I decided to interview Prof. Guido Formigoni who teaches Contemporary History at the IULM University of Milan, author of several books:"Christian Democracy and the Western Alliance" (1996), "History of international politics in the contemporary age" (new ed. 2006), "Italy of Catholics" (2010) and "Aldo Moro" (2016).
In his book History of Italy in the Cold War (Il Mulino, 2017) he gives a lot of space to the international context in which many events take place, as opposed to other publications that underestimate this aspect. What are the reasons behind this choice?
I have the impression that Italian historiography has recently neglected too much the links that exist between social history and internal politics and the international horizon. Especially in long-term syntheses or in manuals, the separation of attentions, complicated by the historical academic distinction between contemporary historians and historians of international relations, still appears rather marked. In the specific investigations and in the in-depth monographs it has decreased widely in recent years, but without consolidated effects. This separation took place despite the fact that in our traditions there is the noble example of a current of studies that dates back to Federico Chabod and his keen attention to these connections. It must be said that it should be precisely the awareness of the originality of the history of the twentieth century that accelerates this meeting. The internal-international links have been strongly strengthened over the course of the century, in which a growing pervasiveness of the international systemic context has developed on individual local situations and in some way, therefore, the influence of the "center" of the world on the "peripheral areas" has grown. ". Of course, the problem is not only to verify the forms and ways in which international power structures weigh on different internal situations, but to consider how this influence is received, opposed or accepted, in any case reshaped, in the impact with structures, forces and actors. of the Italian company. The cold war season in my opinion was one of the occasions when these links have occurred to be more incisive and important. Moreover, the current historical development of the so-called "globalization" could only have more distant roots and origins, precisely in that horizon. It is therefore no longer possible, in my opinion, to write stories of Italy exclusively focused on the characteristics of the internal cultural, social and political conflict, or local economic development.
In recent years, publications on the period of the "Cold War" in Italy have been frequent but in many cases of a general nature such as:Paolo Soddu, The Italian way to democracy, Laterza, 2017, Agostino Giovagnoli, La repubblica degli italians, Laterza, 2016, Guido Crainz, History of the Republic, Donzelli, 2016 or biographical. These two genres, although they have many advantages, perhaps fail to present an analysis of the individual parties that characterized the so-called "First Republic". In your opinion, what are the reasons for this choice?
I cannot say whether the volumes cited underestimate the analysis of the role of individual parties:some of them, on the contrary, seem to me to be very attentive at least to the dynamics of the party system as a whole. The question, however, allows me to raise another question:certainly today the historiography of parties is in a difficult phase. If only because the progressive weakening of their role (at least in society, if not in institutions), has made them slip to the sidelines, in terms of communicative visibility and "cultural fashions". So today we live in a paradoxical situation. On the one hand, we could approach the history of the "republic of parties" (to use the expression of Pietro Scoppola) with greater detachment and on the basis of extensive documentation that has become available. We could also overcome the autobiographical identification of subject and object present in many past studies on parties, given that these are stories that are in many ways concluded. On the other hand, however, there are fewer financial resources to organize systematic studies and young scholars are much more distant and distracted by the desire to investigate the story of a phenomenon that has played such an important role in our history.
The beginning of the crisis of centrism can be traced back to after the electoral result of June 7, 1953 and only in 1963 did an organic center-left arrive. How does the international situation affect the slowness with which it is possible to reach the opening of the PSI?
Well, it is not my original discovery that the resistance of American diplomacy, under the entire Eisenhower administration, to this political evolution was very strong. I believe, however, that I have highlighted in my book how this dynamic was also nourished by a sort of continuous triangulation between Italian politics and the international framework:it was internal resistance, massive and organized, that expressed itself and strengthened itself also by providing arguments, information and pressures. against the American authorities. Of course, overseas diplomats or politicians often did not need to be warned, because they were very suspicious of the socialists. But the two realities supported each other:their convergence assumed a very strong weight. Even a possible American "veto" on political evolution could have been much more fragile and difficult to enforce, if not accompanied by this widespread and stubborn internal resistance.
What consequences did the Cruscëv report have in Italian politics, particularly within the PSI?
The whole story of the 1956 crisis in the Soviet bloc had a relevant importance in helping to strengthen the political evolution of Nenni's line, which is increasingly critical of the Soviet world and therefore led to distance itself from the PCI in internal politics, giving breath to the positions of the autonomists. They were never a solid majority of the party, but gradually managed to guide its decisions. Although in a context that is always very divided and uncertain.
A moment of crisis in relations between Italy and the United States was the election to the Presidency of the Republic of Gronchi. Was the crisis due to the distrust of the United States towards Gronchi or is there also a factor of internal distrust within the DC itself?
The Gronchi case is another excellent manifestation of the complex triangulations that existed between Italian political currents and the American embassy. It is known that the election of Gronchi was the result of a defeat of the Christian Democratic secretariat of Fanfani. But the new president, apart from having been opposed to joining the Atlantic pact in 1949, was no longer absolutely neutralist or anti-American. However, since he passed for a supporter of "openness to the left", the barrage of internal opponents (the Christian Democratic right, the liberals, a large part of diplomacy itself) did everything to put him in a bad light towards the Americans. The presence in via Veneto in Rome of some acute but very conservative diplomats allowed the maneuver to have notable effects. The new president therefore encountered several difficulties in embarking on a positive relationship across the Atlantic. Paradoxically, he was also hindered when he supported "neo-Atlantic" positions for Italian foreign policy, which aimed at developing Italy's national and Mediterranean presence, but within the framework of a solid alliance with the US leading role in the West.
In his book he stops at 1978; what were the reasons behind this choice?
I am well aware that this is a questionable choice, like all periodization options. On the one hand, it was induced by a practical motivation:after that year the available sources (especially American ones) were scarce. But it hides a stronger conviction:the seventies (the economic crisis and even more the crisis of the so-called Fordist socio-political structure; politically and symbolically, then, for Italy, the Moro crime) assumed more and more in my eyes, as time passes, the sense of a significant watershed in the postwar period. They divide two opposing periods, in a sense. The period of democratic consolidation and economic rise led by parties and inserted with its own role in the "free world" (or in the very particular "American empire", as you want to call it). It is the season of many greater economic uncertainties, in the difficult to dominate context of the incipient globalization, with an evident crisis of democracy and in general a lower capacity of the ruling classes to manage historical processes. In this sense, the caesura of the '70s is for me stronger than that of '89 and also of '94. The 1980s therefore appear to be more years of transition to the new equilibrium than a further development of the "republic of parties". And even the so-called "second cold war" was much less decisive for the system, compared to the financialization and globalization of the economy that began to manifest itself.
I'd like to conclude now with a somewhat personal question. It is customary for "Historical Eye" to ask the interviewed scholars a little about their personal path and the reasons that led them to undertake the difficult profession of historian. We believe it is very important to understand “why” one studies history or becomes historical. So, ultimately, Professor, what were the reasons that led you to choose to study history?
Well, as often happens, it is also personal meetings or readings, or special occasions that guide the choices and lives of all of us. For me, the passion for history was born in the high school years, when I began to perceive how the look at the past could be anything but dry and notional, but open to horizons of better understanding of our present. Or better still, the belief that I have built myself is that understanding how things have changed due to the action of men and women in our past, was very useful to understand how to orient ourselves in the present and to instruct the possibility of change in our current experiences. From here then to transform this intuition into a profession, of course, it was not easy. The university of the 1980s, when I graduated, suffered perhaps a little less than the current one from an unbearable asphyxiation of resources. However, in the world of humanities, the posts weren't that numerous even then. But I must say I'm glad I did it.