Zarstvo and Communism: Italian Diplomacy in Russia in the Age of Soviet Communism 1527508994, 9781527508996

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Zarstvo and Communism

Zarstvo and Communism: Italian Diplomacy in Russia in the Age of Soviet Communism By

Francesco Randazzo

Zarstvo and Communism: Italian Diplomacy in Russia in the Age of Soviet Communism By Francesco Randazzo This book first published 2018 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2018 by Francesco Randazzo All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-5275-0899-4 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-0899-6

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Emilio Cassese Chapter One ................................................................................................. 5 Italian Diplomacy and Russia in the Late Nineteenth Century Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 29 Italian Diplomacy between Russia and the Central Empires during the First World War Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 41 Italy, the Revolution, and Civil War in Russia Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 75 From the Bolshevik Revolution to the United Soviet Socialist Republic Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 91 The Russian Civil War, the Polish Question, and Peace Talks in Italian Military Documents from 1917 to 1921 Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 109 Ten Years of Conflictual Politics between Fascist Italy and Soviet Russia (1922–33) Documentary Appendix ........................................................................... 139 Bibliography ............................................................................................ 153 Index of Names........................................................................................ 161

INTRODUCTION

The centenary of the Russian Revolution in Italy has stimulated a moment of great critical reflection on the diplomatic relations between the Russian Empire and the Kingdom of Italy along with a historical review of the event from which an epoch-making phenomenon—Soviet communism— was generated. In this context, this long essay by Francesco Randazzo, Zarstvo and Communism: Italian Diplomacy in Russia in the Age of Soviet Communism, undoubtedly represents a satisfactory point of arrival. It is a summary report of Italian and partly foreign archival sources that takes note of recent historiographic contributions on the subject and does not renounce significant documentary acquisitions and further elements of knowledge. The history of relations between post-unification Italy and Tsarist Russia has been based for a long time on the exhaustive studies dedicated to the theme by Giorgio Petracchi, a well-known specialist in Italian diplomatic relations with Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union. Over the years, the historiographical debate has been further enriched by research on the various aspects of the revolution, focusing on the political, military, and social context, thus helping its greater contextualization. It is no coincidence that contemporary historiography has repeatedly underlined the importance of linking the 1917 revolution to the 1905 revolution, the first true bourgeois revolution in its history. The economic and military defeat of Tsarist Russia against Japan shook the Empire, generating a series of nationalist protests and demonstrations, giving rise, on the initiative of the Social Democrats, to the “Soviets,” the revolutionary organisms directly expressed by the workers. Relying on these historiographical bases and the amount of research carried out in recent years, several scholars, including Francesco Randazzo, have ventured into numerous studies on Italian-Russian diplomatic history starting in 1905 by leveraging the large documentation left by Giulio Melegari, plenipotentiary minister of the Kingdom of Italy in Saint Petersburg between 1905 and 1912. The October Manifesto, issued by the tsar, seemed to be an imperial turnaround through the new constitutional conquests, so much so that Melegari put many hopes in the Russian reform movement. The idyll was not followed, with Nicholas II’s choice to dissolve the first Duma, dominated by the Cadet party, in 1906 showing the fragility of the tsarist government in the eyes of the Italian diplomat.

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When even the second Duma was dissolved, the tsar and minister P. Stolypin decided to change the electoral system by introducing martial law. Randazzo's essay then retraces the main stages of the events before and after the Bolshevik revolution, as well as the evolution of diplomatic relations between the Kingdom of Italy and the tsarist empire. The Racconigi Agreement, for example, was the Russian and Italian response to the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina to the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1908. With this agreement, Italy received the green light from Russia, which it lacked at the moment of the occupation of Libya, generating two Balkan wars which further destabilized the geopolitical area, and from which the First World War took inspiration. There is no doubt that the Racconigi Agreement came about during the crisis of the Belle Époque, slipping between the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of the Balkan States, the Italian military campaign in the Aegean, and the possibility of reaching the Straits, proceeding towards the world explosion of 1914. After Racconigi and the parenthesis of San Giuliano as Foreign Minister and the appointment of Sidney Sonnino as his successor, Italian-Russian relations began to creak, so much so that after the outbreak of the First World War, despite the Italian neutrality called into question with the London Pact of April 26, 1915, Russia represented an interlocutor holding off a disappointing ally. The crisis of the Tsarist empire and its subsequent collapse under the blows of the February Revolution caught several diplomats of the time unawares, such as ambassador Andrea Carlotti di Riparbella, who completely underestimated the role of the masses as well as the strength of the Soviets. In the following weeks, as Randazzo points out, fragmentary news items followed one another, out of fear that the revolution could bring distrust to Russia's holding in the conflict. The contemporary defeat of Caporetto pushed the Italian government, terrified of a possible social crisis, to strengthen the censorship of war and create strong anti-revolutionary propaganda. Meanwhile, Carlotti was recalled on October 25, 1917 (November 7) by virtue of his numerous erroneous predictions, and for the returning Tomasi della Torretta things did not go any better when he was forced to move from Saint Petersburg up to Archangel'sk, while the Bolshevik government moved to Moscow. The intervention policy of the Entente led to the departure of all the foreign and military diplomatic personnel still present in the territory controlled by the Soviets and the only direct news on Russia came from the areas where the Italian military missions were located, in Siberia, the Caucasus, and North Russia. The missions flanked the counter-revolutionary governments of the whites against the reds, and the Italians participated militarily in the operations of control and defence

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of the territories under the counter-revolutionary government of Admiral Kolþak in southern Siberia. In fact, it is crucial to understand how the whites were about to prevail over the Red Army of Trotsky, pushing until the conquest of Moscow through the Urals and acting in cooperation with the other “white” armies, first of all the voluntary army of General Denikin who, from the region to the north of the Caucasus, was threatening both the Volga and Ukraine. That decisive moment, in which the fate of the Russian civil war was in the balance and which would have been enough for the Bolsheviks to receive an irreparable blow, took shape in the spring of 1919, particularly in the month of April. Until then, the army troops of Kolþak had made a large advance on three fronts: to the north, under the command of General Gajda, in the direction of Archangel'sk, starting from Perm, conquered on Christmas Eve of 1918; in the centre, under the command of General M. V. Chanžin, towards Ufa, which fell in March; and to the south, under the command of General A. Dutov, in the direction of Samara, Kazan, and the Volga River. The historic sliding doors, however, did not occur and passed the Urals, while the Reds took Celjabinsk on July 25, 1918 and reached the Tobol River where, after a pause of several months, they resumed the offensive and swept the last defences, conquering Omsk, the capital of the Siberian government, with the white army in full dissolution. Emilio Cassese

CHAPTER ONE ITALIAN DIPLOMACY AND RUSSIA IN THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY

In the nineteenth century, relations between the European and Asian worlds played an important role in the international relationship studies of frequent European protagonists present in geographic areas, which were affected by deep and unexpected social and political changes. According to Pierre Milza; aucun pays, pas même les vieux Empires, chinois ou ottoman, ne sont en mesure d’opposer une résistance sérieuse au conquérant européen. Un autre facteur favorable est l’absence de toute concurrence aux entreprises des Européens jusqu’aux toutes dernières années du XIX siècle. Ni les Etats-Unis, ni le Japon, qui sont appelés à devenir au début du XX siècle les rivaux de l’Europe, ne songent encore sérieusement à jouer un rôle dans la compétition.1

In light of such a premise, it would therefore be interesting to investigate the reasons why countries like China and Japan exited the period of isolation to become new protagonists in world history. After a period of the commercial monopoly of the East India Company with China that ended in 1834, a period of strong tension for the commerce of opium began which, along with cotton, represented one of the most sought-after products by the Chinese.2 The United Kingdom was granted special status 1

P. Milza, Les relations internationales de 1871 à 1914 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1990), 65–6. On this subject see: Lévy Roger, Rélations de la Chine et du Japon (Paris: Hartmann, 1938); G. L. Barnes, China, Korea and Japan: the Rise of Civilization in East Asia (London: Thames and Hudson, 1993); Kenneth G. Henshall, Storia del Giappone [History of Japan] (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2013); E. von Hesse-Wartegg, Cina-Giappone, Il celeste impero e l’Impero del sol nascente [The Celestial Empire and that of the Rising Sun] (Milan: Ulrico Hoepli, 1900). 2 It deals with the first Anglo-Chinese war that ended with the overwhelming victory of the British, who imposed the peace of Nanchino on the Chinese (1842), completed with that of Bogue (1843). The British Crown had the monopoly on the

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as a favoured country, and other states that were also determined to protect the interests of markets in Asian territories came forward; firstly, the Americans signed the Treaty of Wanghia (1843) with the Chinese government, and then the French signed the Treaty of Whampoa (1844). The tolerance of the Catholic religion in China was guaranteed as well as other things, and then with the Swedish and the Norwegians (1847). Ugo Bassi asserts that, “thanks to England, China has emerged from the isolation in which it found itself after having closed its ports to foreign vessels, all this led to the so-called opium war, when China, after having seen all its efforts useless in order to prevent the commerce of this drug that threw its subjects into a condition of disastrous degradation, in 1839 had all English living in Canton imprisoned, which included the commander of the British forces Elliot, who was also the representative of the English government.”3 With the Peace Treaty of Nanking (1842), China was forced to come to terms with the aggressive European nations. The opening of the harbours of Amoy, Canton, Fuciau, Ningpo, and Shanghai preceded the phase of land concessions in Hong Kong to the British. The massacre of Catholic opening of the trade in the ports of Canton, Amoy, Foochow, Ningpo, and Shangai; the transfer of Hong Kong in the form of an ongoing lease; the abolition of the Co-hong (a company of Chinese merchants who had the trade monopoly in the port of Canton from 1760); the payment of a Chinese allowance; the rank equalization of the Chinese and British officers; and mutually agreed customs. Moreover, the United Kingdom was granted the rank of “the most favored country,” criminal jurisdiction on its subjects in open ports, and the free movement of British war fleets in the Pacific Ocean. See G. Borsa, I problemi estremoorientali 1870–1941 [Problems of the Far-East 1870–1941] (Milan: Ispi, 1959), 4. See also H. Schmidt-Glintzer, Storia della Cina [History of China] (Milan: Mondadori, 2011), 226–36. 3 U. Bassi, Italia e Cina, cenni storici sui rapporti diplomatici e commerciali [Italia and China, Historical Hints at Diplomatic and Commercial Relationships] (Modena: Publishing House Bassi and Nipoti, 1929), 12–13. For a more expert reader, the following readings on Russian-Chinese relationships in the modern age are recommended: M. Mancall, Russia and China: their Diplomatic Relations to 1728 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971); Lo-Shu Fu, A Documentary Chronicle of Sino-Western Relations 1644–1820, I–II (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1966); G. A. Lensen, The Russian Push Toward Japan. Russo-Japanese Relations 1697–1875 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1959); I. B. Strižova, Russkoe-japonskie otnosheniya XVIII-naþala XIX vv. [Russian-Japanese Relations in the Eighteenth to early Nineteenth Centuries] (Saransk: Dissertatsija naso iskanie uchenoj stepeni kandidata istoricheskich nauk, 2003); E. Ja. Fajnberg, Russko-japonskie otnosheniya v 1697–1875 [RussianJapanese relationships 1697–1875] (Moskva: Izd.vo Vostochnoj Literatury, 1960).

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missionaries in 1858 brought about the joint Anglo-French intervention, which Russia took advantage of with the granting of new territories, and France with the recognition of its claims on Tonkin. In 1895, China, after a period of inner riots, was forced to give the rich island of Formosa to Japan, while Germany, albeit under the veil of rent, got large territorial grants. Count Cavour, who had long since turned his attention to the seas of the East (the Crimean War being an example), started to form relations with China in an attempt to join the Kingdom of Sardinia to the threads of international politics. “By a letter dated 24th November 1858, he wrote to a British subject living in Shanghai asking him if he was willing to take the title and the office of honorary consul of the King of Sardinia, hinting in this letter at the desire to enter into official relationships with Celestial Empire and get news about trade and about the maritime movement of Shanghai port and the navigation on the Yang-tse.”4 In 1869, the honorary representative was replaced with a career consul, but until the Boxer Rebellion (1900) the relations between the two states were never such as to allow Italy to exploit the huge market at the far edge of Asia to its advantage, as other European nations already did. While the partition of China was being played out in the Asian continent, the Italian peninsula was divided between the Savoy and Bourbon monarchs. It was caught in the grip of foreign powers who muzzled its fate, and therefore did not initially take part in the atmosphere of neo-colonialism that other European countries had already started. The unity of Italy required a colossal effort in support of which there had to firstly be a broad agreement with foreign powers that implemented anti-Austrian foreign policies. First of all, the France of Napoleon III, and later the Russian “liberal” Tsar Alexander II, focused on protecting the Orthodox Slavs in the Balkans from the strong influence of Vienna. The year 1861 was important for both Italians and Russians. Upon completion of the Renaissance Movement, under the Savoy leadership the Romanov Empire responded by emancipating approximately forty million peasants.5 The historic harmony embraced unanimous sympathies in Italy but there were clashes against Minister Aleksandr Michaylovich Gorchakov (1798–1883) as a resistance to recognizing the new kingdom in which territorial limits were not established and where embracing it could have 4

U. Bassi, Italia e Cina, cenni storici sui rapporti diplomatici e commerciali [Italia and China, op. Cit, p, 21. The transfer of Tientsin took place after the military occupation of the area on January 21, 1901, in which Italy was granted an ongoing lease of an area of a few km2 situated on the left bank of the Pi-ho River 5 See T. V. Zonova, Rossiya i Italiya: istoriya diplomaticheskikh otnosheniy [Russia and Italy: the History of Diplomatic Relations] (Moskva: MGU, 1998).

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disturbed the peace in Europe, especially in the hot areas like the Balkans.6 Such diplomatic perplexities were testified by Ministers Filippo Oldoini and Gioacchino Pepoli, both Envoy Extraordinary of the Kingdom of Italy in Russia.7 Talks between Consul Pepoli and Minister Gorchakov were famous for being related to problems of the principal of the liberty and nationality of the people, too risky for the security of Europe according to the Russian statesman, and rich in virtue for the Italian diplomat.8 In fact, recognizing the struggle for Italian liberation would have aroused the recognition of Polish problems that were in turmoil following the insurrections of 1863. After the exit from the Pepoli scenario, ItalianRussian relations improved thanks to Edoardo De Launay’s fervent work and the fact that he knew how to mend and fortify these relations, supporting authoritarian and conservative Russian ideas and expansionistic goals with regards to central Asia and the Ottoman territories. Savoyard was by birth “resolute, relentless, insistent to the point of monotony in supporting the need for an alliance with Prussia.”9 The De Launay ministry would have preferred to abandon foreign policy in favour of France and instead look to Germany “à la quelle l’avenir appartient” without those collective phenomena of the fear of pan-Germanism and pan-Slavism, terms that, in his opinion, evoked only “des grands mots.” Italian foreign policy, after its unification, initially focused on linking the country’s destiny to that of other European powers in order to complete a reunification, to be achieved in stages. The crisis of the Ottoman Empire following defeat to the Russians and the subsequent Congress of Berlin in 1878 momentarily reanimated interest regarding the fate of Italians in Trento, Trieste, and Dalmatia, “with the typical idea of Mazzini; Mazzini wanted to draw on the power of the Slav Risorgimento to dissolve the Habsburg monarchy and promote the full realization of Italian unity while weakening Austria.”10 Germany’s Chancellor Bismarck was undoubtedly a strong ally, able to avert the danger of a France intent on declaring war on Italy because of the famous “clerical affair” which destabilized not only 6

Italian Diplomatic Documents (IDD), s. I, (1861–70), vol. II, (December 31, 1861–July 31, 1862), no. 87 (February 11, 1862), 127. 7 G. Petracchi, La Diplomazia Italiana in Russia (1861–1941) [Italian Diplomacy in Russia (1861–1941)] (Roma: Bonacci Editore, 1993), 26. 8 IDD, s. I, 1861–1870, vol. III (August 1, 1862–July 9, 1863), no. 525 (April 19, 1963), 471. 9 F. Chabod, History of Italian Foreign Policy from 1870 to 1896 (Bari: Laterza, 1965), 27. 10 Ibid., 530–45. These issues are well examined in M. Grillandi, Francesco Crispi (Turin: UTET, 1969), 289–301.

