2024-02-20 14:57:20
by FEDERIGO ARGENTIERI
The historian who passed away on February 3rd had worked until the end on the updated version of his creation. An approach foreign to any ideological prejudice
Not Vidotto if he doesn’t have a waistcoat, it was said in the 1960s of the young assistant of Modern History at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of “La Sapienza” in Rome, in relation to his and the teachers’ clothing in general before 1968. .
Vittorio Vidotto, born in Milan in 1941 and died on February 3, was one of the most versatile, acute and attentive historians in Italy: always consistent with his own actionist-socialist ideas, but open and respectful towards those of others; almost indifferent to intellectual fashions, in particular that, in vogue in his faculty, of leaning on the most extremist positions of student groups to gain popularity; finally, and above all, capable of fully grasping all the complications and nuances of the national story, promptly poured into his works.
In a 2007 interview with Fabio Papalia, Vidotto literally tore to pieces most of the 1968 myths (including the grotesque fascist Rosario Romeo) without any acrimony or sufficiency, but with calmness, strong in the fact that his political and cultural convictions they had shown themselves capable of dealing admirably with any ideological intoxication.
From an Istrian family – his grandfather Giacomo Vidotto was born in Porec and had moved to Romagna during the Habsburg era – Vittorio had always had in mind the elective affinities between Nazi-fascist totalitarianism and Communist-Stalinist totalitarianism, to the point of agreeing with his friend and close collaborator Giovanni Sabbatucci a consistent approach to their successful Latertian manual for high schools: the third author, Andrea Giardina, more tied to the Gramscian tradition, was quickly convinced, despite initial doubts.
The brand new updated, expanded and multimedia edition in three volumes (the third, on the contemporary era, comes out in March), as well as covering the events of a millennium, is also a useful tool for those (and there are many) who need a refresher, both history and civic education. Vidotto cared a lot about this new edition, on which he had worked right up until the end and which he said he felt was a true creation of him.
His other books, published over more than half a century, range from a History of political parties from Unit to the Constituent Assembly (the first and best-selling) to the excellent contemporary Rome, that is, the capital seen, studied and completely understood from a Roman by adoption, without forgetting Italians. From the economic miracle to today, in which he demonstrated mastery of sociological tools and profound knowledge of the evolution of customs. Last but not least, The Italian Communist Party from its origins to 1946, published in the Seventies by a non-left-wing publisher and in a series directed by Renzo de Felice, was almost completely and unjustly ignored.
Vidotto’s teaching legacy is equally precious, having raised generations of scholars of various orientations, capable like him of analyzing our past with penetrating eyes and without preconceptions.
February 20, 2024 (modified February 20, 2024 | 3:56 pm)
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