A historian who clarified the Resistance's moral choices and the war's layered character
In A Civil War, he analysed the Resistance as a struggle that was at once patriotic, civil, and a class war.
Claudio Pavone was an Italian historian and archivist whose work examined fascism, the Resistance, and the continuities of state institutions. His own participation in the Resistance during the Second World War shaped both his historical questions and his civic outlook. His major study A Civil War analysed the struggle of 1943–45 as an overlapping patriotic war, civil war among Italians, and class war, placing political choice and moral tension at the centre of scholarly debate. He also helped organize the Central State Archive and direct the General Guide to the Italian State Archives.
Career Timeline
- 1943Graduated in law at the University of Rome and joined the Resistance
- 1943–1944Worked with the PSIUP, was arrested and imprisoned
- 1949Joined the State Archives administration
- 1975–1991Professor of contemporary history at the University of Pisa
- 1991Published A Civil War
- 1994–1995Vice-president of the National Institute for the History of the Liberation Movement in Italy
- 1995–1999President of the Italian Society for the Study of Contemporary History
- 1993–2016Directed the journal Parolechiave