This book offers a fresh perspective on right-wing and left-wing revolutions, as well as political uprisings against the liberal order in interwar Europe.
This book offers a fresh perspective on right-wing and left-wing revolutions, as well as political uprisings against the liberal order in interwar Europe, focusing on how they were politically used in the public sphere and exploring how these events were narrated and visually represented to justify new authoritarian systems and generate consensus around them.
Bringing together both senior academics and early-career scholars, the volume examines ten emblematic case studies combining original research on overlooked aspects of well-known events with analyses of lesser-studied, or even ‘peripheral’ cases. To provide a comprehensive understanding, the contributors approach the subject from multiple angles, spanning political and cultural history, the history of ideology and emotions, and gender history.
Moreover, with a transnational perspective, the book examines how anti-liberal and anti-democratic ideas crossed borders, shaping movements, parties, and regimes by influencing their symbolic practices and aesthetics—elements that were borrowed, adapted, and reinterpreted to create a shared political language across Europe and beyond.
Part I
1 A fictitious revolution: the legionary occupation of Rijeka/Fiume
(1919-1921)
Federico Carlo Simonelli
2 Legitimacy and nationalisation of the masses during the regime of Miguel
Primo de Rivera (1923-1930)
César Rina Simón and Maximiliano Fuentes Codera
3 The tenth anniversary of the March on Rome abroad. Commemorating the
Decennale of the Fascist Revolution beyond Italys borders
Giorgia Priorelli
4 Revolutionary narratives and Volksgemeinschaft in national socialist
celebrations
Nadine Rossol
5 Memory keepers and memory makers: commemorative practices of the National
Revolution in the early Estado Novo
Annarita Gori
Part II
6 Symbols and myths of an ever-evolving Soviet world and their global impact
(1917-1939)
Josep Puigsech Farràs
7 Red Finland: revolutionary symbols as emotional figures in 1918
Tuomas Tepora
8 Practices of expropriation and emotion in the Hungarian Soviet Republic,
19191920
Emily Gioielli
9 Utopian visions and violent realities: German female revolutionaries and
the legacy of 1918-1919
Corinne Painter
10 Representing the democratic revolution during the Second Spanish Republic
(1931-1936)
Lara Campos Pérez
Giorgia Priorelli is a postdoctoral researcher at Universitat de Girona, Spain. Her research interests include nationalism, Italian and Spanish fascisms, neofascism, refugees and forced displacement in the XX century. Publications include Italian Fascism and Spanish Falangism in comparison. Constructing the nation (2020) and Combining political history and political science. Towards a new understanding of the political (2022).
Annarita Gori is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon. Her research focuses on cultural diplomacy, visual propaganda, and intellectual networks during Portugals Estado Novo regime. Publications include: Showing Salazarism. A Cultural History of Early Estado Novo Trought Political Exhibitions (2025) and Intellectuals in the Latin space during the era of Fascism (2020).
Maximiliano Fuentes Codera is an Associate Professor at Universitat de Girona, Spain. He is an expert in the cultural, intellectual and transnational history of modern Europe and Latin America, with a focus on history of nationalism and the First World War. His latest book is The Flu Pandemic of 1918-1919: A Political and Cultural Approach from a COVID World (2023).