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Italian domestic politics but gave rise to a heated debate between different schools of thought.11 Francesco Crispi, the protagonist of politics between 1870 and 1890, though ousted from the Depretis cabinet, chose Nicotera, Amedeo Melegari, Zanardelli, Mancini, Mezzacapo, Coppino, Brin, and Majorana as companions to lead Italy towards the neo-colonial adventure, for several years diverting away from its main mission—the expansion of universal suffrage, the underdevelopment of many southern areas, and the combination that, according to the historian Ghisalberti, still existed between the “rigid centralized government with which the Kingdom of Sardinia was ruled until 1861 and … modern liberalism.”12 Crispi’s solution was not the ideal route to take, and as such, towards the mid1890s with Antonio di Rudini, Italy partially abandoned the venture and proceeded with the intent to consolidate foreign affairs and improve internal conditions. Italy and Russia experienced different stages of evolution and progress; it was only after the intervention of Piedmont in the Crimean War that interest from Russian liberal groups grew in the Italian Renaissance, which became the ideal common theme through which ideologues and intellectuals of the time constantly confronted one another. On the eve of the twentieth century, Russia was experiencing a time of intense economic and social transformation. This process was not widely supported by the Tsarist regime, resulting in a slow and cumbersome maturation process under the pressure of innovative ideas from the Decembrist Revolt of 1825, which from that point forward would accompany a phase of modernization. The social transformations that were in progress, as evidenced by the copious and fascinating literary and cultural activity of the time, in addition to rapid industrialization, led to a modest growth of capitalism and two social groups—the bourgeoisie and the urban proletariat—which nevertheless represented a small percentage compared to the mass of the peasantry that still mainly lived within the traditional community structure in Russia—the obshina. This change did not go unnoticed in the eyes of the Europeans, most notably many Italians, who had left during the time of the Crimean War, which marked a setback in relations between Russia on one side and the Kingdom of Savoy, ally of the Ottoman Empire, France, and the United Kingdom, on the other. The 11 Regarding Italian membership to the Triple Alliance (May 20, 1882) and the consequences of international politics, see: D. Reichel, Italia e Svizzera durante la triplice alleanza: Politica militare e politica estera [Italy and Switzerland during the Triple Alliance: Military Policy and Foreign Policy] (Roma: SME, 1991). 12 C. Ghisalberti, The Age the Right-wing in Italy and the Problems of Unification in “La Storia”: The Big Problems of the Contemporary Age, vol. III, From the Restoration to the First World War (Milano: Garzanti, 1993), 590.

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review of that judgement is clear through books published in Italy during those years.13 Among the aspects most highlighted by the new literary production are the reformist force of Tsarism, the latent energies of the Russian people, and reforms in the social field. Tomaso Carletti, a young employee of the embassy of Saint Petersburg, emphasized the parallels between mir and the way of UK self-government. Meanwhile, strikes, riots, and student protests were increasingly common in a country that was headed towards a mixed phase of revolution and reform that had never been seen in its imperial history. Even the resounding defeat of the Tsarist Empire in Manchuria against the emerging Japan took a back seat to the Bloody Sunday of January 1905 that, for the first time, was driving the Romanov Dynasty to accept the compromise of a constitutional monarchy. The theory of a liberal model took off; this model occurs cyclically in a country and steers its history towards an inescapable need for individual freedom and parliamentary democracy. Relations were renewed between Italy and Russia, especially thanks to the diplomatic actions of Giulio Melegari who, replacing Count Roberto Morra of Lavriano, knew how to build a diplomatic structure that tended to favour a rapprochement between the two countries, culminating in the meeting of Racconigi—a truly important success of his diplomatic actions. Giulio Melegari, born in Turin on December 11, 1854, was the son of Luigi Amedeo Melegari14 (1805–81), a well-known politician and state 13

The idea of a young Tsar ascending to the throne in 1894 was received with enthusiasm by young European liberals who had seen the reactionary Alexander III as a dangerous obstacle to the liberation of the people. With regards to this see: T. Carletti, La Russia Contemporanea (Milano: Treves, 1894); G. Modrich, La Russia. Note e ricordi di viaggio [Russia. Notes and Travel Memories] (Torino: Le Roux e C., 1892); R. Barbiera, “La Russia d’oggi veduta da un diplomatico italiano” [“The Russia of Today Seen by an Italian Diplomat”], in Illustrazione italiana (Gennaio-giugno, 1894). 14 The son of Pietro and Maria Simonazzi, Luigi Amedeo Melegari was born on February 19, 1805 in Meletole di Castelnovo di Sotto in the province of Reggio Emilia. After having obtained a degree in law in Rome, he was appointed professor of constitutional law at the University of Turin during the turbulent year of 1848. He spent several years in Lausanne, where he would find himself an exile patriot along with Mazzini, of whom he became a friend, and many others. As a Member of Parliament from the II to the VIII legislature for the electoral constituencies of Bricherasio, Bosco di Alessandria, Correggio, and Montecchio, he would be appointed state councillor in 1859, while the following year he was assigned to the section of the Ministry of Justice. In 1862 he was appointed senator. He would for

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counsellor of the Kingdom of Italy and Maria Carolina Mandrot (called Magdalene). He graduated in law from the University of Pisa in 1877. On August 10 of the same year he was admitted to the ministry as honorary officer of legation. Two years later he was effectively admitted to the diplomatic service. Dispatched to Bern, where his father resided as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary, he was also appointed as attaché to the Bern Embassy (May 7, 1879). For three subsequent years from May 20, 1879 he worked in a family business as a result of exposure to his father’s profession. After several months in the Swiss capital he was appointed second secretary of legation (Royal Decree of December 25, 1880). In this regard, given the esteem granted to him at high levels, on January 14, 1880 he wrote to Benedetto Cairoli, president of the council and minister of foreign affairs, the following words of appreciation: Dear Sir, with the revered letter of the 3rd that with Decree of 25th last Your Majesty deemed me worthy to confer the role of secretary of legation second class. I feel I owe in particular such honor and all the benefit that could derive from this in future for me to Your Excellency, hence my life remains bound to you in an everlasting debt of gratitude that in any event I shall try to repay whenever the opportunity arises. Please accept, Honorable Minister, with my most sincere heartfelt thanks the expression of my deep respect.15

several years hold the office of Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary in Berna, while a highlight of his career was in the employ of the Cabinet Depretis, where he would hold the office of Foreign Minister from March 25, 1876 to December 26, 1877. His correspondence with Giuseppe Mazzini was well known and published by D. Melegari in a series of works (Lettres intimes de Joseph Mazzini, Paris, 1895; La Giovine Italia and la Giovine Europa. From the Unpublished Correspondence of Giuseppe Mazzini and Luigi Amedeo Melegari, Milan, 1906). He died in Berna on May 22, 1881. News taken from the volume of La formazione della diplomazia internazionale (1861–1915). Repertorio biobibliografico dei funzionari del Ministero degli Affari Esteri (Rome: Polygraphic Institute and State Mint, 1987), 486–7. With regards to the relationships of Mazzini with Melegari, see also the contribution of Giovanni Ferretti, Luigi Amedeo Melegari a Losanna (Rome: Vittoriano, 1942), XLX, 368, in 8*. l. 45. 15 MFA, Personal Archives, Series VII, Collection M 5, “Giulio Melegari.” From the Legation of Berna, Letter of Giulio Melegari to Mr. Benedetto Cairoli, Prime Minister, Foreign Service Officer on January 14, 1880. Together with this document there is a letter from the preceding day written by Luigi Amedeo Melegari, father of Giulio, in which, besides thanking the minister for the kindness shown towards his son, the former old minister invoked for his son the position of “Member of Congress in our diplomatic corps.”

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In July 1881, two months after the death of her husband Luigi Amedeo, Maria, wife of the former state senator, wrote a letter to Cairoli from Bern for her son Giulio, referencing the position of first secretary in Rome, to where the family hoped to relocate (letter in French from Bern on July 11, 1881). Almost a year later, on May 27, 1882, Giulio Melegari returned to serve in the ministry (where the minister of foreign affairs had in the meantime been Mancini), but only for a short period because, in place of Cavalier Riva, he temporarily returned to serve in Bern in August 1882 (Ministerial Decree of July 19). In February 1883, Melegari went to Florence where his sister Dora had called for him due to their mother’s health problems. He then asked for three months leave, which was granted. Upon return from leave he was relocated from Bern to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Rome.16 With the Ministerial Decree of May 5, 1885 he was called to serve in the Royal Legation of Rio de Janeiro as first secretary. Melegari arrived in the capital on September 6. There is not a great deal of information with regards to this period, only that Melegari requested a period of leave through Ambassador Ernesto Martuscelli for the summer of 1887 in order to tend to “domestic interests.”17 From Rome, on January 19, 1888, Melegari addressed a letter to the ministry in which he criticized his colleague Giulio Silvestrelli, second-class secretary of the legation, for the length of his career, even though there were several nonoperational years. Above all, the reason that pushed the diplomat into a career was the actual length of occupational time as an honorary officer, which was not valid for seniority. He wrote: it is not, in the writer’s opinion, right or fair, without taking into consideration the four and a half years Silvestrelli was out of service (half of his career), to reinstate him in the same position as occupied before, that in spite of which, having almost the same seniority, served without interruption for 10 years of which in part in America.18

16 MFA, Personal Archives, Series VII, Collection M 5, “Giulio Melegari.” Letter of the Minister Mancini to the Honourable Giulio Melegari on February 11, 1883. 17 MFA, Personal Archives, Series VII, Collection M 5, “Giulio Melegari.” Letter of the Ambassador Martuscelli to the Honourable Depretis, Prime Minister and Foreign Service Officer on April 24, 1887. Depretis would grant the re-entry permit to Italy to the first secretary; therefore, Melegari would have been able to use it from August 14. 18 MFA, Personal Archives, Series VII, Collection M 5, “Giulio Melegari.” Personal Letter of Giulio Melegari to the Foreign Ministry of Rome on January 19, 1888.

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Melegari’s “observations” would yield some results; after a few months, on April 20, 1888, he was invited to the Royal Legation in Berne with the duties of first secretary, rendering “diligent and intelligent work”; the Italian Ambassador to Switzerland praised and affirmed this in his letter to the Ministry on July 5, 1888. He replaced Cav. Vigoni for a short period, after which, by Royal Decree, on June 18 he was dispatched to Monaco of Bavaria where Baron Enrico Cova was acting as ambassador. The promotion to first-class secretary of legation took place on November 14, 1888, with the effective date of December 1 and an “annual salary of 4000 lire.” During these years he came into contact with the GermanPrussian mentality and followed the evolution of the Bismarckian policy without leaving any particular sign. In 1888, Wilhelm II came to power in a German state dominated by a military caste and a parliament which submitted to the government, though elected by universal suffrage. Within a few years, the Kaiser, who had an impulsive temperament, had shattered the Bismarck project aimed at creating a network of diplomatic relations in favour of Germany. The new address, briefed to foreign affairs in the belief of being able to act without the contribution of the Tsarist Empire against its rivals the United Kingdom and France, brought about the following in a short time: a rapprochement between the courts of Saint Petersburg and Paris (1892), the discharge of the old Chancellor Bismarck, and active economic cooperation with the Sublime Porte with an enormous capital for the construction of the Baghdad Railroad that connected Constantinople to the Persian Gulf. In the summer of 1890, because of a poorly treated case of diphtheria caught in May, Melegari was forced to ask for two months’ leave from work. Two years later, on February 15, 1892, with Ministerial Dispatch n. 5607/121 he received the decoration Officer of the Crown of Italy. In a letter to the Marquis of Rudini, then president of the council, he expressed his gratitude for “the precious gesture of kindness towards me which I will always try, within the limits of my feeble strength, to make myself worthy of, even in the future.”19 In January 1893, Melegari was offered a transfer to the Embassy in Lisbon, which he refused. On June 14, 1894 he was assigned for duty at the Royal Legation in Bucharest, headed by Count Curtopassi, where he found a very different situation from the previous location. He definitively left Monaco of Bavaria on August 7. The Balkan world was still troubled by lively nationalism that reanimated after the Congress of Berlin in 1878. The various kingdoms and principalities of the Balkan Peninsula were 19

MFA, Personal Archives, Series VII, Collection M 5, “Giulio Melegari.” Letter by the Royal Legation of Italy to Monaco of Giulio Melegari to the Marquis of Rudinì, February 18, 1892.

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experiencing a very critical domestic situation due to the constant contrast between the conservative nobles, pro-Austrians, and small peasant proprietors. In particular, Charles I of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen’s (1866– 1914) Romania was in a state of agitation because of the sale of Bessarabia to Russia in 1878. This implied the nearing of a dual monarchy, even if there was deep resentment towards the magyarization policy initiated by the Hungarians against the Romanian population of Transylvania. In Bucharest on February 11, 1895, Melegari received news of having been awarded the Officer of the Order of Saints Maurie and Lazarus, by a decree of January 20, 1895. Two years after his arrival in the Romanian capital, in April 1896 he was transferred for the first time to Saint Petersburg, where in the summer of that same year he worked at the embassy pro tempore. His resistance to accepting the assignment was overcome by the insistence of the ministry, and with a letter simply dated “Sunday night” he surrendered and accepted the assignment. It was a Russia that looked with suspicion upon the neo-colonization initiated by Western countries, to the detriment of the African territories due to the limited navigability of the Suez Canal, vital for its Asian interests. The Tsar, in the meantime, paid attention to newspaper propaganda, which at the time deemed the attitude of those kingdoms that had “invaded” the African regions to be completely inappropriate. One of these pamphlets, entitled “Abessincy, v’ bor’bje za svobodu” [“Abyssinia, at War for Liberty”],20 strongly condemned the Italian adventure in Abyssinia, citing a Latin phrase: “concordia parvae res crescunt, discordia maximae dilabuntur” [“in harmony, even small things grow, in contrast even the big ones vanish”]. It was with great enthusiasm that Russia embraced the announcement of the new government run by Rudini. The Italian ambassador in Saint Petersburg, Maffei, after hearing about the change of management, responded in this manner: “it’s not necessary for me to state how hostile Russian public opinion is to the Italian policy of expansion in Abyssinia,” and attached excerpts and translations of articles extracted from the Journal de St. Petersbourg, the official agency of the state, and Novosti and Novoe Vremya, which, in unison, applauded the entrance of the new staff of men such as Colombo and Branca, who were not partisans of the triple alliance. With Rudini’s new staff there was the perception of a change of course in Italian foreign policy, previously guided by Crispi, and the feeling of archiving the disastrous experience in 20

The authors of the pamphlet are anonymous and sign with “A. T. e V. L., Abessincy, v’ bor’bje za svobodu,” S.-Peterburg’, Ekonomiþ. Type-Lithography (1896), 1–43. In MFA, Political series “P,” Russia 1896–1898, File 342, C. 66.

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Abyssinia (even though Russian newspapers, like Novoe Vremya, continued until the end of May to condemn the Italian government’s behaviour for not letting convoys of the Red Cross transit Abyssinia). The Marquis, Carlo Alberto Maffei of Boglio, a former ambassador in Madrid and appointed to the seat in Saint Petersburg, wrote from Saint Petersburg on June 11, 1896 to Foreign Minister the Duke of Sermoneta that the Tsarist controlled official media “Il Journal de S. Petersbourg,” and devoted several pages to the Anglo-Italian question of “African things,” highlighting how l’affaire was being strongly felt among Russian public opinion and the Tsarist court.21 Maffei, in his last reports from the Russian capital, before the reign of Melegari, openly blamed Nicholas II, saying that it was not a hazard to already affirm that whoever expects great things from today’s Emperor will experience bitter disappointment, despite the fact that he had already provided proof of irresolution and weakness of character. These types of defects were always serious for anyone who was called to lead the destiny of a nation. They became fatal to the one who wore the crown of the Tsar and who had the appearance of physically crushing Nicholas II on the day he took office in the historic Church of the Assumption.22 Melegari held the embassy position throughout the summer of 1896, and subsequently returned to the post a few days before Maffei’s death on May 15 the following year. Here, Melegari came into contact with the Russian world for the first time, which he observed with curiosity and interest. Russia was no longer a distant and unknown power but a partner with which to establish new social and political relations for the Italian government, which tended to have free rein in neo-political colonial Mediterranean Africa. They welcomed the work of containment pursued 21

MFA, Political Series “P,” Russia 1896–1898, Envelope 342, sheet 66. Maffei’s Letter to the Minister of Foreign Affairs had as its object “La politica AngloItaliana nell’Africa, giudicata in Russia” [“The Anglo-Italian politics in Africa, judged in Russia”], rep. n. 328/199 of June 11, 1896. 22 MFA, Political Series “P,” Russia 1896–1898, File 342, sheet 66, rep. no. 384/227 of June 24, 1896. having as its object “Il nuovo Czar e la politica nazionale di Alessandro III” [“The new Tsar and the national politics of Alexander III”]. In this letter, addressed by Maffei to the Duke of Sermoneta, Foreign Minister, the Italian Ambassador makes a digression on the “Russification” carried out during the years of Tsar Alexander III towards all public administrations. If, with Alexander II, the German element had in fact “dominated supreme on all public administrations,” with the following king this trend was widely abandoned in favour of the so-called “national awareness” that would have condemned the ancient nihilistic propaganda, “more or less supported by noble people, disgusted at the liberal reforms of Alexander II.”

