Born into a middle class Jewish family, Paolo Alatri had his secondary education at the Torquato Tasso in Rome, where his classmates included Bruno Zevi and Mario Alicata.

An upstanding man with deep democratic beliefs, he educated generations of students in the code of honour propagated by the Resistance in the 1940s: love of liberty, respect for human dignity, solidarity with the poor and the oppressed.

A strong supporter of the USSR, he was also President of the Associazione Italia-URSS (1961-1970) and later a member of its governing board.

He resigned from the board in 1980 as a result of the Moscow authorities' treatment of the nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov, saying "Non posso essere amico di chi si comporta come al tempo degli Zar" (I cannot be a friend of those who behave as in the time of the Tsar).

[4] Among the last category is a valuable biography of Bertrando Spaventa, published at Rome in 1941[5] (his first work) and particularly appreciated by Benedetto Croce, who invited the author (then only twenty-three years old) to Naples so that he could meet him.