LIBRI DI ALDO AGOSTI

Nato in seno alla comunità di «Historia Magistra», questo volume vuole esprimere la gratitudine per il contributo che Gian Mario Bravo – mancato il 29 aprile 2020 – ha dato alla Rivista, fin dalla sua fondazione, nel 2009: i suoi testi qui raccolti lo testimoniano, anche se soltanto in parte. Membro del Consiglio di Direzione della Rivista, Bravo è stato un esempio di rigore, di correttezza e di umanità, e la sua presenza è stata un lievito fecondo per questa testata che si ispira alla “storia critica”.

This survey examines the debate which took place both in the public arena and among historians in the 50th anniversary of Palmiro Togliatti’s death. This debate overlapped, more than in other circumstances, with the publication of many of Togliatti’s writings, including a selection of his correspondence and a large anthology of speeches and writings - remarkably, this was published in a «classics of political thought» series. On the whole, a certain tendency to «demonize» Togliatti is still alive, but it seems to us that - especially through the most authoritative press and some radio and tv cultural programmes - a more balanced appraisal of Togliatti is emerging.

-Travestitismo e omosessualità femminile alle soglie dell’età contemporanea
- Uomini, donne e bambini in esposizione. Rappresentazione senza rappresentanza tra esotismo e primitivo
- Tasca e il fascismo. Un’indagine «in tempo reale»
- Terrorismo italiano. Le porte di entrata e di uscita

Gender ambiguity and female homosexuality on the threshold of the contemporary Age
Discusses the recent book that Marzio Barbagli devoted to Caterina Vizzani, a young cross-dresser who lived in the mid-eighteenth century. In particular it examines, in a long-term perspective, the interplay between gender ambiguity, scientific culture and the social sphere. Subsequently, it argues that the identification between cross-dressers and homosexuals, as proposed by the medical literature over the past three centuries (as in the case of Caterina Vizzani), should be regarded with caution.

Women, men and children on display. Exoticism, primitivism and representation. Guido Abbattista’s Umanita in mostra. Esposizioni etniche e invenzioni esotiche in Italia (1880-1940) and Moving bodies, displaying nations: National cultures, race and gender in world expositions Nineteenth to Twenty-first century (edited by G. Abbattista)
Explores the living ethno-exhibitions which took place in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and analyzes their bio-political dimension. Porciani discusses these two very rich books, pointing out the broad set of issues presented in them and focusing on the complex issue of representation in European and African-American contexts.

Tasca and Fascism. A «real-time» study
Examines the latest volume of the «Annali Feltrinelli», including a large collection of writings in which Angelo Tasca sketches his analysis of the Italian Fascist regime, each step of which is used in his seminal book Naissance du fascisme (1938), a milestone in the Italian historiography of Fascism. These writings come from his vast archive, which since the 1960s has been a fundamental source for the history of many aspects of the Twentieth century, mainly for that of the Italian Communist Party and the Communist International. The writings collected in the book concern mainly the economic and foreign policy of the Fascist regime, and show some significant analogy both with the ones by Togliatti on the same subjects and with Gramsci’s prison notebooks. At the same time, they are also part of the debate of the French Left about the Fascist threat and the Popular Front. The volume also collects important essays of a number of Italian historians belonging to different generations, each of them analysing Tasca’s work under different aspects.

Italian terrorism. Entrance and exit doors.
Two recent books deal with the history of terrorism in Italy from two different and complementary perspectives: how the terrorists entered it, and how they exited it. In both cases there is a common Catholic background. On the one hand, the analysis of the origins of political violence in different local contexts sheds light on the ideological roots in the history of ideas and practices of religious legitimization of violent uprising against power which trace back to many centuries ago. On the other hand, the ending of the Italian «anni di piombo» (years of lead) is marked by such contexts as the prison as well as a religious language, with terms such as repentance, confession, pardon and redemption. These two books latch on to deep traits and remote events of Italian history and are of great interest for those who want to understand the original features of our history. Key words: Caterina Vizzani, Gender ambiguities, Medical literature, Homosexuality, Universal exhibitions, Bodies, Race, Colonialism, Fascism, Communism, Italy, Historiography, Archives, Anni di piombo, Political violence, Repentance, Terrorism, Catholic church Parole chiave: Caterina Vizzani, Ambiguità di genere, Letteratura medica, Omosessualità, Esposizione universali, Corpi, Razza, Colonialismo, Fascismo, Comunismo, Italia, Storiografia, Archivi, Anni di piombo, Violenza politica, Pentimento, Terrorismo, Chiesa cattolica

Reviews two formerly unpublished texts by Franco Venturi on the communist idea, written on the eve of and during World War II. The two writings provide a reliable evidence of Venturi’s intellectual itinerary, in a phase when his historical apprenticeship was strictly intertwined with his political militancy. Venturi’s interest for the utopian communism of the late 18th century combines with the urgency to involve the Soviet Union and the communist movement in the death struggle of democracies against fascist regimes. Sterilizing the totalitarian germ inherent to the originary idea of communism, rescuing it from the hypetrophic statism that accompanied its development, became for Venturi both a suggestion of historical interpretation and a political programme.

From the contemporary viewpoint, seventy years later, the year 1945 is still a landmark in twentieth-century history, but its many meanings are perhaps easier to grasp. 1945 was not only the year of the end of the Second World War, but also the beginning of the division of the world into two spheres of influence, of the nuclear era and the first steps towards the Cold War; a decisive and irreversible push to the process of decolonization; the beginning of the political and economic hegemony of the US in the West; the global spread of the concept of democracy - albeit in its various interpretations - and its redefinition. Three prominent European historians deal with these issues in the present discussion. Key words: 1945, Decolonization, American century, Cold war, Democracy

In 1946, after five years as a prisoner of war - first as a Soviet Union in Nazi concentration camps, then as a deportee (falsely accused of treason) in Russia’s Arctic Gulag - 29-years-old Lev Miscenko unexpectedly received a letter from Sveta, the sweetheart he had hardly dared hope was still alive. Amazingly, over the next eight years the lovers managed to exchange more than 1200 letters, and even to smuggle Sveta herself into the camp for secret meetings. Their recently discovered correspondence is the only known real-time record of life in Stalin’s Gulag, unmediated and almost uncensored. In Just send me word the historian Orlando Figes took on the task of deciphering and editing it, discovering an impressive record not only of daily "routine" inside a Soviet labour camp, but also (through Sveta’s letters) a rare sense of Moscow everyday life in the hardest times of post-war Soviet reconstruction.

There are many reasons why Eric Hobsbawm has become arguably the most respected historian in the world, recognised if not endorsed on the political right as well as on the left, and one of the few historians of any era to enjoy genuine national and world renown. He was unrivalled both in his knowledge of historic detail and in his extraordinary powers of synthesis, and endowed with an uncommon facility of expression, a lively style and an ability to synthesize complex events, that made his works known in wide circles of non-specialists. At the same time, his widening fame as a historian was accompanied by a growing reputation as a sharp commentator of his times. Till the end he has been remained loyal to a critical but uncompromising interpretation of Marxism, which he used to read the developments of the current economic crisis. One of the first to have discovered Gramsci outside Italy, from the 1970s onward Hobsbawm, who never refused his imprint as an antifascist turned into a Communist, claimed to have become a "spiritual member" of the Italian Communist Party. His influence on the renewal of historical studies in Italy has been remarkable, and left an important mark also in «Passato e presente».