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Political utopia or Potemkin village? Italian travellers to the Soviet Union in the early Cold War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 May 2016

Joanne Lee
Joanne Lee*
Affiliation:
School of Modern Languages and Cultures, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK
*
∗Email: Jo.Lee@warwick.ac.uk
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Abstract

Situated on the border between the capitalist West and Communist East, and with the largest Communist party in Western Europe, Italy found itself at the centre of global ideological struggles in the early Cold War years. A number of Italian writers and intellectuals who had joined the PCI (Partito Comunista Italiano) during the Resistance had hoped that the party would play a central role in the post-war reconstruction of Italy and were attracted to the Soviet Union as an example of Communism in action. This article centres on accounts of journeys to the USSR by Sibilla Aleramo, Renata Viganò and Italo Calvino. It will argue that although their writings portray a largely positive vision of the USSR, they should not be dismissed as naive, or worse, disingenuous travellers whose willingness to embrace Soviet-style Communism was based on a wholescale rejection of Western society and its values (see P. Hollander's 1998 [1981] work, Political Pilgrims: Western Intellectuals in Search of the Good Society). Rather, the article shows how their accounts of the USSR shed light on the writers' relationship with the PCI and argues that the views expressed in the travelogues emerge from the writers' personal experiences of war and resistance, a fervent desire to position themselves as anti-Fascist intellectuals, and their concerns regarding the direction that Italian politics was taking at a pivotal moment in the nation's history.

Situata tra l'occidente capitalista e l'oriente communista, l'Italia si trovò al centro di battaglie ideologiche nei primi anni della guerra fredda. Gli scrittori e intellettuali italiani, iscritti al Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI) durante la Resistenza, si auguravano che il partito avrebbe avuto un ruolo centrale nella ricostruzione dell'Italia ed erano attirati dall'Unione Sovietica come esempio di comunismo in azione. Quest'articolo si concentra sui racconti di viaggio nell'URSS di Sibilla Aleramo, Renata Viganò e Italo Calvino. Afferma che sebbene questi viaggiatori dipingano l'URSS in modo positivo, non dovrebbero essere semplicemente considerati ingenui, o in malafede, e che la loro inclinazione ad accogliere il comunismo sovietico non era fondata sul rifiuto dei valori occidentali (Hollander, 1998). Bensì, l'articolo dimostra che i racconti dell'URSS gettano luce sul rapporto fra gli scrittori e il PCI e sostiene che le opinioni espresse negli appunti di viaggio derivano dalle esperienze personali di guerra e resistenza, dal desiderio di affermarsi in qualità di intellettuali anti-fascisti, e dalle apprensioni per il futuro politico del Paese in un momento così cruciale nella storia della nazione.

Keywords

travel writingSoviet UnionItalian Communist PartyCalvinoViganòAleramo
Type
Articles
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , November 2015 , pp. 379 - 393
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 Association for the study of Modern Italy 

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