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by the Tsarist regime in the Balkans as an anti-Austrian function. Melegari’s first report from Saint Petersburg was dated June 30, 1896 and was report n. 405/241. In it, the ambassador spoke of the immense carnage in Moscow during the celebrations of the coronation and the strikes by the government factory workers of Saint Petersburg. He underlined how these events had impacted heavily on the “good-hearted Nicholas II,” who would become ill with jaundice, a “disease that easily takes its origin from moral causes.” The Italian diplomat was convinced that these disturbances were due to progress made in Russia by socialist ideas and the Tsar. To defeat them, he had a choice: take into account suggestions from the influential Attorney General of the Holy Synod, Pobedonostsev, which wanted strict enforcement measures, or listen to various advisers and ministers who would opt for milder solutions.23 In subsequent reports, Melegari dealt with a variety of different issues, including: RussianChinese relations with regards to the construction of the Trans-Siberian railway; new loans to Russia by French capitalists24; the resignation of Baron Voruntsov-Daskov as Minister of the Imperial Household (which was directly responsible for the massacre in Moscow); and the possible trip of the Tsar and Tsarina to visit various European courts, not only Berlin so as not to offend the French sensibility. With regards to the latter issue, Melegari wrote: I’m told that the mother Empress raised many issues against the planned visit. The widow of Alexander III, determined to see her son persevere against the attitude of reserve, which was a constant trait of the late Emperor, in her relation with foreign courts openly demonstrated her opposition (being particularly against the trips to England25) and insisted that the Imperial trip be limited to the usual visit to the Danish Court.26

23 MFA, Political Series “P,” Russia 1896–1898, File 342, sheet 66, rep.. no. 405/241 of June 30, 1896 entitled “Return to Petersburg of your Majesty. Strikes in Petersburg.” 24 With regards to this, a report of the Italian Ambassador to Berlin, Giorgio Calvi Di Bergolo (1852–1924), of August 6, 1896, reported to the new Foreign Minister, marquis Visconte Venosta, that German bankers were to rush through the granting of new loans to the Russian government that in fact required more money than the amount requested from the Minister Sergey Witte. In MFA, Political Series “P,” Russia 1896–1898, File 342, f. 66, rep. no. 1080/361 of August 6, 1896 entitled “Russian loan.” 25 The controversy of Russia and the United Kingdom was solved with the institution of a Commission for the delimitation of the Russian-Afghan borders that from March 11 to July 28, 1895 worked for the drawing up of a Memorandum of Understanding. The final stipulation, containing ten protocols, the last of which

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In another communication to the Italian government, Melegari complained of the tight-knit Tsarist group’s level of cooperation, which was little to none and created a scarcity of information. Russia, despite the large influx of foreign capital that was in part going to finance projects such as the construction of the Trans-Siberian railway that linked Saint Petersburg to Vladivostok (on the Pacific Ocean), remained an empire with semi-feudal features and a despotic and reactionary regime, poorly tolerated by the vast majority of Russian people, who were ready to revolt. Despite this fact, Russia was unwilling to give up the influential Asian area; on the contrary, it initiated a campaign for the colonization of the East in which it clashed with the United Kingdom for control of the Pamir region. In March 1896, Ambassador Maffei in Saint Petersburg reported that the new imperial project had created “two new army groups, assigned to the eastern frontier of the empire” (private rep. no. 137/90 del 3 Marzo 1896) and the reinforcement of the naval squad of the Pacific, commanded by Rear Admiral Alekseev. After an interlude in Berlin of a few years (1898–1901), on April 18, 1901 he was transferred to Tokyo with minister credentials. There, on May 2, 1901, he was granted the license for Consul General. In the same year, he was promoted to Envoy Extraordinary and Second-Class Minister Plenipotentiary. His diplomatic career was now at a turning point. Having gained years of experience, Melegari was mature enough to hold the fate of a prestigious embassy. In Tokyo, he experienced the extraordinary accession of the “Rising Sun Empire,” which, after defeating China, on which it imposed the Treaty of Shimonoseki (known to China as the Treaty of Maguan), was determined to challenge Russia on land. In this was prepared on September 10, 1895, took place in the presence of two delegates of the Afghan Emir, Ghulam Mohi-ud-din Khan and Mufti Ashoor Muhammad Khan, Major General A. Povalo-Tchveykovsky, State Councilor P. Ponafidin, and Major Colonel of State A. Galkin, representing Russia, and, for the British side, Major General Montagu G. Gerard, C. B. From these agreements, Russia ascertained that the United Kingdom was committing not to annexing or establishing military ports or fortification works between the Russian frontier and the territory of the Indo-Kush, officially belonging to Afghanistan. The documents on the agreement are contained in MFA, Rome, Archive of Diplomatic Affairs, Political Series “P,” Russia, 1896–1898, File 342, sheet 66, rep. no. 57/20 from London on January 26, 1897, entitled “Pamiro” and addressed to the Foreign Minister the Marquis Viscount-Venosta from the Italian Ambassador in London A. Ferreri. 26 MFA, Political Series “P,” Russia 1896–1898, File 342, sheet 66, rep. n. 455/268 of August 1896 entitled “Journey abroad of your Imperial Majesties.”

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the United Kingdom favoured Japan, and in an attempt to counteract Russian expansionism in central Asia, Korea, and Manchuria concluded a treaty of alliance27 with the Japanese Emperor Meiji, whose reign lasted for more than forty years from 1868 to 1912. During this period, contemporaneously to what was happening in Italy, the unitary Japanese state was formed, unlike Italy where the Albertine statute would create the basis on which to build the new political reality, devoid of a constitution that only came to light in 1889.28 The Italian diplomat wrote in his reports from the Japanese capital that, despite its basic political problems, Japan had begun to broaden its horizons into the international political scene with an army and naval fleet. He also stated that their military was well equipped and able to thwart the ambitions of Russia against Korea and the East Asian regions.29 In those years, an extensive correspondence on the policy of rearmament implemented by the Japanese government occurred between the Italian ambassador and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Italy. Giulio Melegari witnessed the preparatory phase of the RussianJapanese war, and in some of his reports he analysed in detail the internal situation in Japan, highlighting the features of Emperor Meiji’s policy and diplomacy. In a letter sent from Tokyo on August 7, 1901 to G. Prinetti,30 the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Melegari referred to multinational force commander British General Alfred Gaselee’s trip to Japan. Gaselee set off from Tientsin for the liberation of Beijing in the summer of 1900, and Melegari described the British officer’s reception as being particularly warm, adding that, “the more than flattering way that the major British newspapers corresponding from China have consistently spoken of the Japanese troops, has greatly contributed to increasing in these populations this undoubted wave of acceptance towards England and its army.” The 27

The Treaty was signed on January 30, 1902 in London and was structured into six points with a five-year validity. The anti-Russian agreement would prompt Tsar Nicholas II to draw up a new alliance with France and the United Kingdom in 1904 and in 1907, respectively. 28 On this subject there is a fairly complete study of the first Italian-Japanese Convention of Historical Studies that took place in 1985 on “Lo Stato liberale italiano e l’età Meiji.” The substantial points of the convention were taken up again by Hatsushi Kitahara in his essay Dal Giappone in an edition edited by Filippo Mazzonis, L’Italia contemporanea e la storiografia internazionale (Marsilio: Venezia, 1995), 269–81. 29 An enormous quantity of diplomatic reports evidence the rush by Japan to supply the naval material during the years that preceded the war against Russia, and Melegari provides documentary evidence of such mobilization. 30 MFA, Rome, Letter of G. Melegari to the Foreign Minister Giulio Prinetti of August 7, 1901, from Tokyo, rep. no. 144/50.

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actions of the government in London that aimed to promote Japan in the Far East to contain aspirations and preserve their colonies were therefore clear. The Italian diplomat, speaking of tensions between Russia and Japan for control of Manchuria, stated that the official newspaper of the empire had published the text of the agreement, which stipulated the concession of a large area of land in Musampò as a settlement between the Japanese and Korean governments. This granting was undoubtedly a new success for Japan in its dispute to win influence over Russia, which had longed for many years to make that important strategic point overlooking the coast of Japan a formidable naval base, where it had also ventured an attempt at settlement that had almost entirely failed. Within a few years, the forts, arsenals, and Russian battleships at Musampò would be replaced by the chimneys of factories and farms as part of a thriving Japanese settlement, forming a new ring in the solid chain embracing the economic industriousness of the subjects of the Mikado. Within the space of a few years, the entire southern coast of Korea, from Chunulpo to Fusan, would establish an unchallenged supremacy of that empire on the nearby peninsula.31 These were the years in which Russia and Japan took advantage of China’s weaknesses and planned an expansion of their economic interests in Korea and Manchuria. The intervention in the Chinese Boxer Rebellion highlighted the quality of the Japanese military contingent, which consisted of more than seven thousand units, representing by far the largest international coalition. Included were: Russians (3,480), British (2,232), Americans (1,825), and, to a lesser extent, French, Germans, Austrians, and Italians.32 The Russian political action was undoubtedly hampered by the difficult times the monarchy was experiencing, struggling with stagnant economic problems and peasant uprisings, in contrast to Japan, which was internally strong and stable. As well as the positive notes reserved for the Japanese ruler’s actions, Melegari did not hesitate to praise the prestige that a politician such as 31 MFA, Rome, political Series “P,” Japan, years 1902–1909, File 299, Letter of the Italian Ambassador to Tokyo Giulio Melegari to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on June 7, 1902, entitled “Japan Settlement in Ma Sampò.” 32 L. de Courten-G. Sargeri, Le regie truppe in Estremo Oriente 1900–1901 [The Royal Troops in the Far East, 1900–1901] (Roma: AUSSME, 2005), 225–6. With regards to this see: P. Renouvin, La question d’Extreme-Orient, 1840–1940 (Paris: Hachette, 1946); G. Bertuccioli, F. Masini, Italia e Cina [Italy and China] (Roma: Laterza, 1996); A. Vagnini-S. Gyun Cho, La Memoria della Cina. Fonti archivistiche italiane sulla storia della Cina [The Memory of China: Italian Archival Sources on the History of China] (Roma: E. Nuova Cultura, 2008).

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Alexander Izvolsky enjoyed or the authority that surrounded Sergey Witte, Ambassador in Monaco and Minister of Russian Finances: Mr. Izvolsky, like his predecessors, right or wrong, became one of the main manipulators of Russian policy, very efficiently assisted in this task by the renowned Mr. Oloshevo … upon the direct orders of the allpowerful Finance Minister Mr. Witte. He administered, as had been well known in Asia for some time, a successful policy, at times more active and effective than the official one … The challenge was now to see through which trends and by which means this new plan of action would unfold. If, while remaining strictly within the limits established by existing RussianJapanese agreements, the policy of the government of the Tsar was to be solely directed at a pacific growth of the Russian influence in Korea, especially on the economic side, Japan would have nothing to complain about, much less than had been the case for some time … convinced that in this land there would be little to fear from the Russian competition. If, on the other hand, it had been decided to take a more aggressive stance, and especially if the attempts at purchasing a naval station along the coast facing Japan were to be repeated, things might have taken a more threatening course, and we would have found ourselves again faced with another acute period of the Korea matter.33

In a subsequent letter, Melegari compared the struggle of influence which had been fought for the past five years in Korea to the similar one Russia was fighting with the Austro-Hungarian influence on the Baltic States and, in particular, in Serbia. The ambassador hit the mark throughout 1903 in that conflictual relations between the two empires intensified to the point where war was imminent. Referring to the news of the death of General Tamura, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Italian Army, Melegari spoke of a man in whom the Japanese had their hopes in the event of war between Russia and Japan, which, according to the diplomat, “was becoming more and more probable.”34 A few months later, Melegari spoke of the dissolution of the Japanese Elective Chamber. He justified such an act by saying that it could more easily render diplomatic negotiations with the Tsar, because “a chamber with a majority hostile towards Russia and animated by an aggressive attitude would surely be a source of new stirrings and arguments for the 33

MFA, Rome, Political Series “P,” Japan, 1902–1909, file 299, letter of the Italian Ambassador to Tokyo Giulio Melegari to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on August 9, 1902, entitled “Russia and Japan in Korea.” 34 MFA, Rome, Political Series “P,” Japan, 1902–1909, file 299, letter of the Italian Ambassador to Tokyo Giulio Melegari to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on October 7, 1903 entitled “Death of the General Tamura.”

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negotiators as well as a serious embarrassment.”35 Therefore, in admitting state reasons superior to any action, Melegari was defending Kabura’s Cabinet actions, even though, as he would later say about the dissolution of the second Duma by the Tsar and Pyotr Stolypin, the act “is legally quite questionable and the crown would probably not have succumbed if the critical international conditions had not absolutely advised against a government mutation, for now.” The following year, on January 8, he communicated the rigid application of article 22 of the “Law on the Press” that forbade the publishing of any news regarding military movements or strategic plans and war operations.36 On February 11, referring to the annual commemoration of the dynasty foundation, Melegari referred to a sovereign that, with regret, communicated to his guests, all of whom were ambassadors, the fracture in diplomatic relations with a foreign power, and that they were on the eve of a conflict with Russia. The Italian ambassador, who had widely foreseen this, prepared to give an account of the choices of the Rising Sun’s government, even though there was an almost total absence of detailed information on the sovereign’s actions. Meanwhile, the ultimatum imposed by Japan was followed by a surprise attack on Port Arthur by the Japanese naval fleet led by Admiral Tǀgǀ Heihachirǀ.37 In a letter from the ministry, approximately one month after the beginning of hostilities, Melegari outlined a first assessment of the war by communicating to the ministry the numbers presented from the imperial government to the newly established cabinet,38 which was far different from the previous one, being less resentful and more willing to collaborate with the government. From such documents, the overall amount destined to the war was evident, with 108 million Yen going to the War Ministry and 47 million to the Navy. Besides such an action, there was a stronger 35

MFA, Rome, Political Series “P,” Japan, 1902–1909, file 299, rep. no. 391/177, letter of the Italian Ambassador to Tokyo Giulio Melegari to the Foreign Minister Tittoni, on December 12, 1903, entitled “Dissolution of the Elective Committee.” 36 MFA, Rome, Political Series “P,” Japan, 1902–1909, file 299, rep. no. 11/4, letter of the Italian Ambassador to Tokyo Giulio Melegari to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Tittoni, on January 8, 1904, entitled “Ministerial Decree.” 37 The excellent volume is a historical memory of the war from the point of view of military leader Paolo Ruggeri Laderchi in Saint Petersburg. This careful observer during the three years in Russia provides interesting reports about problems in the Far East. Regarding the international relations of that period see also the excellent and accurate work P. Milza, Les relations internationales de 1871 à 1914 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1990), 165–78. 38 MFA, Rome, Political Series “P,” Japan, 1902–1909, file 299, rep. no. 152/69, letter of the Italian Ambassador to Tokyo Giulio Melegari to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Tittoni, on March 17, 1904, entitled “War Budget.”

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tax implementation which started with land ownership (twenty-five million), income (five million), sugar consumption (seven million), salt (almost three million), and silk (four million), etc. It was a detailed account, followed by explicative charts that gave a clear picture of the Japanese economic situation at the time. The losses Japan suffered during the first few months of war were considerable; the Russians simply defended themselves without actually responding because they were awaiting help from Saint Petersburg through the Trans-Siberian, a majestic railway project designed in the last decade of the nineteenth century due to the massive Russian colonization of eastern Siberia, through the Suez Canal and circumnavigation of Africa. A few months after the defeat of Russia at Port Arthur (February 9, 1904), while Melegari tended to his job as diplomat in the Japanese capital, on June 30, 1904 the Italian state sent him to his new destination in Saint Petersburg with credentials of Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary. Upon communication of a change in post, Melegari expressed his perplexity; the letter sent from the Tokyo post on July 15, 1904 started with these observations: As soon as my destination to St. Petersburg was here known to all with whom I have official or private relations, I received the most cordial and warm manifestation of affection, without myself or any member of this legation being able to recognize, from their words, any allusion to indicate that such a destination, in the present moment, would be politically judged inopportune or in any way interpreted as a not-so-friendly act of the Italian government towards Japan. Even the local press, in giving the news of my nomination, refrained indistinctly from any unfavorable comments.39

Melegari then followed the whole process of belligerence between the two nations with the privileged insight of someone who knew first one then the other fighting faction. He analysed many aspects of the RussianJapanese conflict—from the influence on Korea to the contestation of Sakhalin, and from the occupation of the Kuril Islands to the defence of the commercial ports of the Pacific—without leaving out considerations in the order of politics and economics. He therefore left Japan to go to the Russian capital where he had already been eight years before at a very delicate time for international relations because of the African neocolonization started by several European states, of which one was Italy. The Russia before him was undoubtedly different from the one he had left 39

MFA, Rome, Political Series “P,” Japan, 1902–1909, file 299, rep. no. 11/4, letter of the Italian Ambassador to Tokyo Giulio Melegari to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Tittoni, on July 15, 1904, entitled “My transfer to Petersburg.”

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at the end of the 1890s. The vast industrialization, the arrival of huge amounts of foreign capital, and the new authoritative political men that were emerging from those social classes that had been betrayed by the Tsarist politics contributed to the diffusion of liberal ideas. These were new elements that were becoming part of a political scene that was being devastated by errors in foreign affairs, the misery of the farmers, the revolts in the factories, the famine at the beginning of the century, and a monarch who was as weak and retrograde as Nicholas II. All of this was laid out before Melegari’s eyes when he reached Saint Petersburg in the pre-revolutionary era, during a typical periodic acceleration of its history and in the clash between conservation and modernization. This stimulated the intellectual interest and passion for the Russian situation in the attempt to answer the question of its future evolution in international relations. At the beginning of 1905, two closely related events put the Tsarist policy in crisis: the fall of Port Arthur after a long and bloody siege, and the Saint Petersburg workers’ revolt, better known as the Small Russian Revolution. Melegari analysed the Russian subversive process on the Western revolutionary model, in particular with the stages of the French one. The diplomat saw in the Zemsky Sobor the national assembly, the expression of requests, opinions, and representation in equal proportions to the Russian social classes, and a reproduction of the French General States of 1788.40 Meanwhile, the Japanese army defeated the Russians in Mukden, and in the Sea of Japan Admiral Zinovy Rogestvensky’s naval fleet arrived, but was of no use. Rogestvensky’s naval fleet had left the Kronstadt Naval Base in August 1904 after many hardships and diplomatic incidents it was forced to overcome, but was completely defeated on May 27–28, 1905 during the decisive battle of Tsushima. The Portsmouth (New Hampshire) Treaty of the following September, wanted and mediated by the American President Theodore Roosevelt, reinforced the prestige of Japan while confirming it as a great Asian world power. The obtainment of territorial advantages in Korea was annexed five years later in the Sakhalin Island and Manchuria. These were losses that took away the remaining prestige the Tsar had enjoyed and so a “hot” autumn began, made up of strikes and official contestations. Despite the work of Count Witte for the peace agreement (which was greatly appreciated by important Russian politicians such as Kokovzov, who, in his memoires, exalted the Russian minister),41 the social protests that stemmed from the people’s discontentment after 40

MFA, Rome, Political Series “P” (1891–1916), Russia, envelope 343, rep. no. 68/28, Petersburg, February 2/15, 1905. 41 V. N. Kokovtsov, Iz moego proshlogo. Vospominaniya 1911–1919 [From My Past: Memories 1911–1919], t. I, (Paris: Ed. de Seuil, 1933).

