The thesis deals with Communist youth in Italy between 1943 and 1960. The main aim of the research is to explore the change in the political identities and behaviour of Italian young radicals between the Resistance War and the late 1950s. To do this, the topic is approached from different angles, in an attempt to overcome the barriers between political, social and cultural history. The first chapter focuses on the history of Communist youth organizations between 1943 and 1960. Party and its youth organizations in the aftermath of 1956, and the subsequent emergence of youth dissent within the Party, is extensively analysed.
the developments in the Italian Communist youth networks were the result of specific decisions of the Italian leadership or whether they should be seen as the fulfilment of external Soviet directives. The second chapter focuses mainly on Communist pedagogy for young people. in its publications for young people, and in the schools for prospective cadres.
Through an examination of the Party magazines for young people, the chapter stresses the increasing difficulty faced by Italian Communists in dealing with the diffusion of commercial mass culture. Even though in principle the latter was ideologically described as an American Trojan horse that corrupted the minds and souls of the younger generations, in practice Communist youth magazines drew largely on the design and the style of commercial weeklies to reach a wider audience. The third chapter deals with the gendered content of Communist youth policies. the chapter outlines the female role models put forward in the Communist movement. independence was eventually acknowledged within the Party.
Communist youth policies is also discussed. In the fourth chapter, the emergence of different generations of Communist militants is analysed. is here defined as a group of young people who enter the public arena for the first time at a specific political conjuncture, which ends up influencing their idea of militancy and their political identity in the long term. mindset, more similar to that of the radical students and workers of 1968. the thesis aims to offer an original contribution to our understanding of the processes of cultural and political change among Italian youth after World War II. One of the realms in which references to Marx and Marxisms played a critical role in the 20th century, was historiography. This PhD thesis offers a study of Latin American historiographic debates inspired by Marxism.
and on Argentina, Mexico, and Chile. and with specifying the different modes of production in these societies. Second, the debate about the Mexican Revolution in which the popular masses as historical actors, social conflicts and questions of political domination were in the centre of interest.
the way how these referred to other debates both formally and with regards to contents. For this the following questions are dealt with: Which ideas and arguments did the participants of Latin American debates base themselves on? Were these references local, transnational or transcontinental? translations, travels, stays abroad etc. How did these references influence the interpretations of authors?
Were there characteristic reference patterns? Militancy Between Reason and Feelings. founded in 1922 from the impact and repercussions of the Russian revolutionary process, was one of the main agglutinating poles of the Brazilian political Left during the twentieth century, even during the periods of illegality.
fact that attracted the attention of the political police investigators looking for evidence of subverting the political and social order. In the State of Paraná, this activity of the political police left behind a big range of captured documents, newspapers, photographs, pamphlets about various activities of communist militants. are currently kept in the historical and public archives of Paraná, and constitute important sources for social and political history.
Based upon these archival materials of the Department of Political and Social Order of the State of Paraná, my research has the objective of building a social history of politics. In other words, my main purpose is to draw a history from below of communist militancy, reflecting on the following issues: What did motivate ordinary working men and women to defend the ideal of communism with such passion and dedication? Despite the period of illegality and the repression against the PCB, why did the party did not lack loyal and faithful militants at that time? In an attempt to provide answers to these questions, my research concentrates on the militants who, for several motivations, acted collectively in favor of a common ideology: communism. Therefore my main focus is not the history of the PCB as an institution, but as an affective unit. Although it is methodologically more convenient to consider the institution as a representative of a whole group, I intend to show the opposite, considering that any political party is a homogeneous unit.
This research is delimited on the State of Paraná despite the fact that this State was not where the PCB had the most supporters in Brazil. It serves as an empirical basis to observe the various strategies of a small group of militants. In this way the history of communist militancy in Paraná will be presented through the reflection of the role of political passions considering militancy. Due to the belief in the omnipotence of reason as the sole producer of meaning and the difficulty in overcoming the positivist opposition between what is objective and subjective in science, the role of emotions in politics has been ignored for a long time, as if political activity was only managed by people fully aware of their ideas and interests. have made valuable contributions about this theoretical approach on the theme of political passions. Acording to Ansart, the communist parties have produced touching messages through symbols and collective practices.
Being connected to a party means to feel its orders as beneficial, to approve its goals as desirable choices and to judge its leaders as the best rulers. protecting them from a lonely and desolate life. Based on the reflections about passions in politics, my research aims to consider the motivations of communist militants of the past, trying to overcome a perspective in which motivations are not just based upon the ratio of class interests of the Marxist scientific discourse, but also in different feelings like courage, hate, love, happiness, sorrow, resentment and hope. Study of Popular Opinion and Adaptation.
based explanations of the regime as based upon either total state coercion or total state conversion, with the focus coming to rest upon the space between those poles. Exactly what that space was, its nature and operation, its blurring of boundaries between affirmation and dissent, has yet to be clearly defined. The outlines of the everyday realities for the majority of Soviet citizens have been sketched, but have yet to be coloured in. My research proposes that studying the humour of the population can offer us a keyhole onto the period, providing a wealth of new detail to this still underdeveloped picture of popular perceptions, understandings of and reactions to the upheavals of the 1930s. Policies, speeches, leading figures and the daily grind of life in the Soviet Union were all subjected to constant mockery by the Soviet population. the ubiquitous acronyms of the Soviet authorities in mocking and sometimes filthy ways.
emerged from this plethora of humorous subversion. How, then, did the relationship between official ideology and popular responses to it actually function? propose an intricate blend of acceptance and criticism or, rather, of acceptance through the process of criticism. Soviet citizens could retain some agency of their own and shared these interpretive acts widely with those whom they trusted.
These processes created a pathway to adaptation without becoming simply crushed or brainwashed by ideology, and simultaneously shaped a very complex interaction between the population and official ideology. They picked and chose only certain pieces which they held to be true, but did not simply discard the most patently false or unwanted. view of world around them. propose humour as a key indicator of the path many citizens may take between those poles. That is not only to say that people are selective, but to identify the operational islands of the everyday which they constructed and to examine them in their own right. ideology, but continues to allow for personal agency to colour that reception.
laden question of why people endured the difficulties of the Stalinist regime. Instead, my research is more empirical in its focus, noting first that because people did endure it, our focus should be upon the vital question of how they did so. social bonds and interactions.
