Democracia, comunismo e reformas na Venezuela de Rómulo Betancourt (1940-1964)

Pós-graduação em História - FCHS

Cultura, política e representações do México no cinema norte-americano: Viva Zapata! de Elia Kazan

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Radicalismo de esquerda e anticomunismo radical: a União Nacional dos Estudantes entre 1945 e 1964

Pós-graduação em História - FCLAS

Alceu Amoroso Lima: matrizes e posições de um intelectual católico militante em perspectiva histórica - 1928-1946

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Vítima do ódio: a militância comunista e as lutas camponesas no interior paulista

Pós-graduação em Ciências Sociais - FFC

A unidade política das esquerdas no Uruguai: das primeiras experiências à Frente Ampla (1958-1973)

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

A eugenia no humor da Revista Ilustrada Careta: raça e cor no Governo Provisório (1930-1934)

Pós-graduação em História - FCLAS

O vermelho que violenta a ordem: os comunistas sob o olhar da DOPS no Paraná

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

O vermelho que violenta a ordem: os comunistas sob o olhar da DOPS no Paraná

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Riccardo Lombardi nel socialismo italiano (1947-1964)

Il primo capitolo della tesi verte sull’ultimo anno di vita del Partito d’Azione, sulle modalità di partecipazione di Lombardi allo scontro elettorale del 1948 nelle liste del Fronte democratico popolare, e sul breve periodo di direzione ‘centrista’ del Psi a cavallo tra il 1948 e il 1949, quando Lombardi, appena entratovi, fu magna pars nel gruppo dirigente del partito. Il secondo capitolo abbraccia il periodo in cui Lombardi agì all’interno del Psi ‘morandiano’, o frontista: si è cercato di dare ragione sia dell’inserimento di Lombardi nelle logiche del frontismo socialista, sia della peculiarità di quell’inserimento negli ambiti privilegiati della politica economica e della politica estera. Oggetto del terzo capitolo è il ruolo giocato da Lombardi nella definizione delle linee guida dell’autonomismo socialista, un ruolo fattosi via via più pregnante a partire dal 1956, che ebbe la sua massima consacrazione col XXXIV Congresso del Psi, celebrato a Milano nel 1961: centrale in questo periodo la riflessione lombardiana sulle «riforme di struttura», un argomento che ci si è sforzati di inquadrare storicamente, sfuggendo dai luoghi comuni storiografici di cui spesso – con lodevoli eccezioni – è caduto vittima. Tali «riforme di struttura» Lombardi avrebbe voluto alla base dei governi di centro-sinistra. La tesi si chiude con un ultimo capitolo dedicato ad illustrare l’apporto di Lombardi al quarto Governo Fanfani e al primo Governo Moro, il ruolo da lui giocato nella loro nascita e il suo progressivo allontanamento da quell’esperimento che era stato, in gran parte, sua creatura.

