Abstract

'The great illusion'. The use of emotions to reconsider the 'two red years' (1919-20) in Italy ' offers an alternative interpretative approach for the study of the Biennio Rosso and the emergence of Fascism. Instead of focusing on the long lasting interpretation of Fascism as a reaction to the 'fear' of an impeding social revolution, the chapter turns its attention to the hopes and the illusions that nurtured the labor movement in those years and the devastating impact that the collapse of those hopes had on the labor movement and its capacity to oppose the emergence of Fascism.