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“Bloody Sunday” at the beginning of the year did not stop. The strike in autumn 1905 brought about the first “Soviet” assembly, which ensued the signing of the historic October Manifesto. For Ambassador Melegari this represented a point of arrival in the revolutionary process, the institutional way out that would bring the Duma to become a real and true national assembly. The fundamental laws of May 1906 caused the Tsar’s monarchic prejudices to emerge, and he agreed to the constitution as an ideological simulation. According to Max Weber, the l’ukaz of October 21, 1905 was the decree with which the neo-president Sergey Witte created a cabinet and a prime minister with the function of director. This represented the end of the classic autocracy and the consolidation of the centralized dominium of modern bureaucracy.42 The social and constitutional structures of the old order, such as the king’s power and aristocratic supremacy, were preserved based on the Bismarck style. In a punctilious manner, Melegari took note of all Witte’s steps to remove the promises in the October Manifesto. In July 1906, Pyotr Stolypin was appointed prime minister in place of the dubious Ivan Goremykin. The Tsar decided to dissolve the Duma, which, for Melegari, was an act representing a true coup d’état.43 The Russian revolution did not follow in the French revolutionary footsteps, and the dissemblance of the Tsar brought the man, more than the diplomat, to a sort of discouragement and disillusion. Worthy of note in today’s argumentations on the economic field is his detailed analysis of the business-political duo, with regards to international loans and reforms during the Witte-Durnovo period. According to Melegari, the Russian Empire was obliged to take foreign opinion into consideration because it depended on the financial markets and the state improvements that came from European banks, the latter in order to accept huge loans, securing themselves with the liberal guarantees offered by the October Manifesto.44 Incomplete and distorted information arrived in Italy and entered public opinion, mainly with regards to strikes, pogroms, and stories relating to mutinies. After 1907, when the revolution was surely at its end and a Western-style definitive parliament was being waited for in vain, the revolution seemed a distant memory, and not only did it not seep into Italy but it actually left Europeans indifferent, they being too busy with more important national issues derived from the implosion of the multinational empires. 42

G. Petracchi, La Diplomazia Italiana in Russia 1861–1941, 80. MFA, Political Series “P” (1891–1916), Russia envelope 344, Rep. no. 542/222, Petersburg, July 26, 1906. 44 MFA, Political Series “P” (1891–1916), Russia envelope 344, Rep. no. 543/223, Petersburg, July 15/28, 1906. 43

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Melegari’s work in the Russian Embassy had excellent repercussions on relations between the two countries. Besides internal problems and his involvement in the Russian social mutations, over the course of eight years he overturned a situation that left Italy appearing somewhat without credibility before the Tsarist court. In 1907, Russia and Italy renewed their Commerce and Rates Treaty of 1863, while at the meeting of Racconigi in 1909 the two countries initiated a collaboration in the Balkan area. Melegari became involved in a positive context in which several key characters pushed for a rapprochement of the two countries. Among them were Alexander Izvolsky, Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, who had known Melegari since the time he was ambassador in Tokyo, and Nikolay Muravyev, Russian ambassador in Rome, another prominent figure who represented an important contact compared to his predecessor Lev Urusov. The agreement between Russia and the United Kingdom in 1907, in addition to the historic agreement with France, confirmed the agreement of Racconigi and completed the European conversion of Russian foreign affairs. Italy was able to play a part in the Balkan context and obtain its first true recognition for its interests from Russia. The following events divided the intentions of the two countries; they actually differed on the interest they attributed to the conservation of the status quo in the Balkans. Italy was aiming at a complicated project, and the Tittoni plans foresaw an Italian-Russian rapprochement as a starting point for a future AustrianRussian-Italian understanding.45 During 1910, certain conditions brought forth a break in the rapprochement which had been achieved not long before; the newly nominated minister of foreign affairs from San Giuliano possessed a remarkable pro-Austrian orientation. Melegari himself saw his position compromised and in 1912 was discharged from his job. He was replaced by Counsellor Pietro Tomasi Della Torretta, who ruled the embassy for a year before the arrival of Andrea Carlotti di Riparbella. The renewal in December 1912 of the Triple Alliance suppressed what little was left of the spirit of Racconigi. Such an overturn in intentions should have been foreseen, considering the Italian internal events which were intensifying with the clashes between the extremist left and imperialist bourgeoisie. During the various phases of the Giolitti government, the divergences of a society emerged in continuous change in a nationalist manner, and the Italian-Turkish colonial war in Libya did nothing more than exacerbate the extremist right. ItalianRussian relations did not cease thanks to the successive intervention of

45

G. Petracchi, La Diplomazia Italiana in Russia, 95.

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Sergey Sazonov, but the divergences in the Balkan area were surely noticed when the Albanian issue divided the two governments. Some months after leaving the diplomatic post in Saint Petersburg, Tsar Nicholas II conferred on Melegari the honorary order of St. Alexander Nevsky by giving him diamonds for his longstanding ambassador activities in Russia. The First World War interrupted Melegari’s relations with the state authorities for a few years, to be resumed several years later when the exambassador addressed a letter to Benito Mussolini. He complained of the return of state titles bought in Russia during his stay in Saint Petersburg, and affirmed: During the eight years that I had the honor of representing Your Majesty at the Imperial Court of Russia, in order to identify a secure location for my assets that would be safe and profitable as well as, to a certain extent, to have in such places a reserve fund of easy and immediate realization which I could make use of for my expenses of representation, I converted part of the dowry of my wife and my modest assets into government bonds and Russian mortgage banks for a total amount that did not exceed four hundred thousand lira. When at the beginning of 1913 I finally left Pietrograd, the serious domestic concerns that I had meant I was unable to sell those bonds. The sudden occurrence of the European war made the transfer and the sale of Russian bonds risky, if not impossible (not contractible in Italy) so that at the beginning of the Bolshevik revolution I found myself again almost entirely ruined. My serious financial straits obliged me to withdraw to the countryside, where I currently live for most of the year.46

The long letter continued with Melegari’s hope that once commercial relations were revived with the new Bolshevik government, the issue of the credits of the Italians towards Russia could be better regulated. The closing part contained a brief observation on current events: The global conflagration and its overwhelming consequences seem to have created a centuries-old abyss between past and present; all the diplomatic work, including that of the immediate pre-war period, devaluated and neglected, is now, in the memory of most people, only a vague and very distant memory. As such, the lengthy services that I was able to provide during my mission to Petersburg, and that were also useful for our country, as is demonstrated by the favorable treaty of commerce that I was able to

46

MFA, Personal Archive, Series VII, File M 5, “Giulio Melegari,” private letter of Giulio Melegari to Mussolini, Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, on July 27, 1924.

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conclude, and first and foremost by the remarkable political rapprochement between Italy and Russia that was consecrated during the visit of the Tsar to Racconigi, seem nowadays almost entirely forgotten.47

This was a bitter summary that highlighted the merits of his own diplomatic activity within a new Italian and European reality that had been transformed by the war, and even more by the Bolshevik revolution. Perhaps in an effort to avoid upsetting the new relations between the Soviets and Italians, there was no positive answer to the Italian diplomat’s request from the foreign minister and leading Italian embassy in Russia. Without hope, he definitively abandoned the idea of ever appropriating himself of his possessions in Russia and retired to a private life. The last pieces of news regarding him go back to the spring of 1934 when he was residing at the Hotel Majestic in Florence, one of his customs during certain periods of the year. He then requested a new passport from the Foreign Ministry. From then on, all traces have been lost. At the age of eighty he had intended to go abroad but certainly not to the Soviet Union, where his presence would not have been welcome. But Melegari did not return to Russia, and died in Florence in 1935. The work done by the Italian diplomat was without a doubt important and had positive consequences with regards to the Racconigi agreement. Melegari’s sudden change of post from Tokyo to Saint Petersburg during the years of the Russian-Japanese war did not go unnoticed, and it is presumed, in light of the agreement’s success for Racconigi, that the move was well planned by the Italian government to ingratiate the Tsar and therefore have a solid ally in the Balkan affairs. Such a hypothesis does not seem entirely without foundation since Melegari himself was surprised by his transfer, considering it as “inopportune” without understanding the government’s plan to achieve that objective. If we then consider the fact that the foreign minister followed the path taken by Visconti Venosta, which in 1903 assigned General Roberto Morra of Lavriano as ambassador in Saint Petersburg, this shows more clearly that the Italian diplomacy had pro-Russian tendencies during the early 1900s, a course that would bear fruit with Racconigi in 1909.

47

Ibid.

CHAPTER TWO ITALIAN DIPLOMACY BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE CENTRAL EMPIRES DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR

The historiography debate on the entry of Italy into the First World War is more open than ever a century on from that event, which marked the destiny of many populations and traced a clear line between the age of empires and that of nations. Three big geopolitical structures—three macro areas, two of which had Eurasian characteristics—competed for most of the European territory: the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Russian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire.48 The Italy that participated in the First World War was a nation tied to a double thread with the fates of Austro-Hungary, from which it hoped to take back the territories that belonged to it through history and culture. So when, in June 28, 1914, Ferdinand of Habsburg, heir to the throne of Austria, fell victim to an attack in Sarajevo executed by the Serbian Nationalists, the Italian newspapers such as l’Avanti (edited by Benito Mussolini) spoke for weeks of a “painful but explainable” episode, without giving great prominence to the diplomatic developments of that murder.49 The Italian government observed what was happening in the Balkans without intervening, even though they knew that the Russian diplomatic politics of that time were not agreeable to the double monarchy and were evermore close to the claims of the Slavic people submitted to the Austro-Hungarians and Ottomans. Between Italy and Russia there was strong agreement, sealed by the Agreement of Racconigi in 1909, in which 48

The vast bibliography about the pogroms of the First World War cannot be covered in this brief study. See: L. Albertini’s studies, Le origini della guerra del 1914 (in three volumes) of 1942; P. Melograni, Storia politica della grande guerra 1915–1918 (Bari: Laterza, 1971); E. J. Hobsbawn, L’età degli imperi 1875–1914 (Milano: Mondadori, 1996); M. MacMillan, 1914: Come la luce si spense sul mondo di ieri (Milano: Rizzoli, 2013); C. Clark, I sonnambuli. Come l’Europa arrivò alla grande Guerra (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2013); A. Gibelli, La grande guerra degli italiani 1915–1918 (Milano: BUR-Rizzoli, 2014). 49 I. Montanelli-M. Cervi, L’Italia del Novecento (Milano: Rizzoli, 1998), 57.

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the two countries found a point of equilibrium with their respective prerogatives about the Balkan area. However, from the moment conflict erupted, Italy remained neutral until August of the following year. A small diplomatic mystery occurred concerning the preliminary contacts that the Minister of Foreign Affairs Antonino di San Giuliano50 had with German Count Hans von Flotow51 on August 3, 1914. Simultaneously, the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Sazonov came to know of these contacts, which explains the initial Russian interest in keeping Italy out of the “Triple Alliance,” or at least staying neutral. How the Russian politician came into knowledge of the secret meeting between the two friends remains a mystery, even though the system of Russian Intelligence, able to cipher secret messages entering and exiting the embassy, was known for its efficiency.52 Even if such interest for the intervention of Italy diminished in the following weeks, it appears indisputable that the descent in the field next to the Entente powers could have prevented Turkey from siding with the Central Empires, and above all the Italian fleet from cutting connections between Austro-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. The negotiations could not be conducted with Russia only, however, because Paris and London wanted to define, with the government of Rome, the remunerations of a possible descent in the field. Besides, Russia also looked with interest at Romania and Bulgaria and their possible intervention alongside the Entente powers. The concomitant action of Italian Ambassador to Saint Petersburg, Andrea Carlotti, combined with that of Russian Ambassador to Rome Anatoly Krupensky, favouring relations between Italy and Russia for a certain period, even though the voices, contrary to so much political-diplomatic harmony, increased over time to the point of bringing about the removal of the Russian Ambassador from Italy, “recalled and substituted with the Slavophil Baron de Girs … already ambassador to Constantinople … 50

For Antonino Di San Giuliano’s politics see the vast bibliography by G. Ferraioli, Politica e diplomazia in Italia tra XIX e XX secolo. Vita di Antonino di San Giuliano (1852–1914) (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino Editore, 2007). 51 Hans Von Flotow had been nominated German Ambassador in Italy in February 1913 by the Minister of Foreign Affairs Gottlieb von Jagow, who had preceded him in the task and preserved the office until the breaking of the diplomatic relations between the two countries which occurred on May 23, 1915. 52 Petracchi sustains different theses, of which the most accredited, even by cross reference, is the one that sees the Italian Ambassador in Saint Petersburg, Carlotti, as directly responsible for the confession made to the Russian Minister in regard to the secret meeting which happened in Rome between Di San Giuliano and his German friend. See G. Petracchi, Da San Pietroburgo a Mosca, la diplomazia italiana in Russia 1861–1941 (Roma: Bonacci, 1993).

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nephew of the old Minister of Foreign Affairs Nikolay Karlovich.”53 This was a diplomat who was “proficient and impassive by nature,” who, according to Petracchi, with his strong Slavophil tendencies and ample vision of the Russian interests, was, together with Alexander Izvolsky and Evgeny Trubetskoy, one of the few diplomats who could give advice to Minister Sazonov. The truth, according to historian Giorgio Petracchi, was that in the period between the Agreement of Racconigi up until the explosion of the First World War, the balance of the relations between Saint Petersburg and Rome wasn’t entirely positive: “The Russian defeats from May to October 1915 contradicted the expectations of an effective strategic conditioning of Austro-Hungary in the initial phase of the Italian intervention, nor did the victories of the following year compensate it. The diplomatic consequences of this unsatisfactory military situation resulted to be less substantial.”54 Italy and Russia, according to a known commercial report written by Marquise Pietro Tomasi Della Torretta, remained “unknown to themselves” due to the poor Italian diplomatic presence in the vast Russian territory. There was just one (rather isolated) embassy in the capital of Saint Petersburg and three consular representatives: one in Odessa, one in Moscow, and one who alternated between Batum and Tiflis; but there was nobody in Siberia. With respect to the other delegations, a very scant diplomatic corps resided in Russia. Just think about Giulio Melegari, Italian Ambassador at Bucharest, who in April 1896 was sent for the first time to Saint Petersburg and wrote to Honourable Minister Caetani of Sermoneta the following words: “I surrender to your advice and accept the position in Saint Petersburg, with the same hopes to obtain, in a not too far future, another and more suitable destination for me.” He did not know that that place would mark an important decisive (and last) step in his diplomatic career. Saint Petersburg represented a “punitive” place for every diplomatic career, to which one was assigned more for demerits than for merits. If you add to this that for years the location had been held up by simple business employees, such as Count Francesco Bottaro Costa and Giuseppe Silvestrelli, then the reasons why the old Ambassador Costantino Nigra had opposed a clear refusal to return to the Russian capital, following the refusal by Count Luigi Tornielli and the sudden death of Francesco Curtopassi during the trip from Vienna to Saint Petersburg, are clear. But, as Giorgio Petracchi underlines in his volume on Italian diplomacy in Russia, at the base of the resistances by various men assigned to the post, aside from economic 53 54

Ibid., 146. Ibid.

