequence of convergences and divergences, understandings and ruptures, which reflect the tensions and lacerations of the European civil war and its postwar legacy (intertwined with and overlapped to the cultural Cold War). Looked at again from a distance, however, it reveals a fundamental intellectual unity, a profound apolitical affinity in a century of radical politics which had fed wars, revolutions and totalitarian regimes.
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Recensione a A. Viarengo, Franco Venturi. Politica e storia, Carocci, Roma 2014
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Tony Judt: socialism, intellectuals and postwar Europe sketches an intellectual and historiographical profile of the British Jewish historian Tony Judt (1948-2010). His historical studies concerned French socialism between the 19th and... more
Tony Judt: socialism, intellectuals and postwar Europe sketches an intellectual and historiographical profile of the British Jewish historian Tony Judt (1948-2010). His historical studies concerned French socialism between the 19th and the 20th century, the relationship between French postwar intellectuals and communism, and the East European dissidents. In his masterpiece, Postwar, Judt broadened his historical perspective to Eastern Europe and focussed on the political, social, cultural and economic experiences of the European postwar period.
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This paper focuses on the entangled problems of cosmopolitanism, Europeanism and exile, with special attention to the perspective of the Italian-Russian intellectual Andrea Caffi and of the Italian-American intellectual Nicola... more
This paper focuses on the entangled problems of cosmopolitanism, Europeanism and exile, with special attention to the perspective of the Italian-Russian intellectual Andrea Caffi and of the Italian-American intellectual Nicola Chiaromonte, in the period of the 1930s and 1940s.
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This is a re-edition of the well-known Oxford Lectures by Elie Halévy, devoted to the "World Crisis of 1914-1918" and held in 1929. The essay tries to critically discuss the Halévy's Lectures as related to his historiographical interests... more
This is a re-edition of the well-known Oxford Lectures by Elie Halévy, devoted to the "World Crisis of 1914-1918" and held in 1929. The essay tries to critically discuss the Halévy's Lectures as related to his historiographical interests in English history and within his intellectual path in the 1920s and 1930s. Halévy's interpretation of the Great War still provides inspiring hints for a deep re-thinking of its origins and its outcomes.
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This essay focuses on the reflections of the antifascist group of "Giustizia e Libertà" as far as regards the categories of "European civil war" and "epoch of tyrannies". Carlo Rosselli and Franco Venturi, Aldo Garosci and Leo Valiani... more
This essay focuses on the reflections of the antifascist group of "Giustizia e Libertà" as far as regards the categories of "European civil war" and "epoch of tyrannies". Carlo Rosselli and Franco Venturi, Aldo Garosci and Leo Valiani provided important analytical insights on the political experiences of the 1930s and 1940s which still deserve to be integrated within the European intellectual history of twentieth century.
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This volume presents the correspondence between two cosmopolitan intellectuals: Andrea Caffi (1887–1955) and Nicola Chiaromonte (1905–1972), who met while in exile in Paris in 1932. Examined closely, the friendship between Caffi and... more
This volume presents the correspondence between two cosmopolitan intellectuals: Andrea Caffi (1887–1955) and Nicola Chiaromonte (1905–1972), who met while in exile in Paris in 1932. Examined closely, the friendship between Caffi and Chiaromonte appears as a sequence of convergences and divergences, understandings and ruptures, which reflect the tensions and lacerations of the European civil war and its post-war legacy (intertwined with and overlapping the cultural Cold War). Looked at again from a distance, however, it reveals a fundamental intellectual unity—a profound apolitical affinity in a century of radical politics which had fed wars, revolutions and totalitarian regimes.
Research Interests:
Genova, 30 May 2018, International workshop on Fascism, Populism, and Illiberal Democracy. Participants: M. Bresciani, G. Schwarz, F. Cassata, P. Ther, N. Urbinati, S. Bottoni, A. Testi In the aftermath of the geopolitical and... more
Genova, 30 May 2018, International workshop on Fascism, Populism, and Illiberal Democracy.
