Between 1918 and 1945 the British Labour Party effected the transition from the political opposition to the area of government. The transformation was not due to an innate British attitude toward a two-party system, but it was the result of a struggle to remove the taint of being a party “unfit to govern” and thus the Great Britain set an example to other European socialists. Until then communist had been saying that you could only build Socialism through dictatorship, just like in Russia, now social-democrats took Great Britain as an example of a feasible “socialism with freedom”. On two occasions British socialism became a matter of contention between the conflicting souls of the Italian left. In 1946 it became the shibboleth to distinguish fellow travelers from democratic socialists. Saragat’s social-democrats affirmed that the Italian Socialist Party should have become like the Labour Party: a democratic party, independent from communists and ready to develop ties with the middle class. On the opposite side, Basso indicated the British experience as the perfect example of social-democratic betrayal, with its rejection of revolutionary ideals and class struggle. In 1951 Piero Calamandrei had a debate with Togliatti on whether it was possible to challenge the social question in a parliamentary democracy. The secretary of the Italian Communist Party affirmed that the Western system was irredeemable, while Calamandrei held Great Britain as the only case in which political freedom coexisted with social rights. In these discussions the non-democratic left developed such objections toward the social-democratic Welfare State and mixed economy that it took various decades to be removed.
Keywords: Twentieth Century Italy; Labour; Socialism.

This article draws on the documents, almost entirely unedited, from the personal archive of Luigi Gedda, the founder of the Civic Committees (Cc) and champion of the catholic Activism during the ww2postwar. In this paper is examined in particular the Gedda’s thought and the role in preparation for the administrative elections of 1951-52, which formed a fundamental preview of the political consultations of 1953. The declines in support for the Dc, accompanied with the rise of socialist-communist forces constituted a source of great concern for the Holy See, which devised the famous “Operation Sturzo”, trying to force De Gasperi to make an alliance with the right parties, like the Monarchist National Party (Pnm) and the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement (Msi), to which, however, the Christian Democracy Party (Dc) had a strong reserve because of their unconstitutional nature. The new documents presented in this paper help to better delineate the “political project” of Luigi Gedda, his personal evaluation of Dc and of the role of Catholics in Italian policy, the network of contacts between the Cc and the Msi and the opposition encountered within the national leadership of Catholic Action (Ac).

Keywords: Luigi Gedda; Civic Committees; Catholic Action; Holy See; Italian Elections.

In the early 1950’s, after the beginning of the Korean War, a debate about the possibility of establishing a “protected democracy” took place in Italy. It was justified by the need to fight off the “communist threat”. The attempt to “protect democracy” is expressed mainly by the presentation of some bills which were to limit the influence of left-wing parties (the civil defense law; some economic laws; the law against military and economic sabotage; the labor law; the so-called “Polivalente law” that would have suppressed all political parties with anti-democratic purposes and, in particular, the Communist Party; the law for the regulation of the press) and by the electoral law (the so-called “swindle law”) in 1953. These measures constitute a homogeneous series because of their processing mode and of the purposes that the government attributed to them. This article analyses the political debate about these bills, both in newspapers and in Parliament. Most of these bills were never passed (and often not even discussed) in Parliament and lapsed at the end of the term of office of the legislature: their presentation, in fact, responded to the need to face pressures on several fronts (usa, Catholic Church, right wing of the Christian Democracy Party) more than to counter a real communist threat. The debate about the “protected democracy”, however, left an important legacy in the Italian political culture: the Communists began to represent themselves as persecuted people and the idea of a threat coming from them was credited in public opinion. Thus, it legitimized various attempts to marginalize Pci and Cgil activists and to suppress their struggles.
Keywords: Post-war Italy; Protected Democracy; Communist Party.

