Community, Place, and Cultural Battles: Associational Life in Central Italy, 1945-1968 Laura J. Hornbake Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2013 2013 Laura J. Hornbake This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. ABSTRACT Community, Place, and Cultural Battles: Associational Life in Central Italy, 1945-1968 Laura J. Hornbake This dissertation is an exploration of associational life in central Italy, an examination of organizations that were central to the everyday experience of tens of thousands of Italians at a time when social, economic and geographical transformations were upending their everyday lives, 1945-1968. This dissertation examines facets of these transformations: the changing shape of cities, increasing mobility of people, technological changes that made possible new media and new cultural forms, from the perspective of local associations. The many lively groups, the cultural circles and case del popolo of central Italy were critical sites where members encountered new ideas, navigated social change, and experimented with alternative cultures. At the same time, these organizations themselves were being transformed from unitary centers that expressed the broad solidarity of the anti-fascist Resistance to loose federations of fragmentary single-interest groups. They were tangles of intertwined politics, culture, and community, important sites in culture wars and political battles between the Christian Democratic government in Rome and the defiant Leftist opposition that had a stronghold in central Italy. This history of associations is also a history of postwar Italian democracy: highlighting the struggles of ordinary Italians to participate in public life through the associations they constructed and defended, illuminating attempts to organize and control civil society or squelch the autonomy of local groups, and uncovering the ways that demands for democratic participation were dynamic, continuously recast to encompass new meanings of participation. Table of contents Table of figures ........................................................................................................ iv Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1 PART 1: Rebuilding, defending, and democratizing associational life, 1945-1960 .. 19 Liberation: from clandestine struggle to the light of the sun .................................... 20 Collective spaces and democratic life ................................................................... 24 Re-occupying the case del fascio ......................................................................... 28 Reconstruction, city planning and new case del popolo ........................................ 30 Planning and building the Casa del popolo Corazza ............................................. 31 Construction of the casa del popolo as construction of community ....................... 37 Regulating and organizing associations: ENAL and ARCI, 1945-1959 .................... 41 From OND to ENAL ........................................................................................... 43 Regulation and privilege ...................................................................................... 47 Dissatisfaction with ENAL .................................................................................. 52 The movement to democratize recreation ............................................................. 61 The foundation of the Italian Recreation and Culture Association, ARCI ............. 64 The Case del popolo and “Armored Democracy” ..................................................... 78 Eviction from the Casa del popolo of Crevalcore ................................................. 88 The trial of the Kings of Crevalcore ..................................................................... 95 i The memory of Fascism ..................................................................................... 100 Conclusions ....................................................................................................... 107 PART 2 : New prosperity and new roles for cultural associations, 1960-1968 ........ 108 Town planning and local associational life ............................................................. 111 Corticella and the Casa del popolo Tosarelli ...................................................... 116 Building the new Casa del popolo ...................................................................... 123 Youth and new expectations .............................................................................. 132 Conclusions ....................................................................................................... 138 Partisans for a “Cinema Libero” ............................................................................ 140 Expanding access to Film .................................................................................. 144 For a ‘Cinema Libero’ ....................................................................................... 155 The Cineteca Nazionale ARCI ........................................................................... 160 Good films ......................................................................................................... 162 Reactions from local circles ............................................................................... 171 Conclusions ....................................................................................................... 173 The problem of television: reawakening the critical conscience ............................. 176 The problem of television .................................................................................. 183 Television and democracy.................................................................................. 188 The Group for the Study of Audiovisual Instruments and the Public ................. 196 ii Conclusions ....................................................................................................... 209 Conclusions ........................................................................................................... 211 Bibliography .......................................................................................................... 219 Archival sources ................................................................................................ 219 Published sources .............................................................................................. 219 iii Table of figures Figure 1. Enrico Pasquali, The Bar of the Casa del popolo of Crespellano. .............. 50 Figure 2 ARCI-affiliated circles in Emilia Romagna, 1959 ...................................... 76 Figure 3. Total human and economic costs of political persecution in Bologna ........ 85 Figure 4. Police forces enforcing the eviction from the Casa del popolo of Crevalcore August 3, 1954. ................................................................................................................... 93 Figure 5. Map of Corticella in 1948, illustrating the main roads and features. ........ 119 Figure 6. Map of Corticella in 1969, demonstrating the extensive new development of the area.......................................................................................................................... 120 Figure 7. “Here the Casa del popolo will rise”. ...................................................... 123 Figure 8. The theater of the Casa del popolo of Medicina ...................................... 148 Figure 9. Cinema activities in the Province of Bologna ......................................... 166 Figure 10. Watching television in the casa del popolo. .......................................... 177 Figure 11. “Do not turn off the television, but observe and judge” ......................... 196 iv 1 Introduction This dissertation examines associational life in the case del popolo and ARCI circles of Bologna and the surrounding province, from 1945 to 1968. I argue that these associations were sites where the everyday practices of tens of thousands of members and sympathizers of the communist and socialist parties shaped a leftwing subculture that was heterogeneous, unpredictable, and very dynamic. The histories of these associations are not coterminous with the histories of political parties or movements. Through careful examination of the construction, reconstruction and continuous adaptation of these associations, I demonstrate their continued importance in a period of rapid social, economic, and cultural transformation. The casa del popolo was a model for structuring the spatial location of workers’ organizations dating back to the nineteenth century foundations of the workers’ movement in Italy. It was a common development in the rural towns of central Italy, where there were rarely any spaces for popular entertainment or sociability, and where peasant farmers and landless laborers yearned for a space where they could discuss their problems, formulate political demands and simply be together. Similarly, in urban neighborhoods, workers organizing political movements, adult education, and recreational activities in their hard-won free time, dreamed of having a place of their own outside their cramped apartments. The oldest centers of 2 the movements for democracy,