ABSTRACT
Italian history is usually observed from a “Western” perspective, and accordingly, Italian Fascism is understood as the outcome of a series of “national anomalies.” Instead, this chapter argues that the post-1918 Italian crisis, and the rise and consolidation of Fascism and its impact on European politics and society, can be better analysed within a truly European perspective that includes Central and South-Eastern Europe as well. First, it focuses on the complex relationship between nationalism and Fascism in order to shed new light on the radical and conservative dynamics operating both during the crisis that followed WWI, and within Mussolini’s movement and subsequent regime. Second, in order to better understand these dynamics, it pays attention to the nationalist and Fascist strategies and projects drawn on the social transformations of the post-1918 Italian countryside and on the geopolitical backlashes of the collapse of the Habsburg Empire. In this regard, the peasant and the Adriatic questions, which were dynamically related to social and geopolitical questions interconnecting the “West” and the “East,” contributed to the ascent and consolidation of Mussolini’s dictatorship in the 1920s as well as to its radicalisation in the 1930s.
