the Republic have underlined the bond that unites institutional memory. The celebration of the 70th
the Risorgimento (the birth of the national state in anniversary of the Italy’s liberation in 2015 showed,
the nineteenth century) to the First World War and if anything, some signs that this memory is being
to the Resistance, which is traditionally described recovered, thanks to the committed support of the
as “the second Risorgimento”. And they have new president Sergio Mattarella. In such context,
consistently stressed the European significance of an analogy can be noticed with the relaunch of the
the Resistance, identifying the foundation of today’s memory of the Resistance that took place in France,
united Europe in the struggle against Nazism and where in July 2013 the Assemblée Nationale voted to
Fascism waged by Italy and the other populations establish a National Resistance Day.
of the continent. From this European perspective,
All the main contemporary Italian public
we should also underline President Napolitano’s memories (the Resistance, the Shoah, the foibe)
attempts since 2010 to transform the foibe from remain linked to the experience of the Second World
a nationalist memory into a memory of European War. With the demise of the parties that created
reconciliation between Italy, Slovenia and Croatia, the now disappeared First Republic, their political
based on the mutual recognition of wrongs that the cultures, rooted in anti-Fascism, faded away.
parties have historically inflicted on each other and Now Italians citizens tend to collectively identify
on a fruitful future collaboration inside the European themselves as victims - either at the hands of the
Union. This policy has helped to avert a potentially Nazis or at the hands of the Yugoslavs. At the same
dangerous political confrontation between Italy time, they identify themselves as the “righteous”
and its eastern neighbours, marked over the years and cultivate the memory of the “good Italians”
by diplomatic crises and by the neo-irredentist who helped the peJews. A more conscious memory,
positions of the Italian right. Italian nationalists one more aware of the events of the past and better
were keen to redefine the territorial agreements equipped to deal with the dark pages of the history of
signed by Italy and Yugoslavia in 1975, claiming that a country that was the cradle of Fascism in Europe,
the dissolution of the Yugoslav Federation rendered is still struggling to make its way.
them invalid. Even the Presidents of the German
Republic’s numerous visits made in Italy to the sites
of the Nazi massacres were a clear sign of a process
of (“bilateral”) reconciliation in the name of their
common EU membership.
In other words, Italy since the 1990s represents
a particularly interesting case with reference to the
changes in public narratives and cultures of memory.
The new coordinates of European memory promoted
by the EU institutions in Brussels – the memory of
the Shoah and the anti-totalitarian paradigm – have
gained considerable ground inside the Italian public
opinion. The memory of the Resistance, bedrock
of the First Republic, came under great pressure
from two sides: competition from the Shoah on
the one hand, and the antagonistic memory of the
foibe on the other. Thanks to the steadfastness
of the country’s presidents, the memory of the
Resistance has not been undermined or replaced and
has remained a fundamental pillar in the national
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