Communism and anti-Communism in early Cold War Italy

Language, symbols and myths

Andrea Mariuzzo

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781526121875
• eBook ISBN:
  9781526121899
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Italian History
• Index: History

The struggle in projects, ideas and symbols between the strongest Communist Party in the West and an anti-communist and pro-Western government coalition was the most peculiar founding element of Italian democratic political system after World War II.
Communism and anti-Communism in early Cold War Italy enlightens new aspects of and players of the anti-Communist 'front'. It takes into account the role of cultural associations, newspapers and the popular press in the selection and diffusion of critical judgements and images of Communism, highlighting a dimension that explains the force and the diffusion of anti-communist opinions in Italy after 1989 and the crisis of traditional parties. The author also places the case of Italian cold-war anti-communism in an international context for the first time.

1

Systems and methods for political communication in post-war Italy

The ‘Press and Propaganda’ sections of the large mass membership parties

It has long been thought that during Italy’s immediate post-war period the systems in place for projecting party identities were rudimentary and amateurish; this was the almost unanimous view of advertising staff from the major Italian companies in 1953, when they were interviewed for a survey published in the newspaper La Notte during the general election campaign. ‘The parties’ campaigns are being run by amateurs’; ‘we advertising agents wish we had the budget that a large party has … the results would be very different’: these were typical of the views expressed by Italy’s leading communication professionals. They were therefore somewhat surprised, ten years later, when the Italian venture of Ernest Dichter, the American marketing expert, met with failure. Founder of the Institute for Motivational Research in New York, Dichter was involved in work on the Christian Democrats’ electoral campaign. Having learnt from public opinion research that after almost twenty years in government the party needed a rejuvenation of its image, he produced a reassuring poster with the title ‘La DC ha vent’anni’ (The DC is twenty), in which the party was represented by a fair-haired young woman dressed in white. This had to be withdrawn, however, as it took just a few days for it to be totally subverted by Communist activists on night-time raids: they added a selection of crude jibes, whose import ranged from ‘And she’s already such a whore’ to ‘It’s high time she got screwed’.¹

As this incident demonstrates, the degree of effectiveness of seemingly naive publicity activity can only be understood by locating it within its institutional and socio-cultural context. Political life in post-Fascist Italy was dominated by the large mass-membership parties, whose success was based on their comprehensive penetration of society. In political communication as in other party activity, the main people involved were thousands of activists who had had no proper relevant training; many of those who constituted the nerve centre for promoting their party’s ‘worldview’ across Italian society were in fact equipped with a very basic formal education, and sometimes with very shaky literacy. These non-professional publicists were the ‘troops’ best suited to political warfare based on a clear opposition between ideological allegiances, in which political conviction and a sense of belonging were seen as more important than experience and skills in mass communication. Faced with activists who needed at least some basic training for their publicity work, the parties responded by turning to the essentially pedagogical concept of political communication that had been generally held by organised mass movements for most of the twentieth century. On one side, political publicity was viewed as essentially the education of the party’s electoral base and its potential supporters regarding the party’s policies, its current initiatives, and how best to support these and get involved; on the other, the activists’ sense of belonging and loyalty to the cause were particularly strengthened by those moments when they were spreading the party’s message, immersing themselves in its Weltanschauung, and engaging in debate, or even physical confrontation, with their opponents: in brief, by those moments when the militant aspect of political allegiance was most highly celebrated.² The result in Italy was the existence of robust systems for party communication with a strong social presence, within which officials operated under strict ideological and professional control from party headquarters.