Participants: M. Bresciani, G. Schwarz, F. Cassata, P. Ther, N. Urbinati, S. Bottoni, A. Testi
In the aftermath of the geopolitical and ideological transformations of 1989-1991, which are symbolically epitomized by the fall of the Berlin Wall, the future seemed to belong to liberal democracy, as part of a “Western model” self-proclaimed winner of the Cold War. Between the 1990s and the early 2000s, this conviction intertwined with the idea of “the end of history” on both sides of the Atlantic (with different meanings and implications) and found in the project of European integration one of its most dynamic driving forces.
The financial and economic crisis of 2007-2008 which transferred from the US to Europe, destabilized the European Union, and brought to the ascent of new political, social and cultural phenomena has demonstrated that the opposite is true. As a matter of fact, the very complexity of the crisis, or better the plurality of global crises developing at different regional levels, requires a huge and deep essay in understanding. In this regard a tense public debate has taken place thanks to the participation of political scientists, sociologists, and historians. On the one hand, a complex and dynamic global context, marked by the geopolitical initiatives of Putin's increasingly authoritarian regime and by his decisive role in the Ukrainian crisis, by the Syrian civil war, where the great powers were involved in different forms and at different stages, by the disrupting consequences of Brexit and of Trump's American presidency. On the other hand, the crisis of the European institutions, the severe economic difficulties of the Mediterranean countries (first of all, Greece), the massive flux of refugees and migrants from the Middle East and Africa, the hegemonic role of Germany (and its looming crisis) and the instability of the former Communist countries in East Central Europe and in the Balkans, the ascent of the “populist” movements and parties and the affirmation of illiberal governments in Hungary and in Poland.
The debate has focussed on some concepts – “populism”, “illiberal democracy”, “fascism”, and “post-fascism” – by which journalists, political scientists, sociologists, and historians have tried to define, analyse, and reconstruct the sense, the forms and the background of the new political movements and experiments. This debate has made frequent reference to the term of “fascism” and to the analogy with the 1930s in order to grasp the ongoing trends and dynamics. For that matter, the never-ending question of the definition of “fascism” has been resumed, together with the discussion of its political, social, and cultural features, of its relationship with interwar Europe, and of its legacies in post-1945 Europe.
In which sense the comparative reference to the historical phenomenon of “fascism” is pertinent to today's phenomena, and in which ways it is understood? Why and how can be useful the analogy with the past – the “crisis of democracy” of the 1930s – in order to better understand the present? Can the concepts of “populism” or “illiberal democracy”, and the discussions that have developed around them, offer an innovative contribution, and in which terms?
These and other questions will be at the core of this workshop, aiming to confront points of view of historians and political scientists in order to clarify the aforementioned concepts and to reframe the discussion about the relationship between the today's global and European crises and the complex legacy of the twentieth century.
Participants: M. Bresciani, G. Schwarz, F. Cassata, P. Ther, N. Urbinati, S. Bottoni, A. Testi
In the aftermath of the geopolitical and ideological transformations of 1989-1991, which are symbolically epitomized by the fall of the Berlin Wall, the future seemed to belong to liberal democracy, as part of a “Western model” self-proclaimed winner of the Cold War. Between the 1990s and the early 2000s, this conviction intertwined with the idea of “the end of history” on both sides of the Atlantic (with different meanings and implications) and found in the project of European integration one of its most dynamic driving forces.
The financial and economic crisis of 2007-2008 which transferred from the US to Europe, destabilized the European Union, and brought to the ascent of new political, social and cultural phenomena has demonstrated that the opposite is true. As a matter of fact, the very complexity of the crisis, or better the plurality of global crises developing at different regional levels, requires a huge and deep essay in understanding. In this regard a tense public debate has taken place thanks to the participation of political scientists, sociologists, and historians. On the one hand, a complex and dynamic global context, marked by the geopolitical initiatives of Putin's increasingly authoritarian regime and by his decisive role in the Ukrainian crisis, by the Syrian civil war, where the great powers were involved in different forms and at different stages, by the disrupting consequences of Brexit and of Trump's American presidency. On the other hand, the crisis of the European institutions, the severe economic difficulties of the Mediterranean countries (first of all, Greece), the massive flux of refugees and migrants from the Middle East and Africa, the hegemonic role of Germany (and its looming crisis) and the instability of the former Communist countries in East Central Europe and in the Balkans, the ascent of the “populist” movements and parties and the affirmation of illiberal governments in Hungary and in Poland.