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reasons, from the moment that the Russian post was held as the most expensive in Europe because of the numerous parties of representation, there were exquisitely political reasons seen in the difficulties “to interpret and reconstruct the decisional process of the Tsarist policy, both internal and external,” which discouraged many ambassadors from venturing any kind of study on the Russia of that epoch. The image that Italy offers to Russia from the unity to the eruption of the First World War strongly oscillates between a tendency of a certain press and conservative diplomacy apt to outline the unity of Italy with many reserves, for example the affirmations of Ambassador Lev Urusov, who at the end of the 1800s sustained that revolutionary origins were at the base of the unification, and those who freed the way to King Vittorio Emanuele II “were conspirators from clandestine associations, rebels, regicides and adventurers. All it takes is to mention the names of Mazzini, Saffi, Garibaldi and others,”55. In the wake of these opposing reflections, other judgements and prejudices followed from diplomats like Dolgoruky, Alexander Nelidov, Nikolay Muraviov, and Anatoly Krupensky (who was particularly fascinated by Giolitti’s abilities, which were a countertrend to those of many Italian critics), who painted the Italian society of the epoch with its contradictions (“Italy is the heaven of Europe populated by people in decline”) and political dramas (“the cynicism of the sudden transformations,” “the bureaucrat’s despotic nature”). As Kolomiez clarifies, “the analysis of the pro-government sources was dictated by the comprehensible worries of the Russian authority in front of the strong liberal-revolutionary unrest of the Western-like Russian Intelligentsia, an intransigent enemy of the autocratic regime, which looked upon the parliamentary democracies of Western Europe as an experience to imitate or furthermore to express it in extreme projects of social transformations.”56 At the beginning of the conflict, the Russian diplomacy had already interweaved its plot in the Balkan scene, putting Romania in the condition to accept the tempting proposals of Sazonov. The Conference of Constance of July 14, 1914 had given a strong impulse to the hopes and aspirations of the Romanians of 55

V. Kolomiez, Il Bel Paese visto da lontano. Immagini politiche dell’Italia in Russia da fine Ottocento ai giorni nostri, (Manduria-Bari-Roma: Piero Lacaita Editore, 2007), 62. See the author’s rich and selected bibliography, which draws on information from Russian archives and a substantial exposition of unpublished documents which shed light on the political and cultural relations between Russia and Italy and help to better understand the psychological line on which a certain part of the international bibliography would act. 56 Ibid., 73. See also L. Wollemborg, Politica estera italiana (1882–1917) (Roma: Edizioni Roma, 1938), 102–36.

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Transylvania. At the same time, the Italian ambassador in Russia, Carlotti, worked to make the entry of Romania and Italy into the war coincide; “but the Romanians temporized; waiting until the war horizon was cleared. They characterized their conduct along the lines as that of Italy and negotiated with both the central powers and Russia. Romania, as Bulgaria would also later do, looked at Italy as the leading country in the group of states which were about to change the original choice of field.”57 All this took place while Tittoni from Paris and imperials from London pressed the government of Rome so that, according to Allied requests, Italy would put aside its own territorial interests and become an active participant in the political-diplomatic game. For Russia, it was clear that the entrance of either Romania or Italy into the war would mean a considerable change of attitude towards either power, while France and the United Kingdom had no intention of making any commitment that would bind them to an Italian political alliance in the Balkans. Maurice Paléologue, the French ambassador in Saint Petersburg, recollects a certain negotiation between Russia and Italy in his memoirs: I’ve some serious matters I want to talk to you about. It’s not the Grand Duke Nicholas talking to Monsieur Paléologue: it’s the Commander-inChief of the Russian armies speaking officially to the French Ambassador. In that capacity, it’s my duty to tell you that the immediate cooperation of Italy and Rumania is a matter of the greatest urgency. But please don’t interpret these words as a cry of distress. I still think that with God’s help the victory will be ours. At the same time, without the immediate cooperation of France and Italy the war will be prolonged for many months more and we shall run terrible risks. I replied that the French government had never ceased to intensify its efforts to gain allies: Japan, Greece, Bulgaria, Rumania, Italy - Monsieur Delcassé has knocked at all their doors. At this very moment he is racking his brains as to how to get the Rumanian and Italian Governments into line.58

After long months of waiting and a wide spectrum of diplomatic negotiations, Italy signed the London Treaty on April 26, 1915. With this treaty, the Italian government declared an alliance with Russia, France, and the United Kingdom against the central powers of the Triple Alliance and Ottoman Empire. In accords with London,59 which foresaw the entry 57

Ibid., 147. M. Paléologue, An Ambassador’s Memoirs, translated by F. A. Holt (New York: G. H. Doran Company, 1925), 170–1. 59 The Italian government, guided by Foreign Minister Sidney Sonnino, had brought forth negotiations simultaneously with the Triple Alliance and secretly with those from the Entente, which wanted to open a new front in southern Europe. 58

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into the war within a month of the treaty’s stipulation, Italy declared war on Austria on May 23, 1915, but not Germany, even though the agreement called for it. Italy had given weight to its combat abilities, which the Allies started doubting in the first months of the war, especially when the repeated Italian offensives had no positive effects on the general outcome of the conflict between the two sides. The lack of military coordination, General Cadorna’s cockiness, the “embarrassing” presence of King Vittorio Emanuele on the front, and the lack of appropriate trench warfare training made 1915 a particularly disastrous year for the Italian army.60 Russia and Italy were busy with the “Bulgarian question” during this period. If Bulgaria was pulled in by both sides and entered the Entente, in exchange it would obtain southern territories. On the Dardanelli front, in order to avoid Serbia’s expansionistic objective reaching further towards the Adriatic, Russia saw the Bulgarian acquisition as being subordinate to the Serbian growth. According to Petracchi, since the situation in the Adriatic changed after April 26, Sazonov had to sustain the Serbian demands against Italy, but he indirectly encouraged the Serbs to resist the Bulgarian demand until the Serbian program was fully accepted.61 The inflexibility with which the Russian Foreign Ministry conducted the negotiations for the Bulgarian agreement had Italy hung by its neck. Italy couldn’t wait until the next autumn’s events, when the Bulgarians decided to follow the Central Empires. Italy seemed to have come out victorious from the Russian diplomatic conflict, but in reality what had happened was On February 16, 1915 a memorandum was sent to London with the conditions for Italy’s descent into the field next to the countries of the Entente. In the following weeks, the Italian ambassador in the United Kingdom, Marquise Wilhelm Imperiali, communicated to the UK Foreign Minister Edward Grey the sixteen points of the memorandum, recommending absolute discretion, In exchange for its intervention, Italy would have obtained South Tyrol, Trentino, Gorizia, Gradisca, the territory of Trieste, the whole Istrian peninsula all the way to the Gulf of Quarnaro with the Isles of Cherso and Lussino, the Isles of Dalmatia, the city of Zara, Sebenico and Trau, the city of Valona and Isles of Seseno, sovereignty over Dodecanese, recognition of influential areas in Asia Minor, and the rectification of certain boundary limits in the Italian Africa. See Denis Mack Smith, I Savoia re d’Italia (Milano: BUR, 2005). 60 Mack Smith, according to a well consolidated historiography, affirmed that wanting to proceed on behalf of the Italian command on the lines of a parallel war, without constituting a unified command and not getting informed on the allied war methods used during the preceding nine months on the French-Serbian front, represented one of the causes that brought forth the first military failures on the front. 61 G. Petracchi, Da San Pietroburgo a Mosca, 159.

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the complete alienation of Ambassador Carlotti in Saint Petersburg. Petracchi affirms that “Carlotti was not able to interpret any role as ring of conjunction and not even to exercise an effective mediation with the official government environments …” It was clear that Russia didn’t view Italy as being equal to the other allies, and the non-belligerency of Italy and Romania showed the “mercenary” degree of the respective governments that would have wanted to fully exploit the chance offered to them by their history in order to grab advantageous conditions. Before recognizing Italy as a status of ally on a par, “Russia expected that the government of Rome would fulfil all obligations derived from the Treaty of London. Among these was the adhesion to the Pact of September 5th that would have equalized Italy to the three of the Entente and the declaration of war on Germany.”62 Furthermore, in the summer of 1916 the Allied operations were concentrated mainly in the European Balkan area. After an unsuccessful military operation in Gallipoli and Kut el Amara, they tried to surprise the Bulgarians through a strong offence from Salonicco. Many hopes were put into the Italian intervention and the entry into war of the “stalling” Romania. In Cardona’s mind, this should have happened as a “simple representation of our flag and not with the intention to lend the Allied offensive an actual strong cooperation.”63 It is on this front, or rather on the Balkan diplomacy, that, even though Italy complied with the declaration of war on Germany, the Tsarist government changed its attitude towards the Italian ambassador, who was expelled from the daily reunions held with the British and French diplomats. This was because, in the reunions, they spoke of matters regarding the Slavs in the southern part of the Balkan Peninsula, and such a thing could have made plain the Italian interests and slowed down or diverted a solution. We must not hide the fact that London and Paris placed great expectations on Italy. The pressure exercised on the Italian government on behalf of the French and Russian mission leaders in the high command, in agreement with the British chief of staff, was aimed at obtaining the displacement of an entire Italian division on the site of the only brigade. Italy was told that their Allied offensive against the Bulgarians would have brought about the hesitations of the Romanians. The act of persuasion lasted a while, but in the end the Allies obtained what they hoped for. Cadorna retraced his steps and adhered to the request with the idea that the 62

Ibid., 161–2. M. Montanari, Politica e strategia in cento anni di guerre italiane, vol. 2, t. II, La Grande guerra (Roma: AUSSME, 2000), 332. 63

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result obtained by a joint effort in the Balkans could be well compensated and worth pulling out the forces from the theatre for.64 Luca Riccardi, in his volume Alleati non Amici, reconstructs the diplomatic role in dealing with the Entente delegation well.65 The Italian war was, and wanted to remain, a national war, its own war: the continuation of the anciently shared Risorgimento ambitions were animated by strong idealistic motivations with irredentist flairs. The interpretation of this tendency into a coherent and effective diplomatic line was definitely not easy.66 For sure, it wasn’t easy to adopt an attitude towards those states which initially chose to remain neutral, such as Bulgaria, Romania, and Greece, although they did so for different reasons. Due to historic events and its geographical position, Bulgaria found itself in a particular situation, and as such incurred intense political relations with Turkey. With the Peace Treaty of Bucharest in 1913, Turkey saw some Turkish property in the Balkans subtracted from right under its nose in favour of the Serbs and Greeks. On the contrary, Romania, apart from the already-mentioned rivalry with the Habsburg Empire, seemed to adhere more easily to the Entente’s program, of which it embraced numerous causes. The Italian attitude towards the Romanian neutrality was profoundly different from that of the Allies. The Romanian government’s request to obtain territorial 64

As of July 27, l’Armée d’Orient counted: 112 thousand French, 115 thousand British, 118 thousand Serbs, and 10 thousand Russians. The first convoy of the 35th division (General Petitti of Roreto) set sail from Taranto on August 8. 65 L. Riccardi, Alleati non amici: Le relazioni politiche tra l’Italia e l’Intesa durante la prima guerra mondiale (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1992). The author, on the basis of ample Italian diplomatic documentation, retraces the events of Italy’s entry into the war, analysing the reasons that induced the nation to delay its declaration of war on Germany. Of great relevance was the agreement stipulated between Italy and Russia on May 21, 1915, which called for a bilateral simultaneous intervention against Austro-Hungary. Having encountered great difficulty on the frontline, in May 1915 the Tsarist army soon had to retreat. The Triple Alliance’s strengths were based on the first results of the conflict in order to formulate a new strategy which called for containment on the Italian front and the advance of numerous units on the Russian end. One of the reasons found in the book to justify the Italian political delay in the First World War, in other words the non-declaration of war on Germany, was the missing declaration of war as being the origin of disagreements between Italy and the other allies, which is an analysis that must be confined to roughly the war’s first year. The disapproval amongst the allies was much deeper, strategic and, I must say, of a political perspective. The following events of August 1916 were a clear demonstration of this reality. Germany’s situation probably served to polarize all the existing tensions within the alliance to the extent of making it the decisive point for the relations inside the Entente. 66 Ibid., 14.

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acquisition at the expense of Russia and Serbia put the Paris-LondonMoscow axis in great difficulty. Despite some constraints put on Bucharest’s demands, Romania’s entry became essential for the Entente due to the Tsarist army’s failure: “this contingency made the contractual position of Bratianu much stronger since he perfectly realized the difficulty in which the troops of the Entente lay. Not for nothing his attitude was of persistent intransigence.”67 The Italian government in turn saw an ulterior motive of satisfaction with the Romanian entry into the war, since that attack would be mainly aimed at Austro-Hungary, therefore loosening the enormous Austrian pressure on the Italian front. Consequently, even Italy undertook the endeavour initiated by the Entente to convince Saint Petersburg to make concessions to Romania in Bukovina. The difference between the Italian attitude and that of the rest of the Entente was concentrated on the role Serbia had to assume in the future European structure, and was tied to the Romanian claim with regards to certain Balkan territories: According to Rome, without doubt, it was necessary to allow concessions to Romania without searching desperately for Serbian consent. For this reason, the Italian government pressed Saint Petersburg so it would accept the Romanian requests: such pacification would have forced Serbia to give up.68

The tensions followed by the Romanian resistance, through which London and Paris harboured serious doubts about its loyalty, pushed the Allies to find an alternative solution. Italy remained alone in its attempt to sustain that the only way out of the impasse was in Russian hands, and were the only ones capable of finding an agreement between Romanians and Serbs in regards to Banato by offering Bessarabia as a territory in exchange. Nothing came of this. The British and French projects failed one after the other in the negotiations with Serbia for the concessions to Bulgaria in Macedonia. Soon, Bulgaria joined forces with the Central Empire, and the government of Bucharest reinforced its position until the summer of 1916. Thus, certain mechanisms were being consolidated which would exert themselves in the course of the war. The United Kingdom displayed no interest in the Balkan region if it was not strictly tied to the favourable evolution of the war; Russia showed itself to be very 67 Ibid., 137. The allies couldn’t see other solutions to Romania’s entry into the war and therefore also mobilized through their ambassadors, as happened with the French case in London with Paul Camion, who pressed the Russians to allow small concessions to Romania. 68 Ibid., 139.

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careful in “handling” the Adriatic policies of Serbia by inevitably contrasting itself with the Italian hegemony demands in the Mediterranean area of interest. Paris also aligned itself to this policy, reprimanding Rome for not fully respecting the Treaty of London. All this brought on the progressive political-diplomatic isolation of the Italian government, already seen in a bad light due to the missed declaration of war on Germany. Italy seemed to come out of that isolation in July 1916. The decision was made from Rome to send an Italian military contingent as support to the Allied expedition in Salonicco. It was a demanding decision that however gave back a new image to Italian politics after months of difficulties and international tensions. The Allies were as a matter of fact convinced that the military offensive in Macedonia, besides instilling fear in the Bulgarian troops, would dissolve the last resistances of intervention by Romania on the Allies’ side, even though they harboured serious doubts about Bucharest’s preparation for the conflict. A telegram sent on August 3, 1916, signed by Lieutenant Colonel Luciano Ferigo,69 an Italian military attaché in Bucharest, confirmed the perplexities displayed by his French, British, and Russian colleagues on the solidity of the Romanian army, and, on the contrary, the real efficiency of the Bulgarian army and its advantageous situation. According to the Italian officer, one of the greatest risks Romania faced was that of recruiting military personnel in Dobrugia, there being many Bulgarian and Turkish citizens in the region: It results to me that Romania wants to operate in Transylvania with the largest and best part of its army, my colleagues’ appreciation corresponds to truth, all the more that the formation of the fourth battalion in every regiment of infantry and that of other battalions in reserve, if they augmented the number of bayonets to one hundred thousand, they have certainly not raised the army’s efficiency.70

In synthesis, we can sustain that in the diplomatic relations between Italy and Russia, prior to and in the first years of the war, the Balkan world was in the midst of its complexities and unsolved problems, which would return and explode again seventy years later with the fall of the Berlin Wall. This complexity, which invested in all aspects of civil life, from 69 General Luciano Ferigo (Udine 1870 to Bucharest 1921) debuted in his military career in 1890 as second lieutenant of artillery. In 1895–6 he participated in the Eritrea champagne. He was commander of the Sassari brigade between 1917 and 1918. He retired for length of service in 1920 and settled in Bucharest and the king nominated him his field assistant, honorary general. 70 AUSSME, Rome, Fondo G.29, envelope 76, military assigned in Romania August-September 1916, f. 6.

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politics to the national ideology, showed how the two countries had for various centuries been a fount of inspiration for each other. In Italy at the beginning of the twentieth century, Russia was a “formidable unknown,” and Italy for Russia was that “young damsel” who had reached the age of consent (the national unity), but whose flirtatious attitudes (the free Risorgimento thought) created problems in maintaining the monarchic institute. The terrorist attacks—regicides—in Italy and Russia at the beginning of the 1900s scared the courts more than wars since they were dealing with an internal enemy—a subject, a citizen of the state. It is on this basis that the two countries built a weak but strategic alliance, overlooking and sometimes ignoring that long-term and lasting solutions were necessary. A pact with the people needed to be established before finding it between governments. The military defeats and the losses in terms of human life had thrown Russia into the arms of the revolution and delivered the “victorious” Italy to fascism. A new age opened, a new chapter of history destined to bring about the Second World War—no less harsh and absurd than the first.

CHAPTER THREE ITALY, THE REVOLUTION, AND CIVIL WAR IN RUSSIA

Over the last ten years, international historiography has been very interested in the Bolshevik revolution. Various monographs have been produced in Europe regarding relations between Bolsheviks, “White” troops, and European governments. Through missions and expeditionary forces, the European governments initially opposed the plans of Lenin and his allies to favour the Civil War that erupted in Russia after the Bolshevik coup, the conservative troops of the ex- Tsarist generals being grouped under the name “White Army.”71 This topic is extensively documented within the files contained in the Gosudarstvennyj Voennyj Archiv Rossijskoy Federatsii (GARF)72 and the Rossiskyj Gosudarstvennyj Voenny Istoricheskyj Archiv (RGVIA)73 of Moscow. The GARF contains rich collections relative to the Russian Civil War and is articulated in a long series of kollekcija documents regarding relations between delegations of Russian exiles in Italy74 and the Allied high command, political observations of Bolshevism, information on the establishment of Russian-Italian legions (Sojuz i vozrazdenija Rossii v edinenies s sojuznikami), and detailed lists of anti-Bolshevik groups established in Western countries. In the RGVIA there are collections 71

Consult the book by F. Randazzo, Alle Origini dello Stato Sovietico. Missioni Militari e Corpi di Spedizione Italiani in Russia durante la Guerra Civile 1917– 1922 (Roma: AUSSME, 2008); F. Randazzo, Russia. Momenti di Storia Nazionale XIX-XX Secolo (Roma: Nuova Cultura, 2012). 72 State Archive of the Russian Federation, now known as GARF, Moscow. 73 Historic-Military Archive of the Russian Republic, now known as RGVIA, Moscow. 74 A thorough and well-documented analysis on the Russian exile’s role in Italy in A. Tamborra, Esuli russi in Italia dal 1905 al 1917 (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1977), 227. Based on what Tamborra affirmed, the position of the Russian exiles in Italy, after the Bolshevik coup, was absolutely hostile to the Bolshevik project to Sovietize Russians. Such intellectuals were in great part social revolutionaries and in a minor part Mensheviks.

