Veniamo da lontano, andiamo lontano : Gli studi nel centenario della fondazione del Partito Comunista Italiano

The Italian Communist Party’s 100th Anniversary was the opportunity for a large number of diversified cultural initiatives: documentaries, exhibitions, reviews, public debates, cultural meetings, scientific conferences, and a wide range of publications. Actually, the coincidence with other anniversaries linked to the most important communist leaders, such as Antonio Gramsci, Palmiro Togliatti, Enrico Berlinguer, or Nilde Iotti, multiplied the publication of books on the ICP for five years (2018-2023). The essay aims at analysing such a relevant historiographic production mostly focused on local reconstructions and political biographies, including communist women. Few, but valuable, were the histories that have retraced the entire historical path of the party or some special turning point of the communist experience. Unlike the previous historiographical seasons, this element derives, on one hand, from a progressive tendency towards the fragmentation of studies, and, on the other, from the gradual marginalisation of the historiographical and politological interest in twentieth-century mass parties. However, this has also allowed, for the first time compared to past historiographical seasons, a strong (and hopefully long) split between the analytical level and the political one.