The debate has focussed on some concepts – “populism”, “illiberal democracy”, “fascism”, and “post-fascism” – by which journalists, political scientists, sociologists, and historians have tried to define, analyse, and reconstruct the sense, the forms and the background of the new political movements and experiments. This debate has made frequent reference to the term of “fascism” and to the analogy with the 1930s in order to grasp the ongoing trends and dynamics. For that matter, the never-ending question of the definition of “fascism” has been resumed, together with the discussion of its political, social, and cultural features, of its relationship with interwar Europe, and of its legacies in post-1945 Europe.
In which sense the comparative reference to the historical phenomenon of “fascism” is pertinent to today's phenomena, and in which ways it is understood? Why and how can be useful the analogy with the past – the “crisis of democracy” of the 1930s – in order to better understand the present? Can the concepts of “populism” or “illiberal democracy”, and the discussions that have developed around them, offer an innovative contribution, and in which terms?
These and other questions will be at the core of this workshop, aiming to confront points of view of historians and political scientists in order to clarify the aforementioned concepts and to reframe the discussion about the relationship between the today's global and European crises and the complex legacy of the twentieth century.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Throughout the Cold War Fascism and totalitarianism, antifascism and anti-totalitarianism were often perceived and interpreted as reciprocally inconsistent categories, either basically avoiding to cope with Communist totalitarianism or... more
Throughout the Cold War Fascism and totalitarianism, antifascism and anti-totalitarianism were often perceived and interpreted as reciprocally inconsistent categories, either basically avoiding to cope with Communist totalitarianism or exclusively focussing on it. In the post-1989 period anti-totalitarianism became the legitimizing key of the new democratic orders, but it boosted searches for genealogies still marked by binary perspectives. I aim at reconstructing the complex links between pre- and post-1945 intellectual history within a ‘beyond Cold War’ perspective, analyzing the ways in which a selective and creative appropriation of the anti-liberal culture contributed to the elaboration of a liberal critique of totalitarianism.
Nicola Chiaromonte, exiled in Paris and in the US in the 1930s and in the 1940s, was a member of the antifascist revolutionary circle Giustizia e Libertà and a collaborator of the libertarian and anti-totalitarian journal Politics. These circles developed insightful interpretations of the totalitarian thought and experiments, coming to terms with the differences between Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and Soviet Union as well as with their common background in the Great War. In the post-1945 period Chiaromonte kept intense relationships with Czesław Miłosz, Gustaw Herling-Grudziński, Jerzy Giedroyc, Konstanty Jeleński, Alexander Wat, Jóseph Czapski, Sławomir Mrożek, and took active part in the editorial and intellectual environment of Kultura. He was recognized as one of the most influential interlocutors by the Polish exiles in the 1950s and 1960s and by the pioneers of the Polish dissidence in the 1970s.
I will start from the essay Sur le fascisme published by Chiaromonte on the journal Europe in 1936 and translated in Polish by Wojciech Karpiński in 1973. As Adam Michnik pointed out, the clandestine circulation of Chiaromonte's essay contributed to providing the intellectual background for the formation of the Polish illegal opposition of Kor in the mid-1970s. Fascism as a ‘totalitarianism’ was characterized by the ‘alteration of the vocabulary’, implying a simplification in the representation of reality and a subsequent loss of sense of responsibility. Chiaromonte's early experiences of the Italian Fascism allowed him to develop the analytical and conceptual tools for understanding Soviet Communism (and Nazism), and his Polish friends applied them to the Communist experiences in Eastern Europe. The relationship between violence and propaganda, the crisis of the idea of progress (or ‘nihilism’) and the ascent of the political religions, the faith in History and the problem of Evil represented some of the main topics of their dialogues and collaborations (especially on Chiaromonte's journal Tempo presente, between 1956 and 1968), and all of them amounted to a reflection upon totalitarianism as the deepest sense of modernity.