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regarding the Civil War, divided into distinct categories: “belye” and “krasnye,” or, in other words, the White Army and the Red Army. The importance of this archive is tied to the great quantity of material from the files of the Russian Historic archives of the Prague Immigration, Fondy russkogo zagranichnogo istorichnogo archiva v Prage. In Western and American historiography regarding the Russian Civil War, among the most influential contributors is the Harvard historian Richard Pipes.75 Pipes analysed the causes of the Civil War through the experiences of his protagonists and did not neglect the precious contribution of W. H. Chamberlin,76 an eye witness of those years. Specific studies on the Russian Revolution attracted the attention of many scholars of the post-war period. The study conducted by Walter Bruce Lincoln,77 for example, analyses the phase of the Civil War connecting them to historic anecdotes gathered from Russian, French, British, and American archives. A story told through its atrocities highlights the characteristic traits of the Soviet society, “an empire born by force and governed with violence and terror.” The results of intense research and additional sources can be found in the book The Russian Civil War, Documents from the Soviet Archives, by Butt, Murphy, Myshov, and Swain. The authors tried for more than seven years to retrace crucial moments of the Civil War without putting forth ideological prejudice, simply citing the sources, as in the case of the abundant correspondence between the Bolshevik high command, the Moscow site, and other detachments dislocated in areas occupied by local Soviets loyal to Lenin.78 To these works of great historic interest can be added numerous studies in the Russian language, such as: A. Derjabin, Granzhdanskaya voyna v Rossii 1917–1922; Belye armii and A. V. Smolin, Beloe dvizhenie na Severo-Zapade Rossii, 1918–1920; and V. I. Mukachev, Kolcak i interventsya na dalnem Vostoke; dokumenty i materialy and Dal’nii Vostok Rossii v period Revoliutsi 1917 goda i grazhdanskoy vojny, sbornik 75

Richard Pipes, Polish by birth, taught history at Harvard University in 1950. In 1981 he led the department of Soviet and Eastern European affairs at the National Council of American Security. He published the book Il Regime bolscevico: Dal Terrore Rosso alla morte di Lenin (Milano: Mondadori, 1991), in which are found many bibliographic references to Lenin’s revolution. 76 W. H. Chamberlin, Storia della rivoluzione Russa (Milano: Il Saggiatore, 1967) (original American edition 1935). 77 W. Bruce Lincoln, I Bianchi e i Rossi, Storia della Guerra Civile Russa (Milano: Mondadori, 1991). 78 V. P. Butt, A. B. Murphy, N.A. Myshov, and G.R. Swain, The Russian Civil War: Documents from the Soviet Archives (London: MacMillan, 1996).

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nauchnykh statei.79 The opening of the Russian Archives allowed for the reconstruction of the story of the proletarian revolution, which subverted the monarchy through telegrams, letters, and correspondence between political forces and diplomats. The great epic scenes of the Civil War and its legendary figures attracted many scholars, enriching Russian libraries in recent decades with monographs on the White Generals of the 1920s by Kolchak, Alekseev, Kornilov, Denikin, Vrangel, Judenich, and Semjonov,80 who were filled with memories and testimonials of the “new turbid period” that had started due to conflicts between farmers and labour workers. In this manner, history rediscovers old and new heroes that had been obscured by powerful Red generals and national heroes that saved their homeland from the monarchic restoration. What happened in Italy during that same period? The Italian post-war reality was characterized by a political world of contrasts when, after the Russian-German agreement, it was decided to continue the Italian military mission in Russia with a diversified character. After General Romei Longhena’s81 mission ended he returned to Italy through Helsinki and

79 A. V. Smolin, Il movimento bianco nella Russia nord-occiddentale 1918–1920 (Moskva: SPb, D. Bulanin, 1999); A. Derjabin, La guerra civile in Russia 1917– 1922. L’esercito “bianco” (Moskva: Izd. vo “AT”, 1998); B. I. Muchacev- M. I. Svetaþev, Kolcak e l’intervento in Estremo Oriente, documenti e studi (Vladivostok: Institut Istorii Archeologii i Etnografii, 1995); B. I. Muchacev, L’Estremo Oriente della Russia durante la Rivoluzione bolscevica e la guerra civile, raccolta di studi scientifici (Vladivostok: Institut I. A. I E., 1998). 80 The following are the most recent publications, among which is the interesting collection “Vospominanija-Memuary” of the publishing house Charvest-Ast, Minok-Floskva, which published the series “Memorie” on the characters of the Russian Revolution and the Civil War. The following books refer to the above: Pyotr Nikolaevic Vrangel, Zapiski, najabr’ 1916 g.-nojabr’ 1920 g (2002), in two volumes; Anton Ivanovic Denikin, Ocherki russkoy smuti, keusenie vlasti i armii fevral’-sentjabr’ 1917 (2002); Aleksej Budberg, Dnevnik belogvardejtsia.Vspominania 1919 (2001); furthermore, from the Moscow publishing house “Vagrius” is the biography on Anton Denikin, Put’ russkogo oficera (2002); while on the General Kolcak are many monographs amongst which are those of Georgij Egorov, Kolcak Aleksandr Vasilevic, poslednie dnizizni (Moscow, 1991) and V. G. Krasnov, Kolchak i zhizn’ (Moscow, 2001). 81 General Armando Diaz, Army Chief of Staff, on August 6, 1919 sent a letter to Albricci, then Minister of War, describing Romei as a general to whom “per le sue qualità e per la lunga esperienza acquisita nella trattazione delle questioni internazionali, potrebbe affidarsi anche una Missione di esclusivo carattere politico” [“for his qualities and long experience acquired in treating international

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London in late August 1918, and his attention turned to new missions and expeditionary forces in the Russian areas where, inevitably, militarystrategic and geo-economic interests overlapped.82 It was Leon Trotsky himself who, in March 1918, invited representatives of the French, British, American, and Italian missions to form a new army on a military basis: Officers of Allied military missions detached to various General Staffs, services and troops would take part in this job. These officers would have been counsellors, assistants and, especially, guarantors of the reliability and efficiency of the job carried out. France had arranged the disposition of about forty officers deriving from Romania, the United States about four hundred assigned to reorganize transportation on all rail systems and England had hypothesized the use of Navy officers to fix the ports. General Romei, due to the scarce components of the Mission, appointed the Officers Achille Bassignano and Ruggeri-Laderchi.83

The Allies saw in Trotsky’s proposal a real possibility for keeping the Russian front open against the Germans, and while moving forward could dissolve the Soviets, who had just come together, threatening the Russian Bolshevik program. In Italy, in the summer of 1918 a massive Austrian offensive took place from Grappa to Piave, and the war came to an end. The clear symptoms of a breakup of the Austrian Army brought on a quick victory of Vittorio Veneto in the autumn of 1918, giving the strained country a break after the enormous war effort. The political debate, intensified by the internal divisions of the Socialist Party regarding the Bolshevik revolution, took on a threatening tone and almost led to an actual cultural querelle. The continuous contact with the Moscow Bolshevik Party leaders, as well as with certain matters, he could be given a mission with a political character”]. See A. Diaz’s letter to Albricci in AUSSME, File E-11, envelope 63, f. 2. 82 Such a convergence of interests will soon become a “program of action.” For example, some industrial and financial groups, among which Pirelli, Nogara, Senigaglia, and Della Torre had planned to build a huge Italian company in Transcaucasia. This was an ambitious project with many difficulties, even in view of the fact that the British, through a policy of high customs tariffs, clearly implied that they would proceed to penetrate the Caucasus alone. 83 A good military man and an excellent observer, proven over time, Romei Longhena admired the qualities of Colonel Paolo Ruggeri Laderchi, military attaché in Petersburg in 1901–19, and Achille Bassignano, already engaged in Russia during the recovery of the irredentists. Due to the virtues demonstrated and his knowledge of the Russian world, Colonel Achille Bassignano would be put in command of the Italian military mission with the White General Anton Denikin.

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Menshevik high exponents such as Martov, fuelled a discussion between the reformist and other socialist groups. The main question was whether Lenin had betrayed the Marxist doctrine after the October Revolution. This was a bitter theme and initiated many confrontations among the most knowledgeable Italian socialist minds. Filippo Turati rejected it because, according to him, Russia was undergoing an “anarchic and utopian deviation of socialism” in a Plekhanovian style. Claudio Trèves supported Lenin, stating that he was motivated in light of “a chaotic state of historic contingent necessity.” The Bolshevik experiment was put to the attention of national public opinion, but it mainly animated the intellectual and political circles by having a superficial consequence on the civil society already dealing with the difficulties tied to the post-war reconstruction. The Ukrainian historian I. A. Khormach affirmed that Russia’s revolution did not have a noticeable impact on Italian public opinion for two reasons: “for the coincidental defeat of Caporetto (24 October 1917),” and the Italian retreat on all frontlines was consequently aggravated by a moral crisis and discord among military leaders; and by finding the government circles unprepared, “the Russian Revolution did not have more importance compared to the conclusion of the Balkan issues.”84 Antonio Gramsci came to the defence of the Bolshevik revolution and the Russian revolutionaries by stipulating that the authors of the liberation of Marx’s way of thinking were “from those positivistic and naturalist encrustations that largely depended on the historical development of economic factors while limiting the creative contribution of man’s will. Thanks to Lenin and the Bolsheviks the human and voluntary factor has been re-evaluated and evidence has also been provided that the will of the Russian people could have overcome obstacles considered insurmountable according to the canons of historical materialism.” Ignored by a great part of recent historiography is the activity of the Italian troops. This is clearly sustained by Richard Pipes in his book which recalls Peter Fleming’s85 studies, The Fate of Admiral Kolchak, according to which the American and Czech troops were “le sole unità alleate a combattere in Siberia” [“the only Allied units to fight in Serbia”]. This has a certain significance, and, compared to other Allied delegations, is perhaps animated by a spirit of patriotic solidarity with the “White”

84

I. A. Khormach, Otnoshchenya mezhdu sovietskim gosudarstvom i Italiei 1917– 1924 gg. (Moskva: RAN, 1993), 8–12. 85 P. Fleming, The Fate of Admiral Kolchak (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1963), 99–103.

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Russians more than economic interest.86 This was a key role that Italy, through its military contribution and logistic support to the Siberian and Caucasus populations, constantly had until the Allied powers pulled out of their missions because they considered the clash between Whites and Reds “una questione internazionale” [“an internal national issue”]. The permanent military members of the Supreme Council of War, located in Versailles,87 had studied an Allied intervention in the ports of Murmansk and Arkhangelsk in June 1918. Soon after came the Italian participation in the Allied expedition located in the Far East, under French 86

This statement might be proved wrong in a report sent from Tientsin in December 19, 1919, from the Italian RR troops in the Far East and signed by Lieutenant Colonel Edoardo Fassini Camossi of the Ministry of War in Rome. In it, the Italian officer shows a particular interest in pointing out the “sterminata ricchezza del suolo siberiano” [“immense richness of the Siberian land”], in his opinion a resource used only in part and badly, because of the Russian instability, lack of capital, from “apatia russa che rifugge da lavori in cui si richiede energia, responsabilità, attività e di iniziativa, della deficienza delle comunicazioni e delle vie di trasporto, del sistema di corruzione nella società russa e specialmente delle autorità e degli impiegati … gente alla quale, prima di ottenere l’autorizzazione di poter sfruttare o d’impiantare lavori di qualsiasi genere, aziende ecc., bisogna dare mancie fortissime, la cui somma varia a seconda dei diversi gradi di detti impiegati, appartenendo tutto il terreno allo Stato” [“Russian apathy that shuns labour that requires the energy, responsibility, activity, and initiative of the corruption system in Russian society and especially of the authorities and employees … people to whom, before obtaining authorizations to exploit or establish jobs of any type, companies, etc., have to give big tips, the amount of which varies according to the various levels of each employee since all land belongs to the state”]. Also pointed out is the lack of competent professionals, engineers and technicians, for which Russia has always had to turn to foreign countries. In spite of everything, the biggest problem was reaching mines of gold, silver, iron, and carbon, which were located hundreds of kilometres from the railways. The value of the report is indescribable, being an expression of the capacity of an exponent of the Italian high command to be a testament to and interpreter of a reality he understands, proposing—as if for a moment the “technician,” “economist,” and “specialist” replaced the military man—diverse solutions to the exploitation of the resources. Relazione sulla Siberia del Ten. Col. Fassini-Camossi, Tientsin December 19, 1919, Rome, Historic Archive Office, Staff of the Army, File F3, b. 272, f. 10. 87 The activity of the Supreme Council of War was very intense. It represented the military authority through which, often in union with the Inter-Allied Naval Council, there was the possibility of the intervention and deployment of corps in Russia. In the summer of 1918 it consisted of the following representatives: one French, Belin; one British, Sackville-West; an Italian, Di Robilant; and an American, Bliss.

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request since January. This was followed by another military task in the Russian northern ports of Caucasus and Vladivostok.88 This brings us to another point which deserves special attention: the missions and expedition corps with important diplomatic-military testimonies of an unstable Russian political-institutional scene, and the precipitation of events which within a few years would allow Lenin’s Reds to assume control of the entire Russian territory, the soon-to-be United Soviet Socialist Republic. As a matter of fact, after the conclusion of the German Armistice, the international diplomacy mobilized to decide what attitude to adopt towards Lenin’s Russia, which, in the eyes of the Entente, had become a “secret” ally of Berlin with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. For centuries, Russia had an important role in European politics, particularly between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in the fight against the Central and Ottoman empires. That period of its history attracted the attention of many historians as being an “atteggiamento vagamente teleologico che sembrava farne l’esito obbligato e in qualche modo definitivo di tutto il precedente percorso.”89 Events after the Revolution and the Civil War proved the fragile equilibrium among states, and the “barrier” role of teleology as being under constant danger of nationalisms ready to explode in a Europe that Versailles redesigned in a “hasty” manner, thus depriving the cultures of the people and ethnic groups their values and dignity. This thought is shared by many historians when considering what was decided upon in the Hall of Mirrors in January 1919: a failure, a disillusion, an affair between superpowers. The results of such matters are quite interesting in the works by T. E. Jessop, The Treaty of Versailles, Was it Just?, M. Launay, Versailles, une paix baclée? Le XXéme siècle est mal parti, A. J. Mayer, Politics and Diplomacy of Peacemaking: Containment and Counterrevolution at Versailles, 1918– 1919,90 and G. Romolotti, 1919: La Pace Sbagliata, next to which is the 88

These are the Far East corps of the previously mentioned Colonel Edoardo Fassini-Camossi in Krasnojarsk and of Lt. Col. Augusto Sifola in Murmania, during summer to autumn 1918; the Missions of Lt. Col. Achille Bassingnano in Taganrog with the troops of the “White” General Anton Ivanovich Denikin, the Siberian one led by Lt. Col. Vittorio Filippi of Baldissero in Vladivostok, and lastly that of Col. Melchiade Gabba in the Caucasus in April 1919. 89 This is a vaguely teleologist attitude which made the previous path seem like an obligatory and, in some way, definitive outcome. See A. Ferrari, La Russia zarista e la rivoluzione: Interpretazioni e problemi, in “L’Altro,” documents from the convention promoted by the Christian Russia Foundation and Diesse, Seriate, 1999. 90 T. E. Jessop, The Treaty of Versailles, Was it Just? (London: Nelson & Sons, 1942); M. Launay, Versailles, une paix baclée? Le XXéme siècle est mal parti

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contribution by Schmitt, Neutral Europe between War and Revolution, 1917–1923, on Europe’s role in the “Russian crises,” while Lauro Grassi’s observations are of great interest in Versailles e la Russia bolscevica, and finally the work of Melchionni, La vittoria mutilata: problemi ed incertezze della politica estera italiana sul finire della grande Guerra (Ottobre 1918–Gennaio 1919) on Italian politics for the peace treaty.91 With regards to the Paris Conference are the interesting studies in the German language by Erich Wuest, Erwin Viefhaus, Friedrich Stahl, Hellmuth Rossler, Peter Kruger, and Katherina Erdmenger, which are not to be neglected.92 Versailles, which has never represented a more crucial turning point for history as in the convictions of its legislators, is a starting point for a Europe that dismissed “the sick of the East.” It gave room to nationalism, leading to the explosion of a new and harsh world conflict with an unpredictable and disastrous outcome. In Versailles, decisions had to be made regarding the destiny of German territories, German demilitarization, (Bruxelles: Editions Complexe, 1981); A. J. Mayer, Politics and Diplomacy of Peacemaking: Containment and Counterrevolution of Versailles, 1918–1919 (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1967). 90 H. A. Schmitt, Neutral Europe between War and Revolution, 1917–1923 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1988); L. Grassi, Versailles e la Russia Bolshevica, in La Conferenza di Pace di Parigi fra Ieri e Domani (1919– 1920), A. Scottà (ed.) (Soveria Manelli: Rubettino, 2003), 113–23; M. G. Melchionni, La vittoria mutilata: problemi ed incertezze della politica estera italiana sul finire della grande guerra (Ottobre 1918–Gennaio 1919) (Roma: Ed. Di storia e letteratura, 1981); G. Romolotti, 1919: La pace sbagliata (Milano: Mursia, 1969). 91 E. Wuest, Der Vertrag von Versailles in Licht und Schatten der Kritik: die Kontroverse um seine wirtschaftlichen Auswirkungen (Zurich: Europa Verlag, 1962); E. Viefhaus, Die Minderheltenfrage und die Entstenhung der Minderheitenschutzvertrage auf der Pariser Friedenskonference 1919. Eine Studie zur Geschichte des Nationalitatenproblemsim 19 Und 20 (Wurzburg: Holzner, 1960); F. Stahl, Der Versailler Vertragvom 28. Juni 1919 als Instrument zur Ausbeutung. Erniedrigung und Schikanierung Deutschlands. Die Geschichte des Vertrages und seine Bestimmungen (Bremen: Faksimile-Verlag, 1986); H. Rossler, Ideologie und Machpolitik 1919. Plan und Werk der Pariser Friedenskonferenzen 1919 (Gottingen: Musterchmidt, 1966); P. Kruger, Versailles: deutsche Aussenpolitik zwischen Revisionismus und Friedenssicherung (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1986); K. Erdmenger, Neue Ansatzezur Organisation Europasnachdem Erten Weltkrieg (1917–1933). Einneues Verstandnis von Europa? (Sinzheim: Pro Universitate, 1995). 92 A formidable mystery. See: P. Renouvin, Il Trattamento di Versailles (Milano: Mursia, 1970), 109.