A Sociological Study of the Political Subsystem in Yugoslavia

In this critical analysis of sociological studies of the political subsystem in Yugoslavia since the fall of communism Mr. Ilic examined the work of the majority of leading researchers of politics in the country between 1990 and 1996. Where the question of continuity was important, he also looked at previous research by the writers in question. His aim was to demonstrate the overall extent of existing research and at the same time to identify its limits and the social conditions which defined it. Particular areas examined included the problems of defining basic concepts and selecting the theoretically most relevant indicators; the sources of data including the types of authentic materials exploited; problems of research work (contacts, field control, etc.); problems of analysisl and finally the problems arising from different relations with the people who commission the research. In the first stage of the research, looking at methods of defining key terms, special attention was paid to the analysis of the most frequently used terms such as democracy, totalitarianism, the political left and right, and populism. Numerous weaknesses were noted in the analytic application of these terms. In studies of the possibilities of creating a democratic political system in Serbia and its possible forms (democracy of the majority or consensual democracy), the profound social division of Serbian society was neglected. The left-right distinction tends to be identified with the government-opposition relation, in the way of practical politics. The idea of populism was used to pass responsibility for the policy of war from the manipulator to the manipulated, while the concept of totalitarianism is used in a rather old-fashioned way, with echoes of the cold war. In general, the terminology used in the majority of recent research on the political subsystem in Yugoslavia is characterised by a special ideological style and by practical political material, rather than by developed theoretical effort. The second section of analysis considered the wider theoretical background of the research and focused on studies of the processes of transformation and transition in Yugoslav society, particularly the work of Mladen Lazic and Silvano Bolcic, who he sees as representing the most important and influential contemporary Yugoslav sociologists. Here Mr. Ilic showed that the meaning of empirical data is closely connected with the stratification schemes towards which they are oriented, so that the same data can have different meanings in shown through different schemes. He went on to show the observed theoretical frames in the context of wider ideological understanding of the authors' ideas and research. Here the emphasis was on the formalistic character of such notions as command economy and command work which were used in analysing the functioning and the collapse of communist society, although Mr. Ilic passed favourable judgement on the Lazic's critique of political over-determination in its various attempts to explain the disintegration of the communist political (sub)system. The next stage of the analysis was devoted to the problem of empirical identification of the observed phenomena. Here again the notions of the political left and right were of key importance. He sees two specific problems in using these notion in talking about Yugoslavia, the first being that the process of transition in the FR Yugoslavia has hardly begun. The communist government has in effect remained in power continuously since 1945, despite the introduction of a multi-party system in 1990. The process of privatisation of public property was interrupted at a very early stage and the results of this are evident on the structural level in the continuous weakening of the social status of the middle class and on the political level because the social structure and dominant form of property direct the majority of votes towards to communists in power. This has been combined with strong chauvinist confusion associated with the wars in Croatia and Bosnia, and these ideas were incorporated by all the relevant Yugoslav political parties, making it more difficult to differentiate between them empirically. In this context he quotes the situation of the stream of political scientists who emerged in the Faculty of Political Science in Belgrade. During the time of the one-party regime, this faculty functioned as ideological support for official communist policy and its teachers were unable to develop views which differed from the official line, but rather treated all contrasting ideas in the same way, neglecting their differences. Following the introduction of a multi-party system, these authors changed their idea of a public enemy, but still retained an undifferentiated and theoretically undeveloped approach to the issue of the identification of political ideas. The fourth section of the work looked at problems of explanation in studying the political subsystem and the attempts at an adequate causal explanation of the triumph of Slobodan Milosevic's communists at four subsequent elections was identified as the key methodological problem. The main problem Mr. Ilic isolated here was the neglect of structural factors in explaining the voters' choice. He then went on to look at the way empirical evidence is collected and studied, pointing out many mistakes in planning and determining the samples used in surveys as well as in the scientifically incorrect use of results. He found these weaknesses particularly noticeable in the works of representatives of the so-called nationalistic orientation in Yugoslav sociology of politics, and he pointed out the practical political abuses which these methodological weaknesses made possible. He also identified similar types of mistakes in research by Serbian political parties made on the basis of party documentation and using methods of content analysis. He found various none-sided applications of survey data and looked at attempts to apply other sources of data (statistics, official party documents, various research results). Mr. Ilic concluded that there are two main sets of characteristics in modern Yugoslav sociological studies of political subsystems. There are a considerable number of surveys with ambitious aspirations to explain political phenomena, but at the same time there is a clear lack of a developed sociological theory of political (sub)systems. He feels that, in the absence of such theory, most researcher are over-ready to accept the theoretical solutions found for interpretation of political phenomena in other countries. He sees a need for a stronger methodological bases for future research, either 1) in complementary usage of different sources and ways of collecting data, or 2) in including more of a historical dimension in different attempts to explain the political subsystem in Yugoslavia.

The New Electoral Geography of Central Europe

Zarycki studied the political map of Central Europe today on the basis of results of recent parliamentary and/or presidential elections in the Czech Republic, Hungary, L8ithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Ukraine. He identified first the structure of regional political cleavages, then the spatial patterns emerging in different countries. He also considered the significance and eventual regional differentiation of various possible influences on these patterns, including urbanisation, historical heritage, ethnic factors, population movements, economic differentiation, the effects of the transformation, demographic factors, education and religion. Virtually all the countries showed a cleavage between more traditional, anti (or non-) communist regions and secular areas with higher post-communist support. Except in Ukraine and the Czech Republic, the post-communist party is dominated by the direct heirs of the former communist parties transformed into moderate left parties. The second major class of cleavages was typical of the Visegrad countries, i.e. the conflict between liberal, mostly metropolitan, regions and a different periphery, usually with a strong populist or anti-liberal appeal. This usually depends on the existence of a sizeable well-educated class, usually pro-market and pro-Western, and on the resolution of the conflict between post and anti-Communists. The third type of cleavage is based on ethnic factors and is clearest in Lithuania and Slovakia, where there are large ethnic minorities. Of factors influencing political behaviour, the two major ones identified were the historical heritage and urbanisation.

Finnish Americans and the Farm Revolt of the 1930s

Farm protest in the United States attracted widespread attention in the 1930s as militant farmers interfered with foreclosure sales, demonstrated at county court houses and state capitals, and blocked highways and stopped trains to prevent crops and livestock from going to market in an effort to raise farm prices. The best known of the protest groups was the Farmers Holiday Association, which was formed in 1932. Prior to the Holiday, however, a left-wing group organized by Communists in 1930 known as the United Farmers League (UFL) gained an initial following in the cutover country of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, northern Wisconsin, northern Minnesota, and parts of the Dakotas and northeast Montana. Finnish Americans dominated the UFL in the Upper Midwest and in a few locales in the Dakotas. Evidence for this high level of influence comes from the fact that the head of the Communist Party’s Agrarian Department was Henry Puro, a key figure in Finnish American Communist circles and a member of the Party’s Politburo. This paper will focus on Finnish American involvement in the UFL and, to a lesser extent, the broader-based Farmers Holiday movement.

