ABSTRACT
One of the strangest aspects of the confrontation of Communism and Fascism was the intense, but almost entirely unsuccessful, endeavour by each side to understand the other. The Nazi image of Bolshevism – Russian, German, or any other – had the advantage of simplicity: Communism was the revolt of the criminal underworld against the Aryan race and all its values. The Soviet image of Fascism is a matter of far greater complexity. Mere intuition or mythology would not do; what the Communists needed was a scientific theory of Fascism. Fascism in the nineteen-twenties and thirties was frequently misinterpreted; it is only since the Second World War that a clearer conception has prevailed. In the early days the Italian Communists, the first to come into direct contact with Fascism, regarded Mussolini’s squadri as a group of terrorists, desperadoes, declassed military adventurers, a ‘fenomeno di militarismo primitivo’.
