This article aims to analyze the autobiographical practice within the Italian Communist Party (Pci) after the Second World War. Those who attended the political cadres’ school between 1945 and 1956 were required to write about their lives, and to submit these writings to the scrutiny of the Party. To take into consideration this practice allows to reflect on the pedagogical dimension within the Pci and on the relations between militants and Party itself, during the transition phase from a restricted organization of «professional revolutionaries» to the «partito nuovo» supported by Palmiro Togliatti. Moreover, the diversity of autobiographical approaches to the self-narration refers to the plurality of trajectories to the communist militancy, allowing to criticize excessively mechanicanistic causal paradigms.
The article focuses on the case study of Turin, an industrial metropolis, because of its political and social specificities and its relevance in the history of the Communist Party in Italy.
