Domestic political culture and US-Italian relations in the early Cold War: a new perspective of analysis

This thesis focuses on US-Italian relations and cultural diplomacy in the early Cold War. Particular attention is devoted to the Congress for Cultural Freedom, an organization of left-wing anti-Communist intellectuals established in 1950 and financed by the CIA. Instead of looking at this organization from a transnational perspective, this work has as the starting point the local dimension of it. In particular, the Italian branch of the CCF: Associazione Italiana per la Libertà della Cultura and the journal Tempo Presente. Differently from other European contexts, the Italian cultural experiment failed in promoting a transnational anti-Communist culture due to domestic factors such as: the political establishment, non-governmental groups with a socialising function and the political culture of the country. This is a contribution taking further the investigation of the Cold War by emphasizing the importance of going “local” for a thorough understanding of transnational relations