Il lungo biennio rosso dei giovani socialisti meridionali

The most recent reflections on the war-post-war relationship, prompted by the recurrence of several anniversaries (the centenaries of the Great War, the double Russian revolution, the two red year period), have drawn attention with new interpretations to the multiple political, social and spatial declinations of a season of tumultuous conflict and delicate balances. In this direction, the contribution analyzes the different scenarios of struggle and commitment that open up in the aftermath of the conflict for the young Italian socialists, already protagonists of the anti-war opposition. In particular, the interest is aimed at the role and positions of the southern group (led by the Apulian farmhand Nicola Modugno, a leading man of the movement during the conflict) within the Italian Socialist Youth Federation, in the difficult confrontation between abstentionists and electionists and in the complex process that will lead to membership with a large majority in the Communist Party of Italy. The path of the southern socialist youth towards communism does not experience the consensus registered in the other federated sections: for the young people of the South, these were brief, transitory experiences, marked in some cases by the passage into the ranks of fascism, in others (as in the case of Nicola Modugno) by the transition to an anarcho-syndicalist anti-fascism.