The risk of freedom. Young people and national rebuilding in Italy after World War II

The election of 18th April 1948 confronted two coalitions: on the right Democrazia Cristiana (DC) and on the left Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI). Two parties that were more than political groups, they embodied two anthropological models of life. Party members wanted to rebuild the nation after the calamity of Fascist dictatorship, and they believed that education could offer a great opportunity to change the Italian identity. So those parties took up the fight against the new enemies: the capitalist system and Communism; DC and PCI spent much energy organizing activist training, party schools, etc. The dominant thought was that all young people were potentially at risk in the age of democracy; freedom was a new sensation after twenty years of tyranny but needed an enormous investment in terms of education. The aim of my paper is to show what risks existed for young people according to the thoughts of Catholic and Communist parties, risks that were different according to the ideological doctrine of these adversaries. For example, Democrazia Cristiana was apprehensive of a moral subversion, it suspected that the Communist party wanted to undermine not just political freedom but also family and religious values. On the other hand the Communist party believed that it was necessary to do battle with the capitalist system which was very dangerous because it aimed to assimilate the proletarian to the individualist bourgeois lifestyle. With the help of archive materials, journals and books I would like to demonstrate that both Democrazia Cristiana and Partito Comunista were not greatly different, and sometimes, in terms of education for youths − for example against sexuality, use of leisure time, music, modern fashion etc. − they fought the same war.