Francesco Leoncini

Graduated with honours in Political Science from the University of Padua and started his research activity under the guidance of Leo Valiani. Since 1970 he has worked at the Faculty of  Humanities of the University of Venice, where he now is Professor of Slavic History and History of Central Europe and runs the Masaryk Seminar.

This brings together students, new graduates and researchers whose common interest is to explore in depth the themes of the courses and promote study visits abroad. Meetings have taken place between members of academies and university lecturers from the universities of Prague, Ljubljana, Moscow, Bucharest, Bratislava, Krakow, Tirana, Leopolis, Cernivtsi, Budapest, Vilnius, Tuzla and Sarajevo. Special relationships have been established with the Italian Centre of the Faculty of Journalism of Lomonosov Moscow State University and with the Valahia University of Târgoviste (Romania).

Francesco Leoncini has conducted research in Germany, Austria, former Czechoslovakia and Hungary and has lectured in various Italian and foreign universities.

He is a member of the Italian Association of Slavists, the Società di Studi Trentini di Scienze Storiche, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Osteuropakunde (DGO, Berlin), and is on the international editorial board of the following reviews: : Historický Casopis (Slovak Academy of Sciences), Poligrafi (Primorska University,  Koper, Slovenia), Crisia (Muzeul Tarii Crisurilor, Oradea, Romania.), Valahian Journal of Historical Studies (“Valahia” University of Târgoviste, Romania) He is on the board of the Société Européenne de Culture (SEC) of Venice, and was a founder member of the Italian Association for the Study of the History of East and Central Europe (AISSECO), and,  due to his international relationships, he is an advisory correspondent with the Carlo Collodi National Foundation. Since December 2009 he has been the President of the First World War Historical Documentation Centre, at S. Polo di Piave, Treviso, Italy.

In the 1970s he worked with the CESES of Renato Mieli, the most accomplished institute in Italy for research into East European countries, and with its partner review L’Est (Milan).

He was a scholar of the Collegium Carolinum. Forschungsstelle für die böhmischen Länder (Munich) and on the editorial board of the review L'Europa ritrovata, Rome.

His publications include:

I Sudeti e l'autodeterminazione[The Sudeten Germans and Self determination] 1918 - 1919 (Aspetti internazionali)[The International Standpoint], Ceseo - Liviana, Padua 1973, reviewed by A.J. P. Taylor in “The English Historical Review” (1975) .

La questione del Sudeti[The Sudeten German Question] (1918 - 1938), Liviana, Padua 1976; reprint by Libreria Editrice Cafoscarina, Venice 2005, finalist in the Acqui  - Storia Prize 1976.

Il problema delle minoranze tedesche tra le due guerre[The Problem of the German Minorities between the Two World Wars] , il Mulino, Bologna 1980 (extract from the Annali of the Istituto italo- germanico, Trento, n. IV).

Die Sudetenfrage in der europäischen Politik. Von den Anfängen bis 1938 [The Sudeten German Problem in European Politics. From the Origins to 1938] , Hobbing, Essen 1988.

L'opposizione all'Est [The Opposition in the East]1956-1981, still today the only collection in Italian of sources and documents on alternative popular democratic movements, and Che cosa fu la "Primavera di Praga"?[What was the “Prague Spring”?] Idee e progetti di una riforma politica e sociale[Ideas and Programmes for Political and Social Reform] , five essays by leading figures of that time; both volumes published by Lacaita, Manduria - Bari - Rome, 1989, and reprinted by Libreria Editrice Cafoscarina, Venice in 2007.

L'Europa centrale. Conflittualità e progetto. Passato e presente tra Praga, Budapest e Varsavia [Central Europe.  Conflicts and Proposals. Past and Present in Prague, Budapest and Warsaw]    Cafoscarina, Venice 2003.
 This constitutes the coming together of over thirty years’ research and new interests aimed at pointing out common elements and processes of aggregation in the course of the history of the peoples situated between Germany and Russia, between the Baltic and Aegean.

Alexander Dubcek e Jan Palach. Protagonisti della storia europea[A.D. and J.P.  Leading figures in European History]  , Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli (Cz), 2009.  A collection that presents a hugely innovative contribution to the Prague Spring for its structure and richness of documentation, including iconographic.

From Czech he has translated several of Jan Hus’ letters from the prison in Constance and Tomáš G.  Masaryk’s programme The New Europe. The Slav  Standpoint [La Nuova Europa. Il punto di vista slavo]. Edizioni Studio Tesi, Pordenone - Padua 1997 (now Edizioni Mediterranee, Rome),  editing the first critical edition.  

 He is active on the international scene in the re-evaluation of the latter as a major democratic leader of east and central Europe. For this he was proclaimed, in March 2003, an honorary member of the Masarykova Spolecnost [the Masaryk Society] of Prague.

In October 2004 the Czech Foreign Ministry awarded him the medal of merit for the Czech Republic’s relationship with Italy. In the same year he was named Reviewer by the Czech Republic’s Academy of Sciences for the Masaryk Institute (Masarykuv Ústav).

In 1998, along with Carla Tonini at the University of Padua, he organized the only conference in Italy to mark the 30th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of  Czechoslovakia, from which emerged a volume of 14 essays by Italian and foreign authors, published by the Edizioni Cultura della Pace under the title Primavera di Praga e dintorni. Alle origini dell'89 [Prague Spring and Neighbourhood. On the Origins of 1989] (S. Domenico di Fiesole, 2000), which was particularly well-received in France where it was the object of a seminar held at the Pierre Renouvin Institute of the Sorbonne.

He was a historical advisor for the feature film Le radici del futuro. Alexander Dubcek. 70 anni di storia nella vita di un uomo[The Sources of the Future. A.D. 70 Years in a Man’s Life]  (1994), directed by Alessandro Giupponi, presented to the Camera dei Deputati (House of Commons) and broadcast on the RAI 2 channel in 1998.

In April 2002 he was invited by President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi to the gala evening in honour of Václav Havel during the Czech President’s visit to Italy. 

In July 2004 he was interviewed by the leading Czech daily newspaper Lidové Noviny about his activity as scholar, Czech-German relations and the links between the ideas shared by Giuseppe Mazzini and T.G. Masaryk as precursors of the European Union.

He has participated in several national and local radio programmes and has been interviewed on Hungarian and Albanian television.

His works have been translated into German, Hungarian, Slovak, Czech, English, French, Russian and Albanian.

Between 1969 and 1975 he was among the founders and coordinators of the interdisciplinary group operating within the Giorgio Cini Foundation in Venice and the  Interdisciplinary Bibliographic Centre of the Biblioteca Marciana. Many scientists praised these initiatives, which aimed at overcoming academic specialism, as being among the most original and stimulating of their kind.

They involved young scholars and protagonists of Italian and European culture.  The content of this activity was published in the volume, edited with the philosopher Giuseppe Goisis, Il metodo interdisciplinare nella scuola, nel lavoro, nella politica [The Interdisciplinary Method in School, Work and Politics] (Liviana, Padua 1978).

Since 1977 he has promoted, at Venice, meetings with intellectuals and politicians from his area of research (Among whom: Bohdan Cywinski, François Fejtö, Koloman Gajan, András Hegedüs, Andrej Sinjavskij, Marko Šunjic, Miklós Vásárhelyi and Marek Waldenberg).