Renzo de Felice: the historian who changed Italy

The article examines the contribution of the Italian historian Renzo De Felice to the formation of a new concept of Italian history of the fascism period. Its main feature was the study of the fascist phenomenon through the prism of the personality of Mussolini. In the world historiography there are a lot of works dedicated to the figure of Mussolini (L.S. Belousov, M.M. Ilinsky, R. Collier, P. Milza, D. Smith, K. Hibbert, R. Bosworth etc.). A distinctive feature of R. De Felice’s 8-volume study is that he fits his hero into the historical context as a person of the specific era. De Felice does not perform his task as a researcher in order to convict Mussolini. He seeks to understand the motives behind the actions of Italy’s political leaders in the first half of the 20th century, closely linking their actions to socio-political dynamics, to the demands of Italy’s mass society during this period. De Felice reviews the origin of fascism in the context of the unfinished bourgeois-democratic revolution (Risorgimento). The fascist regime partly broke the class hierarchy and simplified social elevators, brought society closer to the demands of the industrial revolution (“hierarchy of functions”). The regime managed to secure massive support and De Felice recorded the achievement of a “consensus” between the authorities and the society. However, the regime failed to solve the problem of the consolidation of the Italian nation. After Mussolini’s overthrow, the country plunges into confrontation between republican fascism and anti-fascism, communists and Christian democrats. This confrontation led to the formation of politically engaged concepts of Italian history of the first half of the 20th century. There was an uncompromising struggle on the historiographical front, which resulted in the formation of simplified mythological, ideologically biased concepts of the historical past. De Felice’s conceptual works, especially “Intervista sul fascismo (Interview about Fascism)”, “Rosso e Nero (Red and Black)” initially caused sharp rejection from all opposing sides. Gradually, the degree of discussion shifted towards scientific interpretations of historical themes. As a researcher who was able to strongly operate historical facts and documents, Renzo De Felice disarmed the mythological concepts and thereby brought Italian society closer to overcoming political and ideological prejudices, drew attention to the primacy of the formation of national identity, the task that no political regime has been able to solve since Risorgimento.

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