I particularly aim at: a) providing a comparative close reading of Chiaromonte's and Polish intellectuals' analytical and historical perspectives upon totalitarianism, with a special focus on their peculiar hybridization of liberal and anti-liberal thought; b) understanding their emphasis on ‘truth’ as the main way of coping with the epistemological, ethical, and political implications of totalitarianism and of conceiving an oppositional strategy against it.
Nicola Chiaromonte, exiled in Paris and in the US in the 1930s and in the 1940s, was a member of the antifascist revolutionary circle Giustizia e Libertà and a collaborator of the libertarian and anti-totalitarian journal Politics. These circles developed insightful interpretations of the totalitarian thought and experiments, coming to terms with the differences between Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and Soviet Union as well as with their common background in the Great War. In the post-1945 period Chiaromonte kept intense relationships with Czesław Miłosz, Gustaw Herling-Grudziński, Jerzy Giedroyc, Konstanty Jeleński, Alexander Wat, Jóseph Czapski, Sławomir Mrożek, and took active part in the editorial and intellectual environment of Kultura. He was recognized as one of the most influential interlocutors by the Polish exiles in the 1950s and 1960s and by the pioneers of the Polish dissidence in the 1970s.
I will start from the essay Sur le fascisme published by Chiaromonte on the journal Europe in 1936 and translated in Polish by Wojciech Karpiński in 1973. As Adam Michnik pointed out, the clandestine circulation of Chiaromonte's essay contributed to providing the intellectual background for the formation of the Polish illegal opposition of Kor in the mid-1970s. Fascism as a ‘totalitarianism’ was characterized by the ‘alteration of the vocabulary’, implying a simplification in the representation of reality and a subsequent loss of sense of responsibility. Chiaromonte's early experiences of the Italian Fascism allowed him to develop the analytical and conceptual tools for understanding Soviet Communism (and Nazism), and his Polish friends applied them to the Communist experiences in Eastern Europe. The relationship between violence and propaganda, the crisis of the idea of progress (or ‘nihilism’) and the ascent of the political religions, the faith in History and the problem of Evil represented some of the main topics of their dialogues and collaborations (especially on Chiaromonte's journal Tempo presente, between 1956 and 1968), and all of them amounted to a reflection upon totalitarianism as the deepest sense of modernity.
I particularly aim at: a) providing a comparative close reading of Chiaromonte's and Polish intellectuals' analytical and historical perspectives upon totalitarianism, with a special focus on their peculiar hybridization of liberal and anti-liberal thought; b) understanding their emphasis on ‘truth’ as the main way of coping with the epistemological, ethical, and political implications of totalitarianism and of conceiving an oppositional strategy against it.
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Nel lungo dopoguerra europeo, la storia e la memoria dell'antifascismo sono state congelate all'interno delle identità nazionali ricomposte e rimodellate dopo il 1945. Da questo punto di vista, il movimento antifascista rivoluzionario... more
Nel lungo dopoguerra europeo, la storia e la memoria dell'antifascismo sono state congelate all'interno delle identità nazionali ricomposte e rimodellate dopo il 1945. Da questo punto di vista, il movimento antifascista rivoluzionario “Giustizia e Libertà” non ha rappresentato un'eccezione. Dopo aver a lungo ignorato questa originale esperienza antifascista, la storiografia si è concentrata soprattutto sulla cospirazione che GL organizzò in Italia nella prima metà degli anni Trenta, mettendola in relazione, in una chiave esclusivamente nazionale, con la lotta armata condotta dal Partito d'Azione nel 1943-1945 (G. De Luna; M. Giovana).
