Between Political and Moral Education and the “Seduction” of Readers

Football in the Communist Magazine «Pioniere» (1950 ̶ 1962)

Abstract

Between 1950 and 1962, «Pioniere» was published, the weekly magazine of the Italian Pioneer Association, an organisation affiliated with the Italian Communist Party. Sport, and football in particular, featured heavily in the pages of the magazine. «Pioniere» used it as a means of moral and political education for its very young readers, extolling values such as willpower, spirit of sacrifice, seriousness and loyalty, and celebrating the superiority of the system embodied by the Soviet Union. However, from 1957 onwards, «Pioniere» increasingly adopted a more “seductive” attitude towards its readers, striving to take their desires and preferences into account and to be as attuned to them as possible, with the aim of continuing to sell a sufficiently large number of copies and thus avoiding closure.