Italy's Great Power Strategies in Central-Eastern Europe Between the World Wars: Cultural Institutions and Political Propaganda

This article addresses the issue of Italian penetration in Central-Eastern Europe in the interwar period, paying particular attention to the Czechoslovakian case and dwelling above all on some tools used by Italy to assert its influence among the heir countries of the Habsburg Empire. Among these tools, the article aims to highlight the importance of culture and propaganda, which, alongside politics and economics, allowed Italy to compete with the other great powers for hegemony in Central-Eastern Europe. The strategy of the other powers will be taken into consideration as well, in order to highlight, also in a comparative key, the role that cultural and propaganda institutions played in the policies of great power in the period considered. The complex of Italian cultural activities and institutions oriented towards the study of Central and Eastern Europe, established during the First World War, continued to operate in the post-war period at the time of the last liberal governments and was then strengthened by the fascist regime. Fascism made full use of the potential offered by cultural diplomacy to strengthen its positions in Central and Eastern Europe. Mussolini’s unrealistic great power ambitions, however, rendered useless the network of cultural institutions responsible for the study of Eastern Europe, which collapsed with the fall of his regime.