Tuttavia, l'esperienza politica e intellettuale del gruppo di Carlo Rosselli – costituitosi a Parigi nel 1929 e scioltosi con l'arrivo delle truppe naziste nella capitale francese nel 1940 – è impensabile senza l'esilio. Mentre le sue principali attività politiche, culturali ed editoriali gravitavano intorno al centro parigino, le traiettorie dell'emigrazione giellista si proiettarono lungo una vasta topografia europea e globale che includeva Tolosa, Londra, New York, Boston, Zurigo, aprendo così l'antifascismo italiano ad una nuova dimensione transnazionale. Inoltre, essi riuscirono a costruire un ampio network all'interno delle emigrazioni politiche internazionali e della comunità intellettuale francese, creando le premesse per una larga e originale circolazione di culture politiche. Solo attraverso una prospettiva transnazionale, perciò, sarà possibile inserire GL nella storia politica e intellettuale del Novecento (E. Traverso).
Più in particolare, questa relazione si focalizzerà su tre punti attraverso i quali il case-study di GL può aiutare a ripensare l'antifascismo come fenomeno transnazionale: 1. L'approccio transnazionale consente di inquadrare sotto una nuova luce la vicenda di un gruppo come quello di Rosselli, costantemente teso tra la necessità del riconoscimento della dimensione nazionale e la volontà di un suo superamento in chiave cosmopolita ed europea, oppure europeista e federalista. 2. L'approccio transnazionale consente di individuare il carattere fondamentalmente sperimentale di GL, la sua disponibilità all'ibridazione di culture politiche in risposta alle sollecitazioni dei diversi contesti nazionali (con particolare riferimento al confronto con le culture socialiste europee, soprattutto francese e belga). 3. L'approccio transnazionale consente di rileggere il nesso peculiare che legò indissolubilmente GL al fascismo nel corso degli anni Trenta, e senza il quale è impossibile cogliere il senso del suo antifascismo. Infatti, se era vero, come i giellisti ritenevano e argomentavano, che il fascismo era espressione di una crisi insieme italiana ed europea, allora solo un movimento di carattere transnazionale come GL era in grado di competere con il fascismo su entrambi i terreni.
Tuttavia, l'esperienza politica e intellettuale del gruppo di Carlo Rosselli – costituitosi a Parigi nel 1929 e scioltosi con l'arrivo delle truppe naziste nella capitale francese nel 1940 – è impensabile senza l'esilio. Mentre le sue principali attività politiche, culturali ed editoriali gravitavano intorno al centro parigino, le traiettorie dell'emigrazione giellista si proiettarono lungo una vasta topografia europea e globale che includeva Tolosa, Londra, New York, Boston, Zurigo, aprendo così l'antifascismo italiano ad una nuova dimensione transnazionale. Inoltre, essi riuscirono a costruire un ampio network all'interno delle emigrazioni politiche internazionali e della comunità intellettuale francese, creando le premesse per una larga e originale circolazione di culture politiche. Solo attraverso una prospettiva transnazionale, perciò, sarà possibile inserire GL nella storia politica e intellettuale del Novecento (E. Traverso).
Più in particolare, questa relazione si focalizzerà su tre punti attraverso i quali il case-study di GL può aiutare a ripensare l'antifascismo come fenomeno transnazionale: 1. L'approccio transnazionale consente di inquadrare sotto una nuova luce la vicenda di un gruppo come quello di Rosselli, costantemente teso tra la necessità del riconoscimento della dimensione nazionale e la volontà di un suo superamento in chiave cosmopolita ed europea, oppure europeista e federalista. 2. L'approccio transnazionale consente di individuare il carattere fondamentalmente sperimentale di GL, la sua disponibilità all'ibridazione di culture politiche in risposta alle sollecitazioni dei diversi contesti nazionali (con particolare riferimento al confronto con le culture socialiste europee, soprattutto francese e belga). 3. L'approccio transnazionale consente di rileggere il nesso peculiare che legò indissolubilmente GL al fascismo nel corso degli anni Trenta, e senza il quale è impossibile cogliere il senso del suo antifascismo. Infatti, se era vero, come i giellisti ritenevano e argomentavano, che il fascismo era espressione di una crisi insieme italiana ed europea, allora solo un movimento di carattere transnazionale come GL era in grado di competere con il fascismo su entrambi i terreni.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Marco Bresciani, The post-imperial space of the Upper Adriatic and the post-war ascent of Fascism in T. Buchen, F. Grelka (eds.), Vergangene Räume – Neue Ordnungen. Das Erbe der multinationalen Reiche und die Staatsbildung im östlichen Europa 1917-1923 (Viadrina Universitaet, Frankfurt Oder 2016)more
This paper aims at rethinking the issue of the origins of Fascism within transnational, European and global perspectives, focussing on the case study of post-Habsburg Upper Adriatic between 1918 and 1922.