The essay explores the political culture of the Italian Communist Party through the spotlights offered by the funeral rituals of the two most relevant secretaries: Palmiro Togliatti and Enrico Berlinguer. Comparing these two big events – the first dated back to August 1964 and the second to June 1984 – the author analyses the differences occurred during twenty crucial years of both Pci and Italy’s history. The point of view of the political funeral allows the author to investigate in a new outlook the cultural aspects of communist own representations, images, narratives and propaganda’s themes as well as the politics and the events related to the party’s leadership. The essay combines historical, literary and sociological sources and methods. Author’s aim is to show Pci’s difficulties to change its commemorating models in those twenty years. By the reconstruction and the comparison of the funeral events is possible to underline the similarities, the anachronisms and the modern aspects not just among the two commemorations but even between Pci’s political culture, as was expressed in two relevant times of its history. The author points out how the model for the funeral of Enrico Berlinguer owes to the previous one of Togliatti, which was largely inspired by the soviet pattern spread throughout the communist world by the late Twenties. In the Eighties the lack of a new, non compromised and up to date form of commemoration could be seen as one, among the others, symptoms that highlights the reluctances had by the Italian communist party to search and offer a new cultural (and political) strategies to the new generation of militants. A model of funeral, moreover, that could appear closer to the changes developed over those twenty years in the Italian society (especially in terms of secularization). The events around the funeral of Enrico Berlinguer clearly shows how the Pci – in the last decade of its path – was strictly bound to its own heritage: to be read in this particular case as a problem of leadership’s mentality too. According to the author’s conclusions, thus, in 1984 the Pci’s long history and past turned in a burden hard to historicize for the whole party.
Keywords: Cultural History; Political Funerals and Rituals; Politics and Memory in Modern Italy.

The article provides an account of the much-disputed episode of the dialogue between the Italian Communist Party (Pci) and the German Social Democratic Party (Spd) on the eve of the Ostpolitik. Basing on multi-archival research, the author provides evidences that the collaboration originated from an Italian initiative, and was linked to a broader reassessment of Pci’s international outlook. Spd’s reasons of interest (related to the development of the Ostpolitik) are also considered, as well as East German’s critical standpoint. While its importance for the establishment of the Ostpolitik should not be overrated, the episode is revealing of Pci’s views on Cold War, détente and the role of West European Left during crucial years of change for the European order. New elements that distanced the Italians from Soviet perspectives and from allegiance to a cracked international communist movement were intertwined with substantial flaws in the understanding of the international situation and the setting up of the Party’s strategy, which were to influence Pci’s fortunes also in the following decades. It was also due to these strategic stalemates that the collaboration with Spd, after assuming a considerable relevance for two years, eventually lost momentum in a changed international context.
Keywords: Italian Communist Party (Pci); German Social Democratic Party (Spd); Ostpolitik.

Between 1968 and the late 1970’s, the communist parties of Italy, France and Spain converged in an attempt to redefine certain features of their own identity, in order to adapt their function to a changing society. This article retraces the path to Euro-communism from the Italian point of view and proposes a new partitioning of periods, more suitable to describe the Pci’s strategic evolution and mutable partnerships.
This paper also aims at outlining the development of the Italian appreciation for democracy as an absolute value and at discussing the connection with Pce’s theoretical and political approach to the relationship with Moscow and to the national democratic road to socialism. Due to its small size and its precarious structure, Pce has often been confined to a marginal role by political studies, though at times it had expressed itself more forcefully than other political parties involved in the Euro-communist strategy. This article intends to show how much its innovations forced Pci’s evolution through comparing their experiences and mutual contacts.
Keywords: Euro-communism; Pci; Pce.

Early modern Catholic Church used the term “rape” to indicate a sexual intercourse between a man and woman who were not married. Thirty-four trials were celebrated for this crime by the Episcopal tribunal of Teramo during the Seventeenth and the Eighteenth Century. Trial records clearly show that premarital sex did not mean an irreparable damage for the public image of peasant girls’ families. Especially during the Eighteenth Century, premarital pregnancies were not necessarily kept secret, because little social shame was associated with them. On the contrary, since female honour had a corresponding economic value, parents made pregnancies public and reported them to the tribunals in order to earn financial compensation from the seducers’ families. Communities strongly supported their efforts and showed concern for the future of pregnant girls.
Keywords: Early Modern Ecclesiastical Justice; Rape; Seduction.

The brothers Riccardo and Bruto Annibaldi della Molara, lived in the Seventeenth Century, belonged to an ancient but impoverished family of the Roman nobility. While the first one was governor of several cities in the Papal States and later Bishop of Veroli, the second one was a layman and served the Grand Duke of Tuscany, the Cardinal Nerli iunior and the Gran Connestabile Lorenzo Onofrio Colonna. Thanks to many, unpublished archival sources, especially epistolary documents, it is possible to reconstruct the careers, the personal and family strategies, and the mutual relations of the two personages. The novelty of the research is to make clear the emotional and career paths of “poor” aristocrats of the Baroque Italy, who had to win the esteem and protection of rich and powerful lords. The historiographical ideas that have encouraged and accompanied this article are various, especially coming from the current scientific debates about the family networks, the generational relationships and the dialectic between patronage and ethic of service to the prince in Early Modern Italy.
Keywords: Seventeenth Century; Annibaldi della Molara; Roman nobility.