Dentro e fuori il Collegio “Mussolini”: l’elaborazione degli antifascismi tra «mito» corporativo e «scelta» (1941-1945)

The study of antifascisms and the biographical trajectories connected to them remains an open historiographical question, particularly when examined at the intersection of individual agency and institutional context. Building on this premise, the article investigates the final years of the Collegio giuridico Mussolini in Pisa, an institution conceived as an elite training ground for the future Fascist ruling class and, at the same time, a setting in which the theorization of corporatism faces increasingly pronounced critical tensions by the late 1930s. Adopting a prosopographical approach, the study seeks to reconstruct the transition from corporatism to antifascism not as a sudden rupture, but as a complex process of intellectual and political re-evaluation, shaped by generational dynamics, networks of relationships, and the experience of war. To this end, it takes as a paradigmatic example the case of Carlo Smuraglia: as a member of the last generation of students at the Collegio, his biographical trajectory allows for a deeper understanding of the link between the demystification of corporatism, the development of ethical antifascism, and the construction of Italian Republic.