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The history of the left in the 20th century is an obvious, but also a difficult subject for the historian, who must operate not only with an impartial (if possible) study and analysis of documents, sources in the broadest sense, but also conduct a dialogue with his own memory and life experience. The “short”, according to E. Hobsbawm, the 20th century was a time of struggle for a “left alternative” but ended not only with the narrowing of the left projects themselves, but also with a crisis of utopias, without which the look inevitably turns to the past, giving rise to what Enzo Traverso called “The melancholy of the left”. Although outwardly it seemed that the leftist alternative was defeated in the twentieth century, but, as R. Koselleck noted, the winners write history only in the short term, while in the long term the historical victory remains with the defeated. The history of the left in the 20th century is a huge variety of ideas, historical experience, victories, and more often defeats. The historian is faced not only with new objects of research, new unexplored pages of the history of society, but also with a new epistemological understanding of the particular and general plots of this topic of the history of the left. Without the history of the left in all its diversity, it is impossible to imagine history as an integral process. The 20th century is the time of leftist utopias and leftist practices.
In this issue, the authors are united by an interest in this twentieth century feature, in the manifestations of leftist thought and practice based on different cultures and in the sphere of different institutions and social structures. The works presented here are an invitation to the dialogue of the widest circle of historians-specialists and the public interested in a new view of the “short” 20th century, which still dominates our daily life in the first decades of the 21st century. In addition, works devoted to national themes of the history of the left will undoubtedly become a serious contribution to the study of the civil history of these countries.