Research Interests:
Questo saggio si propone di analizzare alcuni aspetti fin qui trascurati del cruciale rapporto tra politica e religione negli anni Trenta e nei primi anni Quaranta, attraverso la particolare lente del gruppo antifascista rivoluzionario di... more
Questo saggio si propone di analizzare alcuni aspetti fin qui trascurati del cruciale rapporto tra politica e religione negli anni Trenta e nei primi anni Quaranta, attraverso la particolare lente del gruppo antifascista rivoluzionario di Giustizia e Libertà (GL). Un'attenzione speciale sarà dedicata alla sensibilità per la natura religiosa della crisi italiana ed europea del periodo interbellico, e ai suoi legami profondi con la tradizione culturale nazionale. Intorno alla figura di Umberto Calosso, esponente minore della cultura torinese post-bellica, studioso di letteratura in esilio tra le due guerre mondiali, animatore di molti dibattiti all'interno di GL, si cercheranno di annodare i fili di una ricerca e di una riflessione complessa, che coinvolse, tra gli altri, Carlo Rosselli, Franco Venturi e Aldo Garosci. Il fine è gettare nuova luce sulla già ampiamente esplorata dimensione politica di GL e disseppellirne le radici profonde e nascoste, mettendo a fuoco la ricerca di una religiosità «altra», immanente ed ereticale, compatibile con il socialismo come con il liberalismo. Più che elaborare una «religione politica» imitativa e alternativa al fascismo, oppure una «religione civile» laica e democratica, GL rivelò la sua capacità di «imparare dal nemico», attingendo ai suoi interessi storici, letterari e filosofici intorno a Rinascimento, illuminismo e Risorgimento per definire nuove utopie ed eresie. This paper aims to analyze some hitherto neglected aspects of the crucial relationship between politics and religion in the 1930s and in the early 1940s, through the particular lens of the antifascist revolutionary group Giustizia e Libertà (GL). A special attention will be devoted to its awareness of the religious nature of the Italian and European crisis in the interwar period, and its deep links with the national cultural tradition. By highlighting the figure of Umberto Calosso, a minor representative of the culture from postwar Turin, a scholar of literature in exile between the two world wars, and a promoter of several debates within GL, this paper will follow the developments of a research and reflection, involving, among others, Carlo Rosselli, Franco Venturi, and Aldo Garosci. Its purpose is to shed new light on the already well-known political dimension of GL and to find out its deep and hidden roots, by focussing on the search for immanent forms of religion, consistent with socialism as well as liberalism. More than developing a «political religion» mimetic and alternative to Fascism, or a laic and democratic «civic religion», GL unfolded its capacity «to learn from the enemy», drawing on its historical, literary and philosophical interests about Renaissance, Enlightenment, and Risorgimento, in order to define new utopias and heresies.
Research Interests: Intellectual History, Italian (European History), Italian Studies, Religion and Politics, History Of Political Thought (Political Science), and 5 morePolitical History, History of Political Thought, Intellectual and cultural history, History of Historiography, and Contemporary Italian History and Politics
Research Interests: European History, Eastern European Studies, European Studies, Imperial History, Fascism, and 12 moreNationalism, Conservatism, Nationalism And State Building, Fascism and Modernism, History of Nationalism, Central and Eastern Europe, US History, Italian fascism, Nazism, far-right politics Europe, Extreme and Far Right, and Fascismo
Research Interests:
Program of ComFas Convention. "Comparative Fascist Studies and the transnational Turn" held at the Central European University, 27-29 April 2018.
