The Italian Communist Party (PCI) was, after 1945, the largest communist party in Western Europe and one of—if not the foremost—party-communist supporters of anti-colonial liberation movements. This research project examines the PCI’s extensive relations with the decolonizing world from a distinctive and largely overlooked Jewish perspective.
Jews were directly involved in shaping the PCI’s foreign policy, while others publicly engaged with and critically reflected upon it. Focusing on selected life trajectories spanning the Mediterranean—particularly Tunisia, Algeria, and Italy—the project explores Jewish experiences of colonialism, anti-colonial struggles, and the processes of decolonization in the post-war period. Its point of departure is the journal L’Italiano di Tunisi (The Italian of Tunis), published in Tunis between 1936 and 1940. Around this anti-fascist newspaper emerged a network of young activists of similar backgrounds, including the siblings Loris, Nadia, and Ruggero Gallico, as well as Maurizio Valenzi and Ferruccio Bensasson. Their biographies illuminate the complex intersections of Jewish and Italian experiences of colonialism and decolonization. All shared both Jewish and Italian roots. Their families had settled in Tunisia for different reasons: some in pursuit of economic opportunities, others as supporters of the Risorgimento seeking refuge from political repression. Although their families belonged to the country’s European colonial elite, these young anti-fascists identified with the anti-colonial movement. At the same time, they joined the Tunisian Communist Party and developed close ties with the country’s Arab population. Interned under the Vichy regime and persecuted during the German-Italian occupation, they went into hiding before relocating to Italy following the Allied liberation in 1943–44.
In Italy, they continued their political engagement within the Communist Party, now as officials of the PCI. In these capacities, they maintained close connections with anti-colonial movements—particularly in North Africa—serving as PCI representatives in newly independent states, leading members of the party’s foreign affairs department, foreign correspondents for the party newspaper L’Unità, or as influential anti-imperialist and anti-colonial intellectuals.
The project addresses the following research questions through the biographies of these Italian-Jewish communist activists: What experiences shaped their lifelong commitment to relations with the decolonized world? To what extent did their family backgrounds influence their political engagement within the Communist Party? How were anti-fascism, communism, and anti-colonialism interconnected in their political thought and practice, particularly after the end of the Second World War and the political reconfiguration of the Mediterranean? To answer these questions, the project draws on materials from the party archives of the Fondazione Gramsci, private papers, political and autobiographical writings of party officials, and articles published in the communist press.
- Moritz Schmeing (IEG)
