Paolo Alatri

Paolo Alatri (Rome, 27 February 1918 – Rome, 30 October 1995) was an Italian historian and Marxist politician.

Born into a middle class Jewish family, Paolo Alatri had his secondary education at the Torquato Tasso in Rome, where his classmates included Bruno Zevi and Mario Alicata.

After graduating with a degree in literature and philosophy from the University of Rome in 1940 he enrolled in the Action Party, taking an active part in the defense of Rome (September 1943) and subsequently in the Italian resistance movement.

An upstanding man with deep democratic beliefs, he educated generations of students in the code of honour propagated by the Resistance in the 1940s: love of liberty, respect for human dignity, solidarity with the poor and the oppressed.

Among the last category is a valuable biography of Bertrando Spaventa, published at Rome in 1941 (his first work) and particularly appreciated by Benedetto Croce, who invited the author (then only twenty-three years old) to Naples so that he could meet him.

Paolo Alatri was strongly dedicated to journalism.

He wrote for l'Unità, Corriere della Sera and other important newspapers.

He was editor in chief of Ulisse journal and a collaborator in Rinascita and Studi Storici.

After the war he became a Communist (1943) and was elected to the Chamber of Deputies on the PCI list.

A strong supporter of the USSR, he was also President of the Associazione Italia-URSS (1961-1970) and later a member of its governing board.

He alternated his political activities with teaching history, first at the University of Palermo, then at the University of Messina and finally at the University of Perugia, where he was in charge of the Dipartimento di Scienze Storiche for a period in the 1980s.

He resigned from the board in 1980 as a result of the Moscow authorities' treatment of the nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov, saying "Non posso essere amico di chi si comporta come al tempo degli Zar" (I cannot be a friend of those who behave as in the time of the Tsar).

He died at Rome in 1995 from an incurable disease.

Paolo Alatri was especially interested in Modern and Contemporary European History, with particular interest in the Eighteenth century reformists, Italian unification (which he taught at the University of Palermo) and the rise and fall of Fascism.

His literary and historical studies on the life and works of Gabriele D'Annunzio are of fundamental importance, as are his philosophical studies of the leaders of the Enlightenment and of some contemporary Italian thinkers.