The PCI was the first political party whose leaders decided to tackle the issue of a framework for providing publicity and information on a national basis. Between 1944 and 1946, with the restoration of the party’s legal status, its local branches came back into operation and each set up a ‘Sezione stampa e propaganda’ (Press and Propaganda Section). These offices quickly came under the coordination of an operational section of the PCI’s central secretariat: this produced and distributed posters, leaflets and booklets, provided local branches with the first experimental audiovisual publicity material on film reels and vinyl, and handled distribution of the party’s publications. In early 1946, as the first post-war national elections approached, the training of publicity officers was incorporated within the section’s responsibilities. The forthcoming discussions on the constitutional referendum and elections to the Constituent Assembly made it urgent for the PCI to be widely viewed in a favourable light in the run-up to voting. The party’s central office needed to produce support material that was regularly updated on the hottest political issues, in order to give publicity officers the main news and information that would help them to develop public discussion and maintain debate, and to provide them with detailed and accessible instructions on how to make best use of the communication material.

In February 1946, therefore, the PCI headquarters began to publish Quaderno del Propagandista (Publicist’s Notebook), which it entrusted to an editorial team of young journalists from the Roman offices of L’Unità, led by the twenty-six-year-old Luciano Barca. Although this monthly publication only supported the activities of the ‘compagni propagandisti’ (publicity comrades) with four issues prior to the June elections, it was a prototype for subsequent initiatives. Activists could subscribe personally, or read it in their local PCI office; in each copy there was an accessible account of the party line on the most hotly debated topics of the electoral campaign, from land reform to works councils, and suggestions on how best to communicate these issues to the electorate. Directives on the use of posters, photographs, and the lists of slogans sent from the centre to each branch in the ‘pacco-propaganda’ (publicity pack) were all expressed in a simple and restricted vocabulary, often accompanied by illustrative cartoons and images; it was spelt out in detail, step by step, how they should be used. Particular attention was given to occasions when direct control of communication was not possible from the centre: those moments of interaction between the activist and the public that were the most sensitive. For example, the composition of newspaper-style posters, seen as particularly important because they allowed articles from party publications to be read by voters who had nothing to do with the PCI, was covered in every issue, with advice on how best to alternate text and pictures, and local and national news. Suggestions on political rallies and public speeches were provided in a similarly reiterative manner: the many and varied points included the length of a speech, reference to notes while talking, the use of phraseology for effect, replies to potential criticism that could be memorised, gestures, and the tone of voice to adopt.³

In the final issue of Quaderno del Propagandista, which came out at the end of the big push before election day on 2 June 1946, the editors began to steer the readership towards a longer-term task: the more general education of the party’s activists and higher echelons in the ideological foundations of Marxism-Leninism.⁴ This was the direction taken by the new series of this publication, which appeared in the autumn; with its revised title Quaderno dell’Attivista (Activist’s Notebook), it was the journal of reference for every educational and organisational aspect of the life of local leaders and activists.⁵ At the end of 1947, with the general election of 18 April 1948 ahead, it was once again felt that a publication was needed which would exclusively address dissemination of the party’s message, providing expert advice and offering militants an explanation of the party line already formulated as a set speech. The first issue of the fortnightly Propaganda came out on 7 December 1947. Its publication stopped after the elections, but resumed in the summer of 1948 when Gian Carlo Pajetta, an influential party member who had assumed control of the central Sezione Stampa e Propaganda, placed it at the centre of the PCI’s revamped system for mass communication. The publication of Propaganda continued uninterrupted until 1962, contributing to the development of those generations of PCI activists and higher ranks who were the backbone of the movement right up to the Berlinguer years. With its themed issues on trade union battles and the campaigns for peace, throughout its existence Propaganda determined the style of the party’s communication with the outside world, letting activists know what they should focus on and giving them the information they needed on revisions to the party line regarding the most burning issues.

