In vino veritas? Alcohol and its spaces in Fascist Italy

Italian fascism had a somewhat ambivalent relationship with alcohol. On the one hand, in line with the projected image of Mussolini as a model of health and virile masculinity, it was asserted that he 'never [drank] wine'. Repeated emphasis was made to Mussolini's abstemiousness, austere diet and almost ascetic lifestyle. Drinking alcohol was seen as a barrier to becoming an ideal fascist man and was feared as a potentially disruptive activity. On the other hand, wine production was a key facet of regional economies in Italy and was promoted as such by the fascist regime, and alcohol and the places in which it was consumed publicly - bars, osterie, trattorie and so on - crop up repeatedly in source material as important features and spaces of fascist life. Crucially, places associated with alcohol were often sites of confrontation between fascism and anti-fascism. Bars were places where people met to discuss politics; the mix of politics and alcohol was often convivial but could also spark conflict. Osterie and bars, for example, frequently provided the location for clashes - whether violent or verbal - between supporters and opponents of fascism. Drinking songs carried political messages.

Both this wealth of anecdotal evidence on Italy and scholarly work on everyday life in other dictatorial regimes point to the study of alcohol and its associated spaces as a fruitful and important avenue for understanding the negotiation of life under dictatorship. Despite this, we do not yet have a systematic account of the relationship between fascism and alcohol in Italy. This research project aims to fill this gap and, in so doing, to answer a series of questions: What was the fascist regime's attitude towards the consumption of alcohol? How can we explain the seeming dissonance between the insistence on abstemiousness and ascetic discipline in the new fascist man and the celebration of wine production as an important tenet of Italian economic and social life? In what ways could alcohol function as a mediating agent in the relationship between individual Italians and the regime? To what extent did it promote political conflict and to what extent did it act - as Sheila Fitzpatrick suggests was the case in the Stalinist USSR - as a lubricant to maintaining friendships which might help call in favours or 'solve a problem' with the regime?

This project is innovative in two important respects. In the first place, it provides the first systematic examination of the role of alcohol in the fascist regime and in life under fascism. In the second place, given that it approaches this topic both from the top-down (regime policies and representations) and bottom-up (the experience of individuals' encounters with fascism in bars and under the influence of alcohol), it makes connections with and contributes to the growing body of scholarship that examines how far fascist rhetoric and ideology was mirrored by the reality of lived fascism and which seeks to understand fascism in terms of how it was experienced.

The findings of this research project should benefit several groups outside the academic sector. These include organizations and groups within the museum, private (commercial), and education sectors and the wider public in general.

Firstly, as part of this project I propose to collaborate with the documentation and cultural centre, the Biblioteca Internazionale "La Vigna" in Vicenza, Italy. The "La Vigna" library and centre for rural culture and civilization hold an extensive collection of historical documents relating primarily to viticulture and enology but also to wider aspects of agriculture, gastronomy and rural life. Whilst the library and centre have done much to promote their collection locally and nationally since they were founded in 1981, their important collection remains relatively unknown and certainly underused outside Italy. The collaboration would benefit both parties, but could have a sizable impact on the "La Vigna" centre in terms of improving their profile internationally and disseminating knowledge of their collections to a wide international audience. I will make use of their collections for my research and propose to hold a workshop jointly with them and, ideally, contemporaneously to stage an exhibition of documents in their collection relating to the topic of wine production and consumption between the wars.

Secondly, this collaboration with the "La Vigna" centre will provide opportunities for the findings of the research to have an impact upon representatives from wine and other agricultural producers in the private sector in Italy. The "La Vigna" library is linked to a circle of 'friends' largely made up of local wine producers and other agriculturalists. These organisations and individuals would be invited to participate in the jointly-held workshop and visit the exhibition. They are also recipients of the centre's newsletter. The findings of this research project could benefit them in that it will increase knowledge and understanding of the history of their industry and product.

Thirdly, the project will have an impact on the (non tertiary) education sector, especially at secondary level. The period of fascist rule in Italy is a component of many current GCSE, A Level and Highers syllabuses. This research project provides an accessible topic (alcohol in fascist life), which is both discreet and contains within it several broader themes and points of interpretation e.g. the idealized image of the Duce and of the 'new fascist man', the production of fascist propaganda through 'wine trains' and the 'Festival of the Grape' etc., and the potential gap between the intentions of fascist policy and ideology and the realities of how fascism was actually lived. It is therefore a very useful topic to present to secondary level students as evidence of the latest research questions and lines of interpretation in the study of the history of fascism. This will be done via the creation of 2 podcasts, to be made freely available to schools, with interpretative material, via the project website.

Finally, the findings of the research project will attract the wider public with an interest in history. The subject matter - the place of alcohol and especially the production and consumption of wine in fascist Italy - is likely to hold popular appeal. It is a discreet and accessible topic, and 'wine' is already widely associated with Italy in popular imagination. This makes this project an ideal vehicle for presenting current ways of thinking about fascism to the general, interested public. So often, when the history of fascism is presented in a popular format (and, indeed, in secondary education) it is still the figure of Mussolini and the workings of the fascist hierarchy that are foremost. This project offers the opportunity to present the history of fascist Italy from a different angle, from the perspective of its cultural and social history and of how it was experienced and lived day-by-day.