Revolutionary Networks
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Edinburgh Research Explorer Revolutionary Networks. Women's Political and Social Activism in Cold War Italy and Yugoslavia (1945-1957) Citation for published version: Bonfiglioli, C 2012, 'Revolutionary Networks. Women's Political and Social Activism in Cold War Italy and Yugoslavia (1945-1957)', Ph.D., Universiteit Utrecht. <http://www.uu.nl/faculty/humanities/EN/Current/agenda/Pages/20120914-promotie-bonfiglioli.aspx> Link: Link to publication record in Edinburgh Research Explorer Document Version: Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Publisher Rights Statement: © Bonfiglioli, C. (2012). Revolutionary Networks. Women's Political and Social Activism in Cold War Italy and Yugoslavia (1945-1957) Utrecht University (PhD dissertation) General rights Copyright for the publications made accessible via the Edinburgh Research Explorer is retained by the author(s) and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Take down policy The University of Edinburgh has made every reasonable effort to ensure that Edinburgh Research Explorer content complies with UK legislation. If you believe that the public display of this file breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 09. Oct. 2021 REVOLUTIONARY NETWORKS Women’s Political and Social Activism in Cold War Italy and Yugoslavia (1945-1957) REVOLUTIONAIRE NETWERKEN Politieke en Sociaal Activisme van Vrouwen in Italie en Joegoslavie tijdens de Koude Oorlog (1945-1957) (met een samenvatting in het Nederlands) Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit Utrecht op gezag van de rector magnificus, prof.dr. G.J. van der Zwaan, ingevolge het besluit van het college voor promoties in het openbaar te verdedigen op vrijdag 14 september 2012 des middags te 12.45 uur door Chiara Bonfiglioli geboren op 24 januari 1983 te Bologna, Italie Promotor: Prof. dr. R. Braidotti A mia nonna Linda, Una ragazza degli anni Quaranta To my grandmother Linda, A girl of the 1940s Contents Acknowledgements. .9 Introduction. .12 Chapter 1 Theoretical and methodological framework of the research. 22 Introduction. 22 1 Women’s history in Italy, Yugoslavia and the Italo-Yugoslav border area. 24 1.1 Temporalities: the antifascist foremothers and the feminist generation. 24 1.2 Women’s political history across time and across national borders. 27 2 Women’s history during the Cold War: uncovering agency . 30 3 Trans-European feminist genealogies: challenging the East-West divide. 33 4 Reading the cultural Cold War through a gender lens. 36 5 Cold War Orientalism and post-Cold War ethnography. 37 6 Research methodology . 40 6.1 Designing a research method . 41 6.2 Visits to archives in Italy and the former Yugoslavia . 43 6.3 Archival sources . 46 6.4 Autobiographies, biographies and oral history interviews. 49 6.5 Lost and found in translation: language and narrative. 52 6.6 Across Europe: traveling locations. 53 6.7 Across generations: subjectivity and agency. 55 Chapter 2 Women’s antifascist Resistance in Italy and Yugoslavia . 60 Introduction. 60 1 The Second World War in Italy and Yugoslavia. 6. 2 1.1 The beginnings of the antifascist struggle. 62 1.2 Italian and Yugoslav women’s encounters across borders during the war. 65 2 The foundation of the afž and the udi during the antifascist Resistance. .68 2.1 Women’s resistance in Yugoslavia: the Antifascist Women’s Front (afž). 6. 9 2.2 Women’s resistance in Italy: the Groups for the Defense of Women (gdd) and the Union of Italian Women (udi). 72 3 Assessing the impact of women’s participation in the Resistance. 76 3.1 Images of female fighters in Yugoslavia and Italy. 77 3.2 Motherhood, “women” and femininity as consensual signifiers. .79 3.3 Beyond representation: women’s agency in feminist historiography. 82 Conclusion . 85 Chapter 3 The afž, the udi and the task of postwar reconstruction . 87 Introduction . 87 1 Women’s social work of national reconstruction . 89 1.1 The first postwar afž congress (Belgrade, June 1945). 91 1.2 The first postwar udi Congress (Florence, October 1945) . 93 1 .3 udi and afž engagements in social work in the postwar years . 96 1.4 The paradigm of social motherhood after 1945. 98 2 The 1946 Italian and Yugoslav Constitutions: formulating women’s rights . 100 2.1 Overcoming women’s inferiority as a legacy of previous regimes. 100 2.2 Women’s equality as citizens and workers, women’s difference as mothers. 101 2.3 Women’s equality as a “prize” or as a “natural outcome” of the Resistance. 104 3 The pedagogic character of antifascist women’s organizations. 106 3.1 The udi and the afž as avant-gardes: educating the feminine masses. 106 3.2 “Wearing trousers”: udi and afž leaders rejecting “work among women”. 