Renato Zangheri

Renato Zangheri (8 April 1925 – 6 August 2015) was an Italian politician, who was Mayor of Bologna from 1970 to 1983 and Member of the Chamber of Deputies from 1893 to 1992.

Zangheri was born in Rimini on 8 April 1925.

He attended the city's classical lyceum, and was a tennis partner of Clara Petacci, mistress of Benito Mussolini, during her stays at the Grand Hotel Rimini.

Zangheri joined the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in 1944.

In 1946, he codirected Città Nuova, a weekly newspaper dedicated to discussing the city's post-war reconstruction.

Sitting on boards of the local party, Zangheri was concerned by its intake of intellectual socialists unable to respond to the acute socio-economic crises of the time.

Zangheri studied with the Faculty of Literature and Philosophy at the University of Bologna, graduating with a thesis on the problems and aspects of Italian socialism.

Among his teachers were, who wrote that Zangheri had "the religious sense of culture" in a 1948 letter.

Emilio Sereni, the PCI's cultural director, had requested that Zangheri be transferred to Rome after his university studies to work in the party's cultural office, but the transfer was continually postponed and never realised.

Instead, Zangheri assisted the historian, who had invited Zangheri to the University of Perugia to assist his course in economic history.

Zangheri joined the editorial committee of Movimento operaio, a Marxist historiographic journal founded in 1949, and also directed the magazines Emilia and Stuidi Storici; the latter was run by the.

Gramsci was elected for the first time to the city council of Bologna in 1956.

Following the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Zangheri cosigned an appeal from historians endorsing Giuseppe Di Vittorio's support for the striking workers, against the beliefs of the PCI's leadership.

Zangheri obtained a teaching qualification that elevated him to the university professorship in 1960.

From 1960 to 1964, Zangheri was responsible for the city's cultural institutions, only recently transferred from the competence of the city's superintendence.

The policy allowed him to navigate the tension between the traditional communists in the PCI's leadership and the progressive communists from the new students' movements of the 1960.

Under his leadership, Bologna opened Italy's first gay community centre, the Cassero, against the wish of the central party.

While Zangheri bemoaned how Bologna was a net fiscal contributor and deprived of its full funding by the central government, the council was recognised for its administrative efficiency.

Zangheri was vilified by many citizens, especially young people, with a popular protest chant "Zangherì, Zangherà".

Approaching Bene after his speech, Bene told Zangheri: "Get out of my sight, or I will be forced to kick your arse off the tower."

Reflecting on his time in office thirty years later, Zangheri said that the PCI made mistakes and failed to "understand much about those young people", and he chose "excessive rigidity" because he "couldn't choose otherwise".

In 1962, he won a competition for the professorship of economic history at the University of Trieste, moving to Bologna in 1965 as professor of history of economic doctrine.

On 29 July 1970, Zangheri was elected mayor of Bologna, and would be reelected in 1975 and 1980.

Zangheri guided the city throughout the difficult Years of Lead.

In January 1971, Zangheri organised a series of events and meetings celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Italian Communist Party.

The city faced the Italicus Express bombing by a fascist group (4 August 1974), the social unrest that followed the carabinieri's murder of activist Francesco Lorusso (11 March 1977), the crash of Itavia Flight 870 (27 June 1980), and the massacre at Bologna Centrale railway station (2 August 1980).

Amid this polarised political climate, Zangheri advocated compromising with the burgeoning youth movement, particularly through civil society.

He organised cultural and musical events, bringing The Clash to perform in Bologna, and Carmelo Bene to speak at the Two Towers.

He promoted political participation, especially among young people.

In 1979, he was appointed a member of the national party's leadership.

Zangheri resigned as mayor of Bologna on 24 April 1983, when the PCI nominated him as candidate for the Chamber of Deputies.

He was considered a possible successor to Enrico Berlinguer for the PCI's leadership in 1984, but lost to Alessandro Natta.

He was rector at the University of San Marino from 1991 to 1994.

Among Zangheri's most popular publications is a history of Italian socialism published by Einaudi, the first volume of which was published in 1993.

Zangheri was for a time president of the Istituto Gramsci.

In 1998, the Ministry of Cultural Heritage appointed Zangheri as president of the scientific commission for a national edition of Gramsci's works; he resigned in 2000.

Zangheri's research concerned the distribution of land ownership in 19th and 19th centuries, land registers as historical sources, the thought of the Physiocrats, income distribution during pre-capitalist development, and the history of socialism.

His writings on socialism included studies on Antonio Gramsci and Andrea Còsta.

Zangheri lectured at the universities of Reading, Barcelona, Columbia, New York, Yale, and Harvard.

After his political career, Zangheri returned to university teaching.