Gorbachev, Italian Communism and Human Rights

Rethinking Political Culture at the End of the Cold War

edited by Silvio Pons

Book cover: Gorbachev, Italian Communism and Human Rights

Extent: 178 pages

Publisher: Viella – libreria editrice

Subjects: Italian Studies, Social Sciences , Twentieth- & Twenty-First- Century History

Series: Viella Historical Research

Series volume number: 24

Language: English

Paperback (Published)

(December 2022)

ISBN: 9788833138664

Price: $34.00

On back order

The chapters brought together in this volume build on the idea that in the 1970s-1980s the global language of human rights contributed to stimulating ideas of reform in the communist world. The protagonists were Mikhail Gorbachev and the Italian communists. The experience of the PCI was in many ways a peculiar case, but one that was linked to underground ideas of cultural change even in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Gorbachev’s ascent signalled a fundamental shift, as he rejected the approach of reducing human rights to an ideological battleground and instead made it the centrepiece of a universalist relaunch. By exploring the encounter between reform communists and human rights, the authors reconstruct the metamorphosis and the end of communism within the context of the wider transformations taking place in European political cultures at the end of the Cold War.

  • By (author) Riccardo Mario Cucciolla
  • By (author) Gianluca Fiocco
  • By (author) Arianna Pasqualini
  • By (author) Silvio Pons
  • By (author) Adriano Roccucci
  • By (author) Gabriele Siracusano
  • Edited by Silvio Pons