Overview

Based on extensive, largely unpublished material by and about Sartre from archives across Europe, this book explores Sartre’s lifelong relationship with Italy, its culture, society and, above all, its intellectual left. Starting with his dawning awareness of politics as foremost a moral responsibility during his first tourist trips to Naples in the 1930s and the poverty he encountered there, Italy, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Europe’s Cold War then examines the relationships Sartre forged with a number of Italian liberal, leftist and communist intellectuals after the war. Not only did they immediately draw him into debates over the ethical crisis that they held responsible for fascism, the war, and now, Europe’s Cold War. Several of them became lifelong friends of his, as well as collaborators in a number of efforts to address that moral crisis in Italy and, by the late 1950s, in Eastern Europe. Reconstructing the networks they established through cultural organizations they founded themselves, Nancy Jachec traces how Sartre and his ideas were brought into the Soviet Union, Poland and Czechoslovakia in pursuit of a democratic socialism. Using private correspondence, press reports, memoirs, embassy dispatches, government committee minutes, and surveillance and intelligence reports from Eastern and Western sources, this book reconstructs Sartre’s activities and the impact they had in a way that he did not foresee. While his many discussions with his Italian peers on the theme of political morality led him to support the New Left in spite of its organizational problems, in Poland and Czechoslovakia his work was taken in a very different direction, where intellectuals would go on to assume real political responsibility.

Full Product Details

Author:   Nancy Jachec (Independent Scholar, UK)
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Imprint:   Bloomsbury Academic
Dimensions:   Width: 15.40cm , Height: 2.40cm , Length: 23.60cm
Weight:   0.620kg
ISBN:  

9781350433816

ISBN 10:   1350433810
Pages:   312
Publication Date:   30 October 2025
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

List of Illustrations Introduction: Sartre in Italy, Land of Dialogue 1. The Naples Writings, 1936-1938: Toward a Constructive Literature 2. ‘The relation between us…can only be collaboration’: Sartre’s return to Italy, 1946 3. ‘A Carnets for the Cold War’” Queen Albemarle or the Last Tourist, 1951-1952 4. ‘If you want peace, prepare for peace’: The WPC, and Détente with Eastern Europe, 1952-1954 5. The SEC’s East-West Dialogue, 1956 and the Polish Origin of ‘Marxism and Existentialism’ 6. Keeping the Door Open: The Moscow Peace Conference, the Leningrad Roundtable and Sartre’s Trip to Czechoslovakia, 1962-1964 7. Subjectivity and Society: The Gramsci Institute Lectures, 1961 and 1964 8. Between Gramsci and Gobetti: Sartre’s Libertarian Socialism, 1965-1973 9. Beyond Sartre: from De-Stalinisation to Dissent in Poland and Czechoslovakia, 1960-1980 Conclusion: Hope Now Bibliography Index

Reviews

Drawing on a trove of archival materials, memoirs, and interviews in a half-dozen languages, this strikingly original study demonstrates how Jean-Paul Sartre’s relations with Italian intellectuals, and, through them, his engagement with reform communists and dissidents in Eastern Europe helped contribute to the demise of Soviet rule and the end of the Cold War * Matthew Evangelista, President White Professor of History and Political Science Emiritus, Cornell University, USA *

Author Information

Nancy Jachec previously held a Leverhulme Fellowship and is the author of Europe’s Intellectuals and the Cold War (2015).

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