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the dismemberment of the ex-Russian Empire, and the difficult task of defending national borders. This was a colossal responsibility given to the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Japan, and the “Fourteen Points” declared by Wilson as fundamental for negotiations. However, the result was an entwinement of diplomatic issues between the defeated states and the new national aggregations, the conflicting attitudes of the Allied Super Powers regarding relations with the new Bolshevik power, the limited consideration for the problems of the national minorities, the border limits, and the use of demagogy to counteract the people’s protests. Furthermore, the Russian issue represented “una formidabile incognita,” an expression used by Georges Clémenceau. While Europe was searching for new national identities, Russia was bent backward by its huge unresolved problems that lay on the table of the Allied powers. On one side there was Lenin, who was aware that he had to first of all reunite the Soviets from Petrograd to Vladivostok and later deal with states recognized as having a de facto “temporary” independence. On the other side were the “White” generals, whose motto, “one and indivisible Russia,” alienated them from the support of the states belonging to the exTsarist Empire, which had declared themselves independent after the revolution. Both factions were struggling to reach their objective and had to recreate a state of discipline that the revolution had annulled. The only way to maintain control of the country and justify the high number of executions on either side was to overlook the number of victims, complete the unification at any cost, and act without feeling pity for the methods used. But many of those that considered themselves winners of the Civil War, like Zinovev, Kamenev, Tuchachevsky, Rykov, Bukharin, and Trotsky, ultimately suffered a fate similar to that of their victims at the hand of the “new” man, Joseph Stalin. From 1918, millions of farmers were exterminated and the country was torn into large sections, each one serving and embracing a cause specular or contrary to one another. Everyone felt legitimated to govern after the fall of Kerensky’s government (who took charge after Lvov), elected in a semi-“democratic” manner, even if such a term seems inappropriate for such a country. During the last year of the Tsarist Empire, the country had little room for the liberal trends, such as the cadet, inspired by a European “democratic culture.” What lay ahead was a civilisation saturated by contradictions where, before the war, the villages still identified the state with taxes and military service, or better, according to an expression from

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Graziosi, “un entità aliena, impervia alle loro concezioni di giustizia.”93 It was a war born from a postulate, antiauthoritarianism at all costs, that ended up being swallowed by the most brutal form of authoritarianism spoiled by a form of abnormal protagonism. In a short period, everything that the most illuminated minister of Nicholas II’s reign, Pyotr Arkadevich Stolypin, was able to create with the aggression reform program was wiped away by the principals of collectivization and the kulaki extermination. The idea was to make the Marxist political thought active. At the base of this were some contradictions that Lenin was well aware of, and the book Che Fare?, which appeared before the 1905 Revolution, stated the need for the most naive optimism to forget that the masses were still so little informed on the means and methods of socialism. Therefore, since the working class had not acquired a conscious organization, as it did not have the necessary education in order to bring the social class fight against the bourgeoisie, no socialist revolution issue could exist.94 Russia, to confirm the proletariat victory must go through a bourgeois revolution, and the February one by logic, was thought of as being just that. Afterwards, a socialist revolution was needed but was postponed to a later date to be determined. Therefore, the revolution defined by Edward Carr as being of “a hybrid character” places the temporary Government of Kerensky and the Soviet of Petrograd side by side on the basis of the 1905 model.95 In all of this, the peasant’s role became more important and, according to the theories of the German socialist Karl Radek, was bound up with the need to come to terms with it in order to create armed insurrections in Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary, and then involve Germany to bring about the principles of proletarian revolution triumph in the world. However, next to this policy, Lenin’s “comrades” proceeded with the requisitions, violence in the countryside, repression of anything other than the colour red, and extermination of the Cossacks, the stronghold of the restoring force in southern Russia. In a secret newsletter sent from the central Committee of the Communist Party to the Executive Committees of Kamensk, it was written that: the (non-proletarian) Cossacks must be exterminated without pity or hesitation. Compromises and half measures are not accepted by the Soviets and therefore it’s necessary to: organize the general terror, 93

An alien entity, demanding their concept of justice. See: A. Graziosi, La Guerra Contadina in USSR. Bolscevichi e contadini 1918–1933 (Napoli: ESI, 1998), 17. 94 V. I. Lenin, Che fare? (Roma: Ed. Lavoro, 1987). 95 E. H. Carr, La Rivoluzione Russa. Da Lenin a Stalin 1917–1929 (Torino: Einaudi, 1980), translation from English by Franco Salvatorelli.

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confiscate the wheat, facilitate the migration of proletarians in Cossack districts, disarm the population and shoot down who possesses arms … lands in which Cossacks will be buried will be turned over to the proletarians.96

Heller and Nekric affirmed and reiterated the role that different personalities had within the terror climate that was created: la saldatura fra promesse utopistche e uno spietato terrore di massa fu il miscuglio detonante che consenti ai bolscevichi di riportare la vittoria nella Guerra civile…[cosicché] la presenza di un capo che sapeva dosare la composizione del miscuglio a seconda delle circostanze fu un fattore di importanza grandissima.97

In this manner, international diplomacy enters the scene. At first the Allies conversed with the Bolshevik government in sight of a possible alliance with Germany—a danger to be avoided at all costs. In March 1918, after months of useless negotiations, the Brest-Litovsk peace forced the Allies to revise their plans of action. By now it was clear that Lenin was indulging in the German plans, and for this reason they decided to send military missions to Russia. They had to avoid the penetration of the Central Empire and Germany into the heart of Russia to exploit the rich oilfields. Among the various missions were Italian ones, of which little or nothing was known until a few decades ago when the first publications appeared regarding military missions edited by the historic office of the chief of staff of the army. This is a gap in historic research which tends to work in broad terms by following traces of British, French, and German historiography, while forgetting to observe the points of view of nations such as Italy, Romania, and Serbia. These countries also had an important role within the Russian Civil War. Without the logistic support of the Italian high command, the defence of the Trans-Siberian railway and northern ports, the constant supply of ammunition and provisions, and the war experience of the officers called back from the Austrian front to be sent to Russia, alongside the moral support and work of the sappers and telegraphers, very appreciated by British and Russian Generals, we would 96

The newsletter in question was published in a French magazine of that time and can now be found in the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF), file 4644, inv; I, folder 32, p. 199. 97 “The connection between utopian promises and ruthless mass terror was the explosive mixture that allowed the Bolsheviks to bring back victory within the civil war … [therefore] the presence of a leader able to dose the mixture composition according to the circumstances was of great importance.” M. Heller and A. Nekric, Storia dell’Urss, dal 1917 a Eltsin (Milano: Bompiani, 2001), 96.

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be speaking of another war. Therefore, Italy, even if it was engaged in a difficult moment of national war, honoured the commitment with the Allies sent into Russian territory as an expeditionary force in Murmania and to Arkhangelsk commanded by Lt. Col. Augusto Sifola,98 an expeditionary force in the Far East guided by Lt. Col. Edoardo Fassini Camossi99 that sustained the Italian Military Mission in Vladivostok at the command of Colonel Vittorio Filippi of Baldissero,100 and a TransCaucasus Military Mission led by Lt. Col. Melchiade Gabba.101 Between 1918 and 1920, Italy continued to embrace a cause that would soon be betrayed by the Allies in favour of a policy that recognized Lenin and his loyal allies, the only interlocutors of “all the Russias.” This was a slap that Versailles did not wait to ratify by admitting the Bolsheviks to the negotiating table, instead of those who, for nearly two years, the Allies argued against. The hypocrisy was in justifying that act as the only one able to stabilize a fragmented institutional framework in micro-units. Indeed, Admiral Kolchak had been recognized as sole representative of the counterrevolutionary movement by the same White Generals who initially did not want to support his coup during Amsk’s government in November 1918. The Red Army’s military superiority must, however, be regarded as crucial in the analysis of the causes that helped win the war against the 98

Lt. Col. Augusto Sifola, Commander of 3° Btg Group Bersaglieri Cyclists in Cortellazzo, and committed to the operation “conquest of the New Piave.” He was convened by the War Ministry in Rome on August 5, 1918, and received orders to assume command of the expeditionary force in Murmania, already forming through the military authority in Turin. 99 After some difficulties related to the precipitation of events in the early months of 1918, by order of the Ministry of War the Italian expedition force left Naples on July 21 towards Messina led by infantry Lt. Col. Edoardo Fassini Camossi, an officer who had earned the esteem of senior commands in Siberia for the authority with which he brought discipline and courage in supporting the Allied intervention in Russia. 100 Besides Bassignano, three other officers, and a posse of soldiers were part of the expedition that set sail from Taranto on August 10, 1919 aboard the steamer Semiramis, hired by the ministry, on which was a battalion of Romanians heading to Constanta. 101 Different from the other missions, this one had to go to Tiflis, not for a purely logistical-military purpose but for a study regarding the Italian investment project in Trans Caucasia, and, secondly, to report the possibility of replacing the British troops already engaged there and on the way to repatriation. The head of the mission, who sailed from Taranto on April 28, 1919 on the steamer Menfi with Batum as its first destination, was Colonel of Staff Melchiade Gabba, who had the task to report the results by the end of May 1919 to the Italian delegation at the Paris Peace Conference, which was the direct issuer.

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White Armies, a fact of unquestionable and fundamental importance. But apart from this reading of history, we must focus on other objective factors that we cannot neglect and through which we can discover the reasons for the defeat of the anti-Bolshevik armies. In doing so, one must take into account the climate of terror implemented during those years by the Reds and Whites, the resistance of the peasants in the countryside, but above all the disorientation of the Russian people, to whom ideas and concepts were given regarding new social and cultural models without their being able to discern their meaning. Tsarism, in the expression of all its historic boundaries, had been for more than three centuries the common denominator of every Russian’s life. Contemporarily to its historic function, it was a form of “protection” to which the Russian farmer had been used. The birth of a “proletarian question” proved to not adequately meet the requirements of the Russian society of the first two decades of the twentieth century. The Bolshevik claims left everyone perplexed. They were pointing the finger at the failure of the Tsarist policy but could not see a valid reason to embrace the new revolutionary cause in the words of Lenin. One million people died of hunger between 1917 and 1920, and hundreds of thousands lost their lives in the clashes and repressions that took place around the same time. These are figures that give an idea of the great chapter of Russian history that more generally goes under the name of the Russian Civil War. The Russian events were perceived in Italy through the Bolshevik propaganda where it reached the Italian parliament. The large socialist group showed itself to be in opposition to sending missions to Russia to support counter-revolutionary groups. This took place on the eve of the final offensive against the Austro-Hungarian troops located on the Italian front of the Piave. The difficulties of the moment, the high costs of war, long offensive actions against enemy troops, and poor conditions of the Italian military did not allow the government to further concern itself with the Russian question until November 3, 1918, when the Villa Giusti Armistice was signed. A month earlier, after repeated defeats at the hands of the Allied troops led by General Foch, the German governments proposed an armistice to Wilson. This act led to the German revolution starting with the muting of the Hochseeflotte at Wilhelmshaven in October, and ended with the Armistice of November 11 based on Wilson’s fourteen points, with which the Brest-Litovsk (March 1918)102 and Bucharest (May 1918)103 treaties were cancelled. 102

The main cause of the hostile attitude of the Allies towards Bolshevik Russia was the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk of March 1918, which deprived Russia of many territories, including those of the Baltics in Poland, in addition to the recognition of the independent states of Finland and Ukraine. This initiated colossal historic

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After the war in June 1919, the Italian government led by Francesco Nitti and Tommaso Tittoni in foreign affairs, together with Vittorio Scialoja, Wilhelm Marconi, Maggiorino Ferrraris, and Marquis Imperiali, formed the Italian delegation in Paris and addressed its attention to the commitment taken with the Allies regarding Russia. The commitment that was large in proportion to Italy’s military capacity, and was the cause of many lives lost in a hostile land, was marred by ideological prejudices in which anti-Italian propaganda was supported not only by Austrian agents but also those new allies such as France. According to General Romei, it manipulated anti-Italian feeling in Poland after a revolt that occurred in Upper Silesia.104 But Russia had also known the Italian Liberation War, appreciating its value, and whose echo travelled all the way to Moscow and Saint Petersburg through characters such as Vladimir Zabughin, a literature professor in Rome, who dealt with spreading Italian propaganda in Russia by projecting the movie Adamello in 1916 along with slides on the Italian campaign.105 Vladimir’s mission took place from May to September 1917 on orders from Minister Vittorio Scialoja (1856–1933). But the story of the Great War is known in Russia thanks to France and the United Kingdom, who sent propaganda films and brochures about the state of the world conflict. When the Russian Revolution broke out, Europe was overwhelmed by events that engaged it in a long and difficult war with an uncertain outcome, and therefore did not immediately perceive the “revolutionary” character of the Bolshevik elite that had come to power. The effect would be even more muffled by the Entente’s policy that was inclined, up to the last minute, to give credibility to the new leadership so as to prevent it from concluding separate agreements with Germany. This would have led

research, evidenced by numerous international contributions on the topic, including Pier Leo Ragghianti, Brest-Litovsk. Una pace per una politica di transizione (Milan: Nuova Cultura, 1978), and John Wheeler-Bennet, BrestLitovsk. The Forgotten Peace, March 1918 (London: Macmillan, 1956). 103 Signed on May 7, 1918, peace between the Central Powers and Romania foresaw the sale of Dobruja to Bulgaria and the exploitation of oil wells by Germany. 104 Notes from General Romei in 1921 in AUSSME, file E-11,b, 63, f. 13. 105 Vladimir Nikolaevich Zabughin (1880–1923), born in Saint Petersburg and with a degree in history, in 1911 obtained the lectureship in humanistic literature in Rome. For a long time he dealt with Italian propaganda in Russia. He was among the first to speak to the Russians about the irreconcilable contrasts between Croatism (similar to the Austrian mentality) and Serbianism (of Slovak matrix), affirming that Croats were against the annexation of Dalmatia since 1866.