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National indifference is one of the most innovative notions historians have brought to the study of nationalism in recent years. The concept questions the mass character of nationalism in East Central Europe at the turn of the nineteenth... more
National indifference is one of the most innovative notions historians have brought to the study of nationalism in recent years. The concept questions the mass character of nationalism in East Central Europe at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century. Ordinary people were not in thrall to the nation; they were often indifferent, ambivalent or opportunistic when dealing with issues of nationhood.
As with all ground-breaking research, the literature on national indifference has not only revolutionized how we understand nationalism, over time, it has also revealed a new set of challenges. This volume brings together experienced scholars with the next generation, in a collaborative effort to push the geographic, historical, and conceptual boundaries of national indifference 2.0.
The first critical intervention of this volume is geographical, by extending the analysis beyond the original setting of national indifference in East Central Europe. This collection incorporates a much wider array of cases from Belgium and France in the west, to the former Habsburg territories in Central and Southern Europe, and finally to Poland, Romania, Ukraine, and the former Soviet Union in the east. Second, the volume re-periodizes national indifference. It was not only a nineteenth-century phenomenon, reducible to a short-lived developmental stage of nationalism. Rather, it survived well into the twentieth century, even into the post–Second World War age of nationalism. The third intervention is conceptual. We expand and disaggregate the national indifference paradigm to develop a more flexible and variegated approach that can better account for regional and historical variation.
This collection contains the following chapters:
- Introduction. National indifference and the history of nationalism in modern Europe
Maarten Van Ginderachter and Jon Fox /
- Too much on their mind. Impediments and limitations of the national cultural project in nineteenth-century Belgium
Tom Verschaffel /
- From national indifference to national commitment and back: the case of the Trentine POWS in Russia during the First World War
Simone A. Bellezza /
- Lost in transition? The Habsburg legacy, state- and nation-building, and the new fascist order in the Upper Adriatic
Marco Bresciani /
- National indifference and the transnational corporation: the paradigm of the Bat’a Company
Zachary Doleshal /
- Between nationalism and indifference: the gradual elimination of indifference in interwar Yugoslavia
Filip Erdeljac /
- Paths to Frenchness: national indifference and the return of Alsace to France, 1919-1939
Alison Carrol /
- Beyond politics: national indifference as everyday ethnicity
Gábor Egry /
- National indifference, statistics, and the constructivist paradigm: the case of the "Tutejsi" (‘the people from here’) in interwar Polish censuses
Morgane Labbé /
- Instrumental nationalism in Upper Silesia
Brendan Karch /
- ‘I have removed the boundaries of nations’: nation switching and the Roman Catholic Church during and after the Second World War
Jim Bjork /
- ‘Citizen of the Soviet Union – it sounds dignified’. Letter writing, nationalities policy, and identity in the post-Stalinist Soviet Union
Anna Whittington /
- Conclusion: national indifference and the history of nationalism in modern Europe
Jon Fox, Maarten Van Ginderachter and James M. Brophy
As with all ground-breaking research, the literature on national indifference has not only revolutionized how we understand nationalism, over time, it has also revealed a new set of challenges. This volume brings together experienced scholars with the next generation, in a collaborative effort to push the geographic, historical, and conceptual boundaries of national indifference 2.0.
The first critical intervention of this volume is geographical, by extending the analysis beyond the original setting of national indifference in East Central Europe. This collection incorporates a much wider array of cases from Belgium and France in the west, to the former Habsburg territories in Central and Southern Europe, and finally to Poland, Romania, Ukraine, and the former Soviet Union in the east. Second, the volume re-periodizes national indifference. It was not only a nineteenth-century phenomenon, reducible to a short-lived developmental stage of nationalism. Rather, it survived well into the twentieth century, even into the post–Second World War age of nationalism. The third intervention is conceptual. We expand and disaggregate the national indifference paradigm to develop a more flexible and variegated approach that can better account for regional and historical variation.
