Inspiring Dissent: Yugoslavia and the Italian Communist Party during 1956

This paper analyzes the relations between the communist parties of Yugoslavia and Italy during 1956, one of the most important years of the history of communism. The dissenting nature of those relations, which were based on the mutual wish to limit the Soviet hegemony within the global communist movement, is in the focus of this analysis. Finally, this paper aims to demonstrate how the roots of the close friendship between the two parties during the sixties and seventies can be traced back to 1956, and how the Yugoslav communists influenced or tried to influence their Italian counterparts.

Leaving Home, Claiming the Street: Exploring Women’s Challenges in Turkey’s ’68 Movement

Despite worldwide interest in the history of the sixties—particularly in 1968—gender as a category of analysis has received little attention in the majority of academic research about them. Most national historiographies of ’68 have disregarded women’s political actions and their struggles with the gendered political culture. Like its counterparts, Turkey’s ’68 experience was also strongly gendered male. Given the underrepresentation of female historical agency and political subjectivity in the scholarship on 1968, this article aims to explore women’s accounts of Turkey’s ’68 experience with a particular focus on their struggles in leaving home and getting involved in political life.

Hasidic Leaders in the Streets of Tel Aviv, 1940-1965

From the late thirties to the mid-sixties of the twentieth century, Tel Aviv was the seat of dozens of Hasidic courts creating Hasidic precincts in the southern and central parts of the city. The article explores the reason for the Hasidic leaders’ choice to settle in the city with their followers and offers a glimpse of their courts. Hasidic communities distributed throughout the city filled the streets of Tel Aviv with a Hasidic atmosphere. Daily life brought different segments of the population into frequent contact, and generated a unique inter-sectoral mosaic, primarily around special calendar occasions. In the early sixties, the Haredi community in Bnei Brak began to expand and establish educational institutions for the Litvishe and Hasidic communities. As a result, Haredi and Hasidic families slowly moved away from Tel Aviv to Bnei Brak. This trend led, inter alia, to the transfer of several Hasidic courts to Bnei Brak and Jerusalem during the sixties and seventies. The article concludes with a discussion of the diverse reasons for the departure of the Hasidic courts from Tel Aviv and addresses the impact of various processes on Haredi society in the course of the second half of the twentieth century.

‘What you thought you have forgotten’: The Mersey Sound Revisited

The Mersey Sound (1967) was the best-selling poetry anthology of the sixties in the UK. Apart from its commercial success, it is also an important document in terms of the study of working-class literary output in this decade. Despite this, its position within the British literary canon has often been neglected in academic realms. It is for this reason that the present article aims to offer an insight into the scholarly importance of thisanthology through offering arguments for its reevaluation. Moreover, in this research its current status will be explored, looking in particular at contemporary literary criticism of working-class mass culture and art. To this end, I will first discuss the main justifications for a reconsideration of the significance of the collection and describe its context and origins. This will be followed by an analysis of the content of the volume and its current relevance. Conclusions drawn from this will include possible reasons for its absence in many academic poetry guides and will also stress the need torecover and reappraise the anthology in future research on working-class British poetry.

The ideas of the young V. O. Klyuchevsky on the goals of personal development and the progress of Russian society in the 1860s

The article gives an interpretation of the ideas of the young V. O. Klyuchevsky about the peculiarities of the ideological search of young people and the direction of development of Russian society in the sixties of the XIX century. The novelty of the research lies in the attempt to comprehend the problem of perception of V. O. Klyuchevsky himself was one of the representatives of the younger generation of the 1860s, in assessing his ideas about the ideological and value foundations of the activities of the individual and society in Russia during the era of the Great Reforms. The main source of work is the diaries of V. O. Klyuchevsky. The study was carried out in line with modern methodological approaches, which involve the study of the ideological and moral foundations of the culture of the individual in the context of the historical era.

The Seville-Bonanza Canal: A public policy failure

During the sixties, the idea of building a canal to promote the economic development of Seville through the river gained momentum. The initiative –already started in 1953– sought to create an industrial conurbation between the Andalusian capital and Sanlúcar de Barrameda. It was supported by various industrial and commercial sectors of Seville, as well as by local political-administrative institutions. The initiative was also fostered by the Chief of State, general Franco. However, that project actually failed. ¿How such a strong public policy could have been thwarted despite of the support of the dictatorial regime?

The Neo-Futurists

Interest in the Russian Futurist poetry of the first two-and-a-half decades of the twentieth century was revived in Soviet literary circles in the mid-1950s. Initially focused on the work of Vladimir Mayakovsky, interest spread to other writers. At the turn of the fifties and sixties, this revival resulted in regular “unsanctioned” poetry readings at the Mayakovsky monument in Moscow, which were eventually banned by the authorities. Against this backdrop, several young poets tried to build on the creative strategies of the Futurists. Gennady Aigi, who debuted as a Chuvash-language poet, was the first of these poets to arrive on the literary scene. Vladimir Kazakov and Vadim Kozovoy, poets who came onto the literary scene in the sixties, consciously established their styles at the intersection of the Russian and international avant-gardes, trying to overcome the isolationism of Soviet poetry. In the seventies, poems by their elder contemporary, Elizaveta Mnatsakanova, claiming to complete the project of a revived Futurism, were published abroad. All four poets borrowed numerous formal features of their work from Russian Futurism and sought to see themselves as its successors, while setting aside the avant-garde’s socio-political agenda and its desire for a radical transformation of culture and society.

Einaudi and Cooperative Education Association (MCE). Traces of a project for the elementary school (1966-67)

The aim of this paper is to show the editorial relationship between the Einaudi publishing house and the Cooperative Education Association (MCE) during the second half of the Sixties. The members of the Association were looking for an editor willing to spread their pedagogical instances for the renewal of the Italian school and they found it in Einaudi. Thanks to the study of the correspondence and the documentation preserved in the Giulio Einaudi Editore Historical Archive, it has been possible to analyze a project of textbooks for the elementary school, made in collaboration with relevant members of the Association such as Gianni Rodari, Mario Lodi, Giuseppe Tamagnini and Bruno Ciari. The collections were never published, in part for financial reasons, but also because of the rising debate around the textbooks. The opinion of the Association in the late Sixties was changed: the point was not to renew the textbooks but to abolish them. Understanding the reasons of the end of this project might help to clarify the pedagogical impact of the cultural and social changes of that period, the relationship between education and politics. Moreover, it is not by chance that from the ashes of this project took shape The wrong country (Il paese sbagliato), a masterpiece written by Mario Lodi destined to become a classic for the history of education.