National monument of the Foiba di
Basovizza in Trieste | EUROM
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This collective memory, based on the
acclamation of the merits of the Italian Resistance
after 1943 and on the glossing over of Italian
situation would changed dramatically with the
political upheavals of the early 1990s.
Since German reunification, Italy has probably
guilt for the war of aggression fought alongside been the Western European country most affected
Hitler from 1940 to 1943, had suffered serious by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the
repercussions during the years of the Cold War. The disintegration of the international system of the Cold
most important perhaps was the questioning of the War. The transformation of the Communist Party
democratic legitimacy of the Italian Communist in 1991 into a new political entity, the Democratic
Party (PCI), one of the protagonists of the Left Party, was followed by a profound crisis of
Resistance and one of the main signatories of the the entire system between 1992 and 1994, which
constitutional pact; for example, the Catholics and imploded after the huge corruption scandal known
liberals repeatedly accused the PCI of being “pawns” as Tangentopoli, brought to light and fought by the
of Communist totalitarianism led by Moscow. judiciary. Therefore, in the early 1990s all the parties
Nevertheless, the general framework of the national that had created the constitutional pact either found
memory anchored in the Resistance was never their influence severely reduced or disappeared
doubted; in fact, it was re-launched in the 1970s as completely: first the Christian Democrats and the
a common heritage encompassing all the democratic PCI, marked by divisions and name changes, then
and anti-fascist parties in the face of the dual the Socialist Party, the Liberal Party, the Social
challenge posed to the institutions of the Republic by Democrats and the Republican Party. At the same
the terrorism of the extreme left and extreme right. time, new political movements with no roots in the
The period known as the “Second Cold War”
anti-Fascist tradition gained prominence and some
in the late 1970s saw the reactivation in the Italian consensus. This was the case of Umberto Bossi’s
public debate of accusations against the Communists Northern League and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia,
for having monopolized the Resistance. The and of the old Italian Social Movement (MSI), the
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