Lessons on Communism: Party Schools in Italy in the 20th Century

Abstract The Italian Communist Party created the most effective political school—and the only one in Italy—aimed at creating cadre leaders. The first schools were in Rome and Milan, and over the following decades the school system spread throughout the country, eventually counting about a hundred schools active throughout Italy until 1989. The school in Rome, which was the only one to remain open for a further four years, was the main model for the others. Called the Frattocchie School, it was a residential school in the hills of Rome and was in operation from 1944 to 1993. The students attended classes from six months to a year; they studied historical materialism and the history of Bolshevism but also experienced collective life, group identity, and the theoretical and practical values of communism. The Frattocchie model began with an initial period in which training consisted of the organization and acculturation of the working classes, starting with workers and peasants, according to a schema influenced by the Soviet schools but where the socializing bent of the Italian institutes mitigated the sectarianism and dogmatism of Moscow. The aim of the training was to build the careers of future politicians capable of embodying the ideals of a party that demanded control, preparation, and discipline. For this reason, the Italian Communist Party schools represented an original example in teaching methods and curricula, handing down the memory of communism over time. The diaries, questionnaires, and testimonies of the students who attended the Frattocchie School in its 50 years of activity are important sources and a precious heritage to understand how the Communist “faith” became a vehicle of recognition and belonging. Even today the name Frattocchie is associated with a model of party school to be imitated in order to teach methods and principles to those who want to pursue a political career.