Communism in Modena: the Provincial Origins of the Partito Comunista Italiano (1943–1945)

Few fields of study are as frequently subject to revision as the history of contemporary politics. This is especially true for communist movements, where new interpretations constantly rework the old. The outpouring of recent work on the Partito comunista italiano (PCI) is a case in point. The peculiarity of Italian communism and the popularity of the PCI within Italy pose intriguing problems which have attracted the attention of many political scientists. In the search for answers to these questions, most authors also end up recounting the Party's history. Unfortunately, the inspiration for these projects is rarely historical per se , but is rather ‘scientific’, intended in the outdated sense of a discipline which extracts its subject from a specific environment in order the better to study it.