Academic literature on the topic 'Communists – Italy – Biography'

- Nicola Bombacci was an important PSI's leader during the First World War and the biennio rosso (1919-1920). After his expulsion from the PCd'I, of which was one of the founders, he approached fascism and became one of the last supporters of it since he had been shooted by partisans and died in Como Lake, and had been exposed in Loreto Square beside to Mussolini. After a short historical mention of the Bombacci's political life, these pages will analyse deeper the question of the passage from the left to fascism in interwar Italy, through the analyse of his political language. The method executed in order to analyse the question foresees the use of a biography by dates and the identification of the political interpretation's categories, which permit to carry out a comparison between the social-communist and fascist period. In conclusions, the article proposes a thesis of interpretation: the political passion.Parole chiave: Fascismo, Nazione, Rivoluzione, Classe, Guerra, Passione politica Fascism, Nation, Revolution, Class, War, Political passion

Entrepreneur, urbaniste, homme politique, éditeur et intellectuel italien, Adriano Olivetti (1901-1960) a proposé une lecture singulière de la modernité et a démontré qu'une voie alternative, complexe et désintéressée vers le bien collectif était praticable. S'appuyant sur des recherches peu connues, sur la consultation de la bibliothèque d'Olivetti et des fonds d'archives auparavant peu exploités, cette biographie intellectuelle reconstruit les parcours qu'Adriano Olivetti a tracé à travers son territoire, sa famille, l'organisation scientifique du travail, l'urbanisme, l'antifascisme, l'activité entrepreneuriale et la politique, permettant ainsi une interprétation globale et fondée historiquement de cet homme et de sa pensée. Adriano Olivetti est né à Ivrée, dans le Canavais. Entre Aoste et Turin, cette petite ville était peu industrialisée au début du XXème siècle, lorsque son père Camillo y a fondé une entreprise de machines à écrire. Etudiant en ingénierie, Adriano soutenait les principes de l'autonomie et du socialisme fédéraliste avant de se concentrer sur l'organisation scientifique du travail observée aux Etats-Unis. Au début des années 30 il a pris la direction de l'entreprise où il a inauguré une gestion rationnelle d'une production désormais de masse. Olivetti a ainsi observé que la modernisation de l'industrie, conçue comme le seul moyen pour généraliser le bien-être, créait de graves problèmes sociaux et urbanistiques. Ainsi, lorsque l'entreprise grandissait et conquérait les marchés internationaux, il a coordonné un plan urbanistique du Val d'Aoste. Antifasciste, il a conspiré avec les Alliés et a contribué à la chute de Mussolini. Pendant son exile en Suisse il a élaboré un plan de réforme des institutions italiennes qui aurait mis au centre de la chose publique les territoires, les «Communautés» qui auraient permis aux citoyens de participer de façon immédiate à la gestion de la vie politique, économique, urbanistique et sociale. Après son retour en Italie, en 1945 Olivetti a décidé de se consacrer à la politique et s'est inscrit au Parti Socialiste. Déçu par la partitocratie, il est rentré à Ivrée et a mis l'entreprise sur une voie où se rencontraient la préoccupation pour le bien-être matériel et spirituel des travailleurs, l'esthétique, la recherche technologique et le succès au niveau global. Entre 1946 et 1948 Olivetti a fondé la revue «Comunità», la maison d'édition Edizioni di Comunità et le Mouvement Comunità, qui dans les années 50 avait administré plusieurs communes du Canaveis et du Sud d'Italie par des pratiques de gestion du territoire inspirées par la rationalité scientifique à la base du dessein d'Olivetti. Un projet qui vers la fin des années 50 a dû se heurter à un insuccès double : celui du Mouvement, qui n'obtenait pas de consensus en dehors du Canaveis, et celui de l'entreprise, où l'alliance de succès et de redistribution des profits gênait les capitalistes italiens qui s'opposaient aux principes socialistes, keynésiens et fordistes d'Olivetti. Qui est mort en 1960, avant de terminer ses projets réformistes. Cette recherche reconstruit le contexte historique-culturel où Adriano Olivetti a développé et appliqué une conception innovante de la gestion de l'entreprise, de la culture et de la société, dont le centre était la personne et sa Communauté. Tout en évitant d'actualiser cet entrepreneur «modèle», cette thèse considère qu'Olivetti peut donner des réponses alternatives à des problématiques de la cohabitation sociale qui en Europe sont encore à l'ordre du jour, par son affirmation de la centralité du travail, de la valeur de la solidarité et de la liberté, par sa tension vers la juste reconnaissance de la personne au-delà des limites socio-économiques et vers des formes politiques qui prennent en compte la complexité sociale tout en permettant sa représentation dans les institutions