Transformations in French Anti-Semitism?

The increase in the number of anti-Semitic acts since the start of the Second Intifada has sparked off a broad debate on the return of anti-Semitism in France. This article focuses on the question whether this anti-Semitism is still based on the alleged superiority of the Aryan race as in the time of Nazism, or if it represents the birth of a “new Judeophobia” that is more based on anti-Zionism and the polemical mixing of “Jews,” “Israelis,” and “Zionists.” One supposed effect of this transformation is that anti-Semitism is in the process of changing camps and migrating from the extreme right to the extreme left of the political arena, to the “altermondialistes,” the communists, and the “neo-Trotskyists.” The article provides answers to the following questions: Are anti-Jewish views on the increase in France today? Do these opinions correlate with negative opinions of other minorities, notably Maghrebians and Muslims? Do they tend to develop among voters and sympathizers with the extreme right or on the extreme left of the political spectrum? And how are they related to opinions concerning Zionism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? My evaluation of the transformations in French anti-Semitism relies on two types of data. The first is police and gendarmerie statistics published by the National Consultative Committee on Human Rights (CNCDH), which is charged with presenting the prime minister with an annual report on the struggle against racism and xenophobia in France. The other is data from surveys, notably surveys commissioned by CNCDH for its annual report and surveys conducted at the Center for Political Research (CEVIPOF) at Sciences Po (Paris Institute for Political Research). The data show that anti-Semitic opinions follow a different logic from acts, that the social, cultural, and political profile of anti-Semites remains very close to that of other types of racists, and that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism do not overlap exactly.

El nacionalismo frente a la cuestión social en Argentina (1930-1943) : Discursos, Representaciones y prácticas de las derechas sobre el mundo del trabajo

Nuestra investigación se centró fundamentalmente en las distintas formas en que las derechas respondieron a los conflictos suscitados en el mundo del trabajo durante el período de entreguerras. En primer lugar, advertimos que la cuestión social fue adquiriendo un rol protagónico en la agenda nacionalista tal como puede verse, por ejemplo, a través del análisis de los periódicos. En efecto, los diarios más importantes adscriptos al nacionalismo desarrollaron un discurso radical respecto a los problemas sociales e incluyeron secciones específicas para tratar estas cuestiones y expresar una posición al respecto. Las respuestas del nacionalismo argentino frente a la cuestión obrera han sido múltiples y han abarcado distintas esferas de la vida social. Lejos de esperar que la solución a los problemas sociales proviniera exclusivamente de las medidas restrictivas y represivas hacia el movimiento obrero, los nacionalistas elaboraron programas sociales, políticos, económicos y culturales que formaron parte de su proyecto de nación autoritaria y jerárquica. Los proyectos sociales y las propuestas de organización sindical fueron en gran parte inspirados por los fascismos europeos los cuales incluyeron programas de contención social dentro de un orden político totalitario. En este sentido los nacionalistas argentinos intentaron mediante sus propuestas imponer un orden que contemplara las necesidades básicas de los sectores populares y que preservara las jerarquías sociales limitando la participación política o sindical de los trabajadores y eliminando definitivamente alas fuerzas de la izquierda revolucionaria. Las organizaciones obreras nacionalistas incluyeron todo tipo de trabajadores en sus filas y procuraron captar tanto a los afiliados de los sindicatos autónomos como a los trabajadores socialistas. Algunas de estas organizaciones fueron efímeras mientras que otras tuvieron más éxito y lograron atraer adherentes. Las mismas conformaron la corriente que hemos denominado nacionalismo sindicalista, la cual desarrolló su propia doctrina social fuertemente influenciada por las encíclicas papales. Las manifestaciones nacionalistas en el espacio público porteño han sido también analizadas in extenso. Existieron distintos tipos de manifestaciones para movilizar a los seguidores del nacionalismo y para captar nuevos adherentes, especialmente aquellos provenientes de los sectores populares. Las manifestaciones se convirtieron en el escenario de las disputas ideológicas mantenidas tanto contra la política liberal como contra la revolucionaria. La "revolución nacionalista", según la formulaban sus partidarios, implicaba trascender los aspectos políticos y económicos incorporando transformaciones en otras áreas de la vida social: las costumbres, las formas de vida, los gustos culturales, los valores. Los nacionalistas advirtieron que para lograr este tipo de "revolución" debían hacer usa de los medios de comunicación masivos y diseñar proyectos para regular las industrias culturales. El objetivo de representar a los sectores populares fracasó rotundamente. El discurso nacionalista que condenaba la diversidad étnico-religiosa, que amenazaba con eliminar las distintas voces políticas existentes, y que expresaba un odio visceral a sus enemigos (ya fueran judíos, anarquistas, comunistas, o liberales) fue extremadamente desafortunado para quienes procuraron ensanchar las bases de un movimiento antidemocrático originalmente elitista que, a la luz del contexto internacional y de las condiciones locales, devino en populista