The communication methods promoted by Propaganda were not substantially different from those put forward in 1946: much of the activists’ work still focused on the management and distribution of material produced at the centre, which from 1949 onwards was complemented by books and pamphlets produced by Edizioni di Cultura Sociale and other publishing houses funded by the party.⁶ The new periodical provided extensive coverage of specialist training in the delivery of what was then known as ‘propaganda spicciola’ or ‘propaganda capillare’ (‘basic’ or ‘general’ material), based on preparing activists to expound the party line in appealing and appropriate ways during everyday conversations. This was seen as a very effective general way of reiterating and reinforcing the positions presented in posters, pamphlets and the press; as early as the 1920s and 1930s it had been of particular interest to the publicity offices of those Communist Parties that remained unsuppressed, as well as to some very different organisations such as the Légion française des combattants in Vichy France.⁷ Bolstered by these experiences in other countries, Communist leaders in liberated Italy set out to train their activists in informal and interpersonal publicity work: from 1948 onwards, after trial runs in Quaderno del Propagandista, activists were offered outline dialogue and lists of answers to frequently asked questions, which were supposed to make it easier to respond to criticism or questioning in conversation.

In the summer of 1949, while the campaign against the North Atlantic Treaty was in full flow and not long after Pius XII’s approval of the excommunication of supporters of the Communist Party, these articles were brought together in Il Propagandista, a four-page booklet-style publication. This came out at irregular intervals, appearing more often – sometimes even twice a week – as circumstances required. In October 1952, when it was re-launched as Taccuino del propagandista (Publicist’s Notebook) under the editorship of the young Luigi Pintor, another function was added to that of basic publicity manual. As the 1953 elections approached, the campaign for the second legislature, with the added risk from the new electoral law that favoured the centrist government parties, started to heat up. The party needed a means of rapidly updating its publicity that would take on board the constant evolution of debates and initiatives; Taccuino, which could be produced more quickly due to its compact format, proved more suitable than Propaganda in this respect, and in the end retained this role until its publication ceased in 1958.

The endeavours of the PCI clearly served as a model for the national leadership of Christian Democracy, which in 1945 set up its own press and publicity office, Studi, Propaganda e Stampa (SPES: ‘Research, Propaganda and Press’), which was known from the outset by its acronym. Right from the start its officials were involved in training for activists, and produced numerous circulars and guides for publicists that demonstrated the different ways of using communication material, reproducing the methods that the Communists had also considered.⁸ The campaign for the national elections of 18 April 1948 brought a new development in the organisational structure of SPES: having initially been managed by representatives of the DC’s internal left wing such as Giuseppe Dossetti and Amintore Fanfani, in late 1947 the office came under the control of Giorgio Tupini, a follower of De Gasperi. In February 1948 Tupini oversaw the launch of a bulletin aimed at training activists, which took its cue from the PCI’s Propaganda. Its title, ‘Traguardo: 18 Aprile’ (Target: 18 April), made clear its nature as an urgent service offered in the heat of the election campaign, just like Propaganda, although its publication resumed in the summer of 1948 and then continued until the end of the 1950s. Traguardo addressed grassroots activists, offering basic and accessible advice and explanatory illustrations on the production of newspaper-style wall posters, the conduct of debates and conversations, and the use of posters and leaflets, much like the guidance circulating within the PCI; until the 1960s it was the main point of reference for the publicists of the DC, as regards not only the conflict with its right- and left-wing opposition but also promotion of the government’s achievements.

Not just SPES: other centres of anti-Communist campaigning

The existence of these omnipresent mass-membership party organisations, whose activity after the Second World War strongly influenced the way that Italians identified themselves politically, has often channelled research towards an exclusive focus on the central ‘Press and Propaganda’ offices of the PCI and DC, as if they were the only actors in Italy’s systems of political communication. Within the cultural sphere of the Marxist Left, this approach might make sense: the PCI’s national Sezione Stampa e propaganda in fact always retained its central role in the creation and dissemination of the message conveyed by the organisations alongside it, which brought together sympathisers in contexts that...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Figures
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Systems and methods for political communication in post-war Italy
• 2 Religious and moral values
• 3 Freedom and democracy
• 4 The fatherland, the Italian nation and its role in the world
• 5 Towards a legitimation of prosperity?
• References
• Index