109 Conclusion. 111 Chapter 4 Women’s internationalism after 1945. 113 Introduction. 113 1 The Women’s International Democratic Federation (widf) . 117 1.1 The widf founding congress (November 1945, Paris) and the initial activities of the widf . 118 2 Transnational encounters in the postwar period: the Yugoslav example. 123 2.1 Yugoslav women’s international recognition and the claim over Trieste. 124 2.2 Italian women abroad: the uncoupling of Italian identity from Fascism. 128 2.3 The ambivalence of the Yugoslav model for Italian militants. 131 3 The Italo-Yugoslav border area as a microcosm of Cold War battles. 135 3.1 For a Yugoslav Trieste: the Union of Italo-Slovene Antifascist Women (udais).136 3.2 “Let’s learn how to talk”: women’s class-based activism in a multi-ethnic city. 142 Conclusion. 147 Chapter 5 From comrades to traitors: the Cominform Resolution of 1948. 149 Introduction. 149 1 The Soviet-Yugoslav split and its consequences on women’s internationalism. 151 1.1 The First and Second Cominform Resolutions (June 1948 – November 1949). 151 1.2 The isolation of Yugoslav delegates at the Women’s International Exhibition .155 1.3 “Sisterhood was no longer innocent”: the second widf Congress in Budapest. 159 1.4 The break of udi-afž relations and the exclusion of the afž from the widf. 163 2 Intra-communist wars in Yugoslavia, Italy and the Italo-Yugoslav border area. 170 2.1 The making of Yugoslav “Cominformists” . 170 2.2 Enemy making: The afž and the udi amidst Cold War struggles. 174 2.3 The effects of the Cominform Resolution in the Italo-Yugoslav border area. 179 Conclusion. 183 Chapter 6 Into the field: the afž, the udi and the practice of emancipation . .186 Introduction. 186 1 The afž in the early Cold War era . 189 1 .1 afž campaigns in 1948–1953: women’s equality as a modernization project . 189 1.2 From darkness to enlightenment: the campaign against feređže. 192 1.3 Feminist historiography and the dissolution of the afž in 1953 . 196 1.4 The women’s question as a social question: the iv and last afž Congress. 199 2 The udi in the early Cold War era. 205 2 .1 udi campaigns in 1948-53: class conflicts and solidarity networks. 205 2.2 Peasant movements in Southern Italy: a “woman with no name”. 208 2.3 The udi support of of war rape victims in Cassino province . 211 2.4 Feminist historiography and the debate on the autonomy of the udi . 214 Conclusion. 220 Chapter 7 After 1956: national ways to women’s emancipation . 224 1 The impact of 1956 on Italian and Yugoslav women’s organizations. 228 1.1 A new climate within the udi: redefining emancipation and autonomy . 228 1.2 Critical observers: Yugoslav sdž leaders and the widf. 232 2 Women’s internationalism and its discontents. 235 2.1 The widf and the geopolitical crises of 1956 in Suez and Hungary . 235 2.2 Contesting Soviet hegemony: the widf Helsinki Plenum . 237 2.3 The 1957 Ljubljana meeting between Italian and Yugoslav leaders. 241 2.4 Women’s questions: autonomy, contraception and abortion . 246 3 The difficult reconciliation in the Italo-Yugoslav border area . 249 Conclusion. 252 Concluding remarks and suggestions for future research. 255 1 Women’s transnational activism in Cold War Europe . 256 2 Gendering Cold War politics. 261 3 Post-Cold War feminist narratives. 263 List of abbreviations . 267 Bibliography . 269 Summary . .289 Samenvatting . .292 Biography . 296 Acknowledgements Writing a doctoral dissertation is definitely more about the journey than about the destination. Although I am solely responsible for the final contents of the disserta- tion, and thus for its destination, I would like to thank the many fellow travelers who made this journey possible. First of all, I am immensely grateful to the extraordinary women who agreed to be interviewed and to share with me their personal stories. A heartfelt thank you to Gordana Bosanac, Marisa Rodano, Ester Pacor, Luciana Viviani and Vinka Kitarović, whose storytelling allowed me to travel in time and to under- stand the degree of political passion involved in women’s politics. I am immensely grateful to my PhD supervisor Rosi Braidotti. Your generosity, energy and deeply inspiring intellectual support sustained me along the way. Thank you for believing in this project from the start – even when it wasn’t there yet – and for encouraging me to be open to discoveries, while at the same time keeping in check my Pindaric flights with a healthy dose of realism. Theogc Institute at Utrecht University provided me with generous financial and educational support, for which I am deeply grateful. Thank you to José van Aelst for her warm support. The Graduate Gender Programme has been a wonderful academic community, both for a master student and a PhD researcher.