This collection contains the following chapters:
- Introduction. National indifference and the history of nationalism in modern Europe
Maarten Van Ginderachter and Jon Fox /
- Too much on their mind. Impediments and limitations of the national cultural project in nineteenth-century Belgium
Tom Verschaffel /
- From national indifference to national commitment and back: the case of the Trentine POWS in Russia during the First World War
Simone A. Bellezza /
- Lost in transition? The Habsburg legacy, state- and nation-building, and the new fascist order in the Upper Adriatic
Marco Bresciani /
- National indifference and the transnational corporation: the paradigm of the Bat’a Company
Zachary Doleshal /
- Between nationalism and indifference: the gradual elimination of indifference in interwar Yugoslavia
Filip Erdeljac /
- Paths to Frenchness: national indifference and the return of Alsace to France, 1919-1939
Alison Carrol /
- Beyond politics: national indifference as everyday ethnicity
Gábor Egry /
- National indifference, statistics, and the constructivist paradigm: the case of the "Tutejsi" (‘the people from here’) in interwar Polish censuses
Morgane Labbé /
- Instrumental nationalism in Upper Silesia
Brendan Karch /
- ‘I have removed the boundaries of nations’: nation switching and the Roman Catholic Church during and after the Second World War
Jim Bjork /
- ‘Citizen of the Soviet Union – it sounds dignified’. Letter writing, nationalities policy, and identity in the post-Stalinist Soviet Union
Anna Whittington /
- Conclusion: national indifference and the history of nationalism in modern Europe
Jon Fox, Maarten Van Ginderachter and James M. Brophy
Research Interests: European History, Modern History, Cultural History, Soviet History, Modern Italian History, and 15 moreRomanian History, Popular Culture, Polish History, Nationalism, Central European history, Eastern European history, Yugoslavia, Habsburg Studies, Political History, Czech & Slovak Studies, National Identity, Ethnicity, Belgian History, Ruthenian history, and Modern European History
Prevailing narratives about post-war Fiume have been drawn on D’Annunzio and dannunzianesimo as forerunners of Mussolini and fascism. This review analyses three new books marked by the common purpose of going beyond D’Annunzio, although... more
Prevailing narratives about post-war Fiume have been drawn on D’Annunzio and dannunzianesimo as forerunners of Mussolini and fascism. This review analyses three new books marked by the common purpose of going beyond D’Annunzio, although their authors (R. Pupo, M. Mondini and D. Reill) deal in different ways with the legacies of the Great War and of the Habsburg Empire. Notably, Reill’s The Fiume Crisis questions approaches exclusively focused on violence and nationalism.
Research Interests:
Negli ultimi anni la discussione sul fascismo è tornata al centro del dibattito pubblico con una rilevanza che non sarebbe stata pensabile all’inizio del nuovo millennio. A partire dalle domande emerse dal rinnovato interesse... more
Negli ultimi anni la discussione sul fascismo è tornata al centro del dibattito pubblico con una rilevanza che non sarebbe stata pensabile all’inizio del nuovo millennio. A partire dalle domande emerse dal rinnovato interesse storiografico, il libro racconta come il fascismo ha cambiato l’Italia, dando vita ad un regime che si distingueva nelle forme e nelle ambizioni da altre esperienze del passato e contribuiva a trasformare nel profondo la politica contemporanea. I temi posti al centro di questa indagine sono la violenza, l’impero, la guerra, la politica, l’economia, la religione, la cultura, ma anche l’antifascismo, la propaganda, la vita quotidiana e l’impatto all’estero dell’esperienza fascista. Sono argomenti centrali nella storia e nell’interpretazione del regime, qui approfonditi a partire da prospettive spesso inedite, che reinterrogando gli studi esistenti avanzano interpretazioni originali e propongono nuovi interrogativi.