Description du projet
Liens entre police secrète et population
Les dictatures de long terme instaurées pendant l’entre-deux-guerres sont un phénomène largement associé à la politique européenne du XXe siècle. Le régime de Salazar au Portugal n’a pas fait exception. Il détient le record de la plus longue dictature d’Europe (1926-1974). Parmi les institutions du régime figurait la tristement célèbre police secrète PIDE. Le projet secretPOL, financé par l’UE, étudiera le rôle joué par la PIDE au Portugal et examinera la réaction de la société portugaise. Le projet remet en question les connaissances actuelles sur la relation entre la PIDE et les citoyens portugais. Il propose également une interprétation basée sur l’interactivité. Il émet l’hypothèse que la société portugaise, à l’exception des opposants, se serait adaptée aux opportunités de stabilité offertes par le régime.
Objectif
The Salazar regime was the longest-lasting dictatorship in Europe in the Twentieth Century. If the Military Dictatorship from which it emerged is taken into account, it lasted 48 years, from 1926 to 1974. Like the other dictatorships born in the inter-war years, it relied heavily on its secret police (PIDE) for stability. This research programme aims to reconceptualise the relation between the PIDE and Portuguese society in order to reach a more complete understanding of the regime’s exceptional durability. By drawing on developments in the international bibliography of totalitarianisms, of everyday life under a dictatorship, and of denunciatory practices, it challenges the established interpretative paradigm which sees the relation between the PIDE and society almost exclusively as one of top-down repression imposed upon a nation of passive victims. Its core argument is that the relation between the PIDE and Portuguese society was far more multi-facetted, dynamic and interactive than has been acknowledged until now. This research project posits as its main underlying thesis the notion that the Salazarist system was normalised by many Portuguese citizens as part of the structure of everyday life. Society adapted to the institutional framework imposed by the regime - including the secret police -, acting on the opportunities that opened up rather than remaining dependent or passive. If the role of society in the perpetuation of the Salazarist order is to be duly assessed, the framework of interaction between society and the secret police must be apprehended with recourse to a novel analytical prism (focusing on ordinary citizens instead of on the small minority of oppositionists who have monopolised the attention of historians so far), new research methodologies (oral history and opinion surveying) and original archival material (the letters of denunciation held at the PIDE Archives in Lisbon).
Champ scientifique
Programme(s)
Régime de financement
MSCA-IF-EF-CAR - CAR – Career Restart panelCoordinateur
1600 189 Lisboa
Portugal