Dr Jorge Dagnino

IAS Fellow at Trevelyan College, October-December 2023

Contact Details

• Home Institution email: jorge.dagnino@uss.cl

Dr Jorge Dagnino is currently an Associate Professor of Modern European History at the Universidad San Sebastián, Chile. He completed my PhD in Modern European History at the University of Oxford in 2013.  His research examines the complex workings and impact of ideology, culture and repressive policies of Far Right and fascist movements and regimes, with a particular emphasis on Italy. 

Dr Dagnino’s current project, funded by a major Chilean government grant, is titled When Rome met Moscow: Fascist Encounters with the USSR, 1928-43. While numerous studies deal with the relationship between Nazism and Stalinism, very few have ventured into the realm of Fascist representations of the USSR and the larger cultural interactions between Italy and the USSR under Stalin’s rule during the years 1928 to 1943. This study will suggest that both movements and regimes were variants of totalitarian-revolutionary illiberal modernities. Furthermore, it also contends that while in some respects Fascism and Stalinism were antagonistic, the reception and representations offered by Fascists considerably affected their self-understanding and even Fascism’s trajectory. Additionally, representations of Bolshevism in Italy were not always devoid of a genuine sense of excitement and a grasp of the novel features of the USSR, as in the Five-Year Plans, Stalin’s Cultural Revolution and the drive to forge a New Soviet Person. Many Fascists were convinced that Stalinism was an all-encompassing and totalitarian departure that aimed at the radical transformation of the political, social, moral, cultural, religious and, private dimensions. 

In 2017, he published his monograph Faith and Fascism: Catholic Intellectuals in Italy, 1925-43 (Palgrave Macmillan) and in 2018 I edited the book The New Man in Radical Right Ideology and Practice, 1919-45 (Bloomsbury). He has published articles in journals such as Modern Intellectual History, Contemporary European History and the Journal of Modern Italian Studies. 

At Durham, he will collaborate with the ‘Abusing Antiquity’ project, led by Dr Helen Roche (History) and Dr Elisabeth Kirtsoglou (Anthropology).

Events

IAS Seminar - 16 October 2023 - 1.00 - 2.00pm. IAS Seminar Room, Cosin's Hall, Institute of Advanced Study
Fascist Encounters with the USSR and Stalinism, 1928-1936 
Registration is essential. Details here. 

This lecture has been cancelled. IAS public lecture - 8 November 2023 - 5.30 - 6.30pm, Sir James Knott Hall, Trevelyan College, Durham University
The Intellectuals of Italian Catholic Action and the Sacralisation of Politics during the 1930s
Further information here.