'L’eroico cammino alla testa del popolo': la costruzione discorsiva della leadership nel Partito Comunista Italiano

• Autores: Giulia Bassi
• Localización: Nuova rivista storica, ISSN 0029-6236, Vol. 104, Nº. 2, 2020, págs. 703-732
• Idioma: italiano
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• Resumen

  • The direct link between 'leader' and 'people' was one of the main elements in the discourse of many authoritarian and totalitarian regimes in the first half of the Twentieth Century, including Italian Fascism. Such a special relationship has also characterized the Italian Communist Party rhetoric since its pivotal transition, which began in 1944, from a revolutionary organization to the so-called partito nuovo, and continued during the Republican era. During those years, the communist press and leaders shaped a very particular political discourse on the role of Palmiro Togliatti, returned to Italy after eighteen years of Russian exile, as the greatest leader of the party. Rhetorically, the Italian people became the source and lifeblood of this legitimization, of the following idealization (in 1948), and, finally, of the canonization of his person (after 1964). This essay aims to reconstruct this narrative path through an analysis of the most important speeches by the Italian communist leaders and of the main communist newspapers and magazines published between 1944 and 1964, such as «l’Unità», «Rinascita», «Vie nuove», «Il Calendario del Popolo», and «Quaderno dell’attivista».