HISTORY OF POLITICAL PARTIES AND MOVEMENTS
1) In the first part of the examination, students who attend the course will have to write a short paper about a subject regarding the history of the cultural policy of the PCI. The second part of examination regards the history of the PCI from its constitution to the transformation in PDS. It will be exclusively oral.
2) The examination for part time students who will not be attending the course will be exclusively oral, based upon the textbooks.
The goal of this course is to provide a reconstruction of the history of the Italian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano – PCI), from its constitution (1921) to its transformation in Leftist Democratic Party (Partito Democratico della Sinistra – PDS) (1991), in the context of the Italian political times, and of the international communist movement. The objective is to comprehend the complex transformations of Italy and of the two opposing blocks during the Cold War. The course will analyze in particular the cultural policy of the Party and its relationship with intellectuals in the post-World War II years.
The course will focus on the history of the PCI (1921-1991), analyzing the organization’s structure, the internal political debate, and the relationship with the Soviet Union. A central part will be dedicated to the cultural policy in particular to the years of the Palmiro Togliatti Leadership (1945-1964). The topics will be: the propaganda machine, the cultural commission, the cultural foundations, the journals, the publishing houses and the publication of the works of Antonio Gramsci. The different phases reviewed in the relationship between the Communist Party and intellectuals will be: the reconstruction after the war; the electoral defeat of the left in 1948; the crisis of 1956; the social, economical and political transformations of the 1960’s.
A. VITTORIA, Storia del PCI 1921-1991, Roma, Carocci, 2006
A. VITTORIA, Togliatti e gli intellettuali. La politica culturale dei comunisti italiani, Roma, Carocci, 2014
lectures
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