Historical revisionism and fascism

The article introduces the political problems that have characterised the historiographic research of Fascism in Italy. For many years the hegemony of the Italian communist party prevented the historic investigation of Fascism because the anti-fascist approaches were centered around the moral condemnation of Mussolini and his work. Within this frame, the current study emphazises the merits of the investigations by the historian Renzo De Felice for going further than these ideological barriers, transforming himself into the unavoidable reference for the new wave in Italian reformist historiography connected with the historical studies into Fascism. The essay also introduces the main debates of Italian historiography about Fascism between the years 1970 and 1980.