Entrepreneur, urban planner, politician, editor, the Italian intellectual Adriano Olivetti (1901-1960) proposed a novel reading view of modernity and demonstrated that an alternative way, one that was complex and disinterested in the common good, was possible. Relying on previously unexploited research drawn from Olivetti's library and various archives, this intellectual biography reconstructs the life of Adriano Olivetti looking through the lens of the specifics of his territory and his family, the scientific management, urban planning, anti-fascism, entrepreneurial activity and politics, thereby providing a global and historically-based interpretation of the man and his thought. Adriano Olivetti was born in Ivrea, in the Canavese. Situated between Aosta and Turin, this small rural town had little industry when, in the early twentieth century, his father Camillo Olivetti founded a typewriters' factory. Camillo was a socialist of Jewish origin, whose wife was Waldensian, and his son was educated in religious freedom and would become a Catholic. As an engineering student, Adriano Olivetti supported the principles of autonomy and of federalist socialism, before focusing on scientific management which he had observed in the USA. In the early '30s he became the director of the company, where he inaugurated the scientific management of mass production. He subsequently noticed that the modernization of industry, conceived as the only means to generalize the well-being, generated serious social and urban problems. As a result, as the company grew larger and conquered foreign markets, he coordinated an urban plan of the Val d'Aosta. An antifascist, he contributed to the fall of Mussolini by working with the Allies. While exiled in Switzerland, he developed a plan for the reform of Italian institutions which would set the territories at the center of politics, the "Communities" that would allow the citizens to participate more directly in the management of politics, economics, urban and social development. When in 1945 he returned in Italy, Olivetti decided to dedicate himself to politics and joined the Socialist Party and its Center for Socialist Studies. Disappointed by the party system, he returned to Ivrea and introduced a new direction for the company, one which combined a concern for the material and spiritual welfare of workers with aesthetics, technological research and global success. Between 1946 and 1948 Olivetti founded the magazine “Comunità”, the Edizioni di Comunità and the Community Movement, which in the '50s administered several municipalities in Canavese by management practices inspired by scientific rationality which was based on the Olivettian design, a project that in the late '50s collided with a double political failure: of the Movement, which could not achieve consensus out of the Canavese, and that of the company, where the idea of success equated with the redistribution of profits bothered Italian capitalists, who opposed the Socialist, Keynesian and Fordist principles of Olivetti. Olivetti died in 1960, before finishing his reformist projects. This thesis reconstructs the historical and cultural context in which Adriano Olivetti developed and applied his innovative concepts of company management, culture and society, centered on the person and his community. While avoiding to update this "model" entrepreneur, this thesis considers that Olivetti may provide alternative answers to some problems of social cohabitation that in Europe are still current, drawn from his affirmation of the centrality of work , the value of solidarity and freedom, its tension with the proper recognition of the person beyond the socio-economic boundaries, and with political forms that consider social complexity and allow its representation in the institutions

Defence date: 27 February 1995
Examining board: Prof. Nicola Gallerano, Università di Siena ; Prof. Paul Ginsborg, Università di Firenze ; Prof. Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, Martin-Luther Universität/Halle (Supervisore) ; Prof. Luisa Passerini, Istituto Universitario Europeo ; Prof. Claudio Pavone, Università di Pisa
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017

Jennifer Burns examines how diasporic communities create a presence in space that exceeds the duration and the physical locality of the community’s material residence in a given place. Observing the spaces of the everyday in a community in the UK identified as bearing Italian heritage – London’s ‘Little Italy’ – her chapter explores how traces of Italianness are present in the fabric of the built environment and how they make meaning in relation to the area’s ‘Italian’ past. The chapter offers first a close reading of architectural features and usage in the present, and then places this into dialogue with the narrative practices of observer–residents from within the historic community, contained in textual and photographic life histories.