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to serious damage to the powers engaged against the pan-Germanism expansion in Central and Eastern Europe and in Asia. In Italy, the “revolutionary” phenomenon was known from the early months of the Bolshevik coup in which prominent members of the Russian intelligencija, after having abandoned the country, began to create committees abroad as well as in Italy that took on different names but had the liberation of Russia from Bolshevism as their purpose. Important documents for this purpose are contained in the GARF106 in Moscow. Some of these files were given by the Prague Archives to Russian archives so that they could use them to complete base material. The three major anti-Bolshevik organizations formed around that period and many political and intelligencija personalities gathered together, such as Pavel’ Meljukov and Eugenio de Miller.107 The main interest was to persuade the Allies to support the forces that were fighting the Bolsheviks by urging an intervention alongside the Dobrovolskij army of General Denikin. The effect of such propaganda soon triggered solidarity in the Italian public opinion by those who saw a betrayal of socialist revolutionary ideas in the Bolshevik dictatorship. The League for the Russian Renaissance had bases in the United Kingdom, France, Switzerland, and Italy, and was very active during the Conference of Versailles. It was conscious, like other emigrant organizations, of representing a fundamental moment in the fate of the country. A memoir presented to President Wilson on January 4, 1919, on the eve of the opening session at Versailles, on behalf of the delegates of the Russian organizations of Rome united under the slogan “Pro-Russian Democracy,” recalled the sixth of the fourteen points proclaimed by the American President. They demanded that the Russian unit be respected, the pan-Germanism danger be put under accusation, that the Russian government fighting for reunification be recognized, and to have the right to participate in the inter-Allied Peace Conference, as well as advocated an Allied intervention against the Bolsheviks.108 The organic 106

In the Moscow archives are several files that deal with organizations created in defence of Russia from the Bolsheviks thanks to the Allies in Italy and in contact with the committees that were organized in major Western European capitals (File 5806, inventory 1, folders 23–26; file 4644, inv. I, folder 32). 107 The State Council for the reunification of Russia, the National Center (part of the Cadet group formed in June 1918) and Council of the rebirth of Russia including the Constitutional-Democratic Party, the popular Socialist party, the “Unità” group, heirs of Plehanov, the Socialist-revolutionaries, and the Social Democrats. 108 The following were part of the “Pro-democratic Russia” Committee: the League for the Russian regeneration together with the Allies, the Italian-Russian Society

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unity of Russia was considered a fundamental postulate of the equilibrium and peace in Europe and the world. By plunging into a political state comparable to that of the sixteenth century, Russia would have in fact found “the same obstacles as then and would have attempted again to overcome them by feeling forced to repeat the wars of Ivan the Terrible for Livonia and of Tsar Aleksej for Ukraine. Europe’s East would become an endless Balcania, filled to saturation with explosive elements which Germany would certainly and wisely take advantage of, winning but not dominating, which would return to the old Prussian policy of intensive cultivation of animosity between Russia and Poland.”109 A forecast had never been truer. for the cultural approach, the Commission for Italian-Russian Cultural rapprochement, the Russian Institute in Rome, the editors of the weekly newspaper “La Russia Nuova,” the editors of the monthly magazine “La Russia Democratica,” and the rescue committee for Russians residing in Italy. Information from the GARF, Fondo sulla storia del movimento bianco e dell’emigrazione, 4644, f. P-5806 (Organizacionnoe bjuro v Rime), inv. 1, folder 24, p. 51. 109 The author of the article from which these considerations have been taken shows keen political acumen and foresees what would later happen in Europe: the German renaissance, the Russian “ideological expansionism,” the “strangulation” of Poland up to its fourth partition, and the creation of a “Great Balcania” exploited in 1989. The editorial is especially interesting when it highlights the future set-up of the Russian state on a simple party basis. “The lack of a strong, stable and free Russia in the East of Europe would prevent equilibrium of the Polish State, even of a Poland that is wisely free from Imperialistic goals and inclined for an agreement with its Slav sisters. Poland would find a threat on the West and on the East a mere dangerous void, worse than any threat. Bohemia, surrounded on almost all sides by Germany, would also suffer the consequences of a growing mutual state of political discomfort of Russia and Poland, finding itself without its natural allies … Ukraine, abandoned to its harsh fate already experienced towards the mid-eighteenth century, would be a continuous source of complications for Europe and of Russian-Polish-German disputes [as would happen soon]. The present state of Russia’s disunity, especially if made stable and legally recognized, would lead to the total disappearance of intermediate political trends in Russia … Russia would find itself again a victim of a bad undemocratic government, an enemy by institution of all democratic populations of the Entente and United States, natural ally of every militarist and absolutist State, fatal ally of Germany, no matter if Imperial or socialist, if Germany had disagreeable intentions. The death of Russian democracy would be a very serious disease for the world, it would be the source of a new appalling carnage and of dreadful sorrow that, unfortunately, would fade the memories of the most appalling atrocities of the war won by the Entente and the United States (January 1919).” GARF, Fondo sulla storia del movimento bianco e dell’emigrazione, P-5806, inv. 1, folder 24, p. 51.

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There have been many debates over the “Russian Question,” which seems to maintain the interest of conversations in intellectual circles, especially the trend towards the left of a great part of the Italian cultural world around the twentieth century. Interesting in this regard is the exchange of letters in the summer of 1918 between General Eugenio De Miller, president of the Russian League in Rome, and the historian Gaetano Salvemini. The former Russian officer did not want to give credit to a statement which appeared in the newspaper La Russia Nuova under the title “The Authoritative Opinion of Professor Salvemini on the Russian Question,” in which he supposedly stated: “we would almost prefer a hundred years of Bolsheviks to the return of the Ancien Régime”110: Je me refuse absolument de croire que Vous ayez pu dire cela … Vous comme Italien “Ami de la Russie” … Entre nous il ne peut exister d’equivoques sur une question aussi capitale comme l’appréciation du régime bolschevik. Des comparaisons pareilles sont toujours à éviter à mon avis, car si nous connaissons bien les bons et les mauvais côtés de l’ancien régime, l’immagination la plus fantasque ne pourrait nous donner le tableau que réprésenterait la Russie après cent ans de régime bolschevik tel que nous le connaissons …111

But, Miller adds, once the comparison is made one should recognize the good done by the Ancien Régime, despite numerous errors, for Russia: from a role of power capable of counterbalancing itself with the growing German power, to the great reform of serfdom which happened in a peaceful manner while at the same time “flôts de sang a du être payé l’abolissement de l’esclavage dans la démocratique Répubblique des EtatsUnis d’Amérique.” This takes in the liberation war of the Slavs in the Balkans, Serbs, Montenegrins, and Bulgarians of Turkish domination, in an era in which Gladstone raised his voice in vain in favour of the massacred Christian people against the almighty Beakonsfield, friend and protector of the Sultan, to Stolypin’s agrarian reform which in five years created more than seven million landowners, and finally the abolition of alcohol sales in Russia, which in other countries had to undergo long debates. Miller ends his letter saying “tout cela n’étaient que des questions intérieures qui ne concernaient que les russes,” and invites Salvemini to read the correspondence of “Il Messaggero,” the Bourtzef brochure Maledetti siate Bolscevichi published by “La Nuova Russia,” or the article

110

The exchange of letters is at the GARF Fondo sulla storia del movimento bianco e dell’emigrazione, P-5806, inv. 1, folder. 23, pp. 48–50. 111 Ibid.

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by Harkevitch112 on “Il nuovo giornale.” From San Marcello Pistoiese, where he lived, Gaetano Salvemini responded to General Miller, claiming that the phrase was correctly attributed to him and that it was said within a conversation during an interview and reported in good faith by the journalist, but was “a boutade used in a friendly conversation, which printed can have another effect, but nothing more or less than a boutade.”113 In response, Salvemini addressed the issue raised by Miller claiming that if the Russians asked for the involvement in a propaganda endeavour that solicited the Entente intervention in Russia, such an intervention could take place only if it was not directed at the restoration of the old regime: se non abbiamo la certezza che la restaurazione dell’antico regime è esclusa, noi non possiamo lavorare insieme. Padroni voi di fare in casa vostra quel che credete; ma padroni noi di tenerci da parte.” Infatti, le preoccupazioni maggiori provengono dal fatto che non sono pochi gli esponenti antibolscevichi di fede monarchica. Lo storico italiano si scaglia contro lo zarismo dispotico “che per mezzo secolo ha riempito l’Europa di esuli politici, a somiglianza degli antichi regimi italiani anteriori al 1860. Uno czar costituzionale, circondato da elementi liberali, magari conservatori, ma sia veramente costituzionale il quale non cambi le leggi elettorali secondo fa comodo alle camarille di corte e all’estrema destra reazionaria sarebbe altra cosa. Fra l’assolutismo Zarista e il bolscevismo ci sono infinite soluzioni possibili. Ma se la Russia non potesse scegliere che fra l’assolutismo zarista e il bolscevismo … non resterebbe che dichiararsi fautori dei bolscevichi, pur riconoscendo tutto il danno che essi fanno … fra i due mali si sceglie il minore. [“if we don’t have the certainty that the restoration of the old regime’s excluded, we cannot work together. You are free to do as you please in your home but we are entitled to stand aside.” In fact, major concerns come from the fact that many anti-Bolshevik exponents are of monarchist faith. The Italian historian attacks the despotic Tsarism, “which for half a century has filled Europe with political exiles in the likeness of ancient Italian regimes prior to 1860. A constitutional Tsar, surrounded by many liberal elements, perhaps conservative, that is really constitutional and does not change the election laws according to what suits the court clique and the reactionary right. Among the Tsarist absolutism and Bolshevism there are endless possible solutions. If Russia couldn’t choose between 112

In regards to the correct transliteration of Cyrillic names and surnames, the principle expressed at the beginning of the volume holds true (examples in the French Grigorieff and Italian Grigorev) 113 GARF, Fondo sulla storia del movimento bianco e dell’emigrazione, P-5806, inv. 1, folder 23, pp. 61–68.

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Tsarist absolutism and Bolshevism … the only choice would be to declare oneself supporters of the Bolsheviks, even if having to acknowledge all the damage they provoke … one chooses the least of two evils.”]

In his analysis, Salvemini does not ignore the parallel with the French Revolution, which brought the regime of Robespierre to power and whom resisted less than Bolshevism in Russia. What mattered in France in 1794, as in Russia during that delicate moment in history, was that the monarchy did not return to power, and it was necessary to prevent this in any way and at any cost. Regarding the historical function of Tsarism, Salvemini compares it to the glorious French monarchy which, despite its greatness, was demolished and swept away by the Revolution, and as a historian he acknowledges that function: today I would gun down without hesitation a minute Donedet and Mauricar. If Izvolsky worked at the return of the old regime in Russia I would applaud the Russian that shuts him down, even if that Russian were a Bolshevik, because forced to choose between the two extreme cases, I will always consider a minor evil, for Russia and humanity, Lenin compared to Raupadin.114

The Italian historian justifies the Italian alliance with Tsarist Russia as “a moral passivity,” to which they submitted because the help of the Tsarist armies was indispensable to Italy: “and when you’re about to drown you even grab onto snakes: for me the absolutist Tsarism was the snake. In March of 1917 we had a great joy, the moral passivity had disappeared; the Russian Revolution was for us the first gain for humanity caused by war.”115 Although the Russian Revolution made the Italian victory problematic due to the collapse of the Tsarist army, or better the end of the Ancien Régime, good exceeded evil, or rather the paralysis of the Russian military and the prolongation of the war. At the conclusion of his long response, Salvemini admits that the hatred towards the old regime did not depend on the war because it was hated even before 1914. The letter leaves no doubt that the position was adopted by a majority of the Italian academic culture aligned in favour of the Revolution of February 1917, and in the wake of which it would like to see the Marxist principles realized, thus avoiding any risk of restoration. Miller’s response 114

“Raupadin” is perhaps a transcription error. It would be appropriate to think that Salvemini refers in his letters to Gregory Rasputin, monk and advisor of Tsar Nicholas II. 115 Ibid.

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was aimed at demonstrating the constitutional character of the league he represented, along with the one headed by Izvolsky, who was in his time a partisan of constitutional ideas, to form a cabinet of “cadets” composed of members of the Constitutional-Democratic Party. To assume that Izvolsky worked on the return of the Ancien Régime “c’est se créer des fantòme.”116 Concerning the “snake” matter, the General rhetorically asked if this role was not being played by the Germans in Ukraine and Finland. To this end, we must remember the important position adopted by the Whites against those states which, taking advantage of the revolutionary storm, detached themselves from the Tsarist Empire, declaring themselves independent. No kind of autonomy or independence was intended to be given to them, and the hostile attitude of the White Generals towards the people who showed secessionist ambitions was crucial in the final outcome of the Civil War. The debate in Italy was very much alive and often involved the authoritative characters of the national intelligencija. Newspapers, as always happens in times of political uncertainty, assumed positions dictated mainly by the need to reflect the ideological positions of editors when possible, and remained silent regarding any involvement of the Italian military in the Russian territory. It was indeed the government’s concern to prevent Bolshevik revolutionary ideas from penetrating Italy while it remained shaken by the after-effects of the war. However, Italian military intervention in Russia is a historic event of great magnitude that deserves to be analysed with due consideration. It was distinguished by its geographical location and for the manner of intervention: in the north, in the logistical and structural contribution to defend materials contained in the ports of Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, and to support the troops of general Nikolay Judenich; in Siberia and the Far East, in securing the Trans-Siberian railway between Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk besides monitoring the area against sabotage or Bolshevik uprisings; and in the Caucasus and southern Russia, through trade and 116

Miller sustains that once this point is clarified, the discussion on what is best for Russia becomes a purely academic question. Which regime is preferable for Russia and Italy provided what Tsarist Russia did for Italy and what the Bolshevik regime would have never done. The Russian officer believed that Salvemini wrote under the impulse of a deep hatred towards the monarchy, but that the day would come “when the professor of history, the man of history will win over the politician, the man of the party, of the picked party and then you’ll see my letter with better understanding.” Miller’s letter to Salvemini of August 30, 1918. GARF, file on the history of the White movement and emigration, P-5806, inv. 1, folder 23, pp. 69– 73.

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logistic support to the volunteer army of Denikin. Without forgetting the meaning of military value in such acts, the moral support that could determine an Allied mission in the Russian military that fought Bolshevism was incalculable. A population on its last legs needed officers able to rearrange the frontline, maintain discipline, avoid desertions or rebellions, and give courage and dignity to men who must fight opponents who were previously neighbours, friends, or relatives. If you analyse these causes in light of the outcome of the Russian Civil War, the works of Fassini Camossi, Bassignano, or Gabba are very important. The withdrawal of Italian troops along with all the Allies coincided with the defeat of the White Army. This was not by chance if you consider the objective of the Red Army—the act was one of the decisive points in determining Lenin’s victory. As long as Fassini Camossi’s expedition held its position, Kolchak’s army was protected from behind and could concentrate on the western offensive. When it withdrew in the summer 1919 for “superior orders,” even the Siberian army of Omsk collapsed the following fall under the strong push by Bolshevik agents and local uprisings. It was a defeat determined by choices which, in light of the events of the twentieth century, might today be considered “unhappy” regarding the Western governments that abandoned the Russians to their immature destiny, convinced that they were acting in the interests of that people, according to the Wilson plans. Even Poland is responsible for the Whites’ defeat in Russia because it allowed Lenin to turn his troops against Denikin, hoping to profit from the talks and under-the-table agreements with the Bolsheviks, without imagining the political implications of that act. The responsibilities of the Whites’ defeat are many and the analysis of such factors brings us to conclude that the missions on Russian territory had the effect of slowing down a pre-planned fate for Russia. The only appreciation may come from the work done by the military Allies and the high commands in Russia, surely including the Italians—an endeavour that for its size diverged enormously from the poverty of ideas demonstrated by the Allied delegations in Versailles. In the months following the October Revolution, the former Tsarist Empire was divided into numerous groups of states with features and goals that were different from one another. The first political-military analysis, made by various foreign delegations present in the territory, and the creation of two main blocks are noted. The so-called European Russia and Asian Russia, particularly the former, demonstrated diverse traits of “separatism” and “unionism.” The first tended to establish autonomous and independent states, well defined by territory, culture, and ethnicity; the

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second, headed by the Soviet power under the “leadership,” was still not able to be named a dictatorship of the “Trojka” formed by Lenin-TrotskyCicerin117 that radiated massive political propaganda from Petrograd to Moscow.118 The year 1918 can be considered pivotal for the fate of the Russian people. The election of the Constituent Assembly119 in January and its dissolution shortly afterwards by Lenin, the soldier’s revolt against the officers, the beginning of a one-party regime, and the establishment of the Ceka all represent choices the Bolshevik elite would be soon called upon to respond to. But the break with the monarchic past had to be clean cut, both symbolic and emblematic, and for this purpose the Gregorian calendar was adopted in January 31, 1918. The interest that the Bolshevik headquarters in Moscow showed towards the delegations present in the immense Euro-Asian territory was intended to preserve the political credibility of the new leaders. The deposition of Tsar Nicholas Romanov and the dissolution of the first democratic people’s representation, the Constitutional Assembly, aroused strong doubts among the European courts. There was a fear that, along with the First World War damages, there might also be an insurrection organized by the left-wing revolutionaries in power with Lenin. First of all there was Germany, whose public opinion had already had to suffer the humiliation of defeat to the British and French, in which Lenin’s words arrived like fire through the massive communist propaganda launched by the party. 117

Vladimir Ilych Ulyanov (Nikolai Lenin) was born in Simbirsk in 1870. Leiba Bronstein (Lev DavidovichTrotsky), a Jew like Lenin, was born under the Kherson government in 1879, while Georgy Vasilevich Chicherin was born under the Tambov government of 1872. 118 At the Second Congress of Soviets on October 25–26 (November 7–8) 1917, Lenin proposed to countries at war a strange peace that was defined in his speech as being: “democratic and fair which draws the overwhelming majority of workers and working classes of all belligerent countries, exhausted, worn-out and tormented by the war—clear solicitation for lifting all European working classes against the regime under which they stand at the moment— immediate peace without annexations (without conquering foreign lands, without forced annexation of other peoples) and without compensation.” Essentially, this was the “Soviet peace” which, even if officially declaring that it did not want to subjugate other populations, did not completely exclude its annexation. V. I. Lenin, Sulla Politica Estera dello Stato Sovietico (Moscow: Progress, 1976), 5. 119 Of the 707 elected, 307 were members of the Social-Revolutionary Party, 170 Bolsheviks, 40 Left Social-Revolutionaries, 34 Mensheviks, and 100 from other parties.

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March 3, 1918 was the day of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and the first act of the “Soviet diplomacy”120 signing, a date for the border between two Russias: one that came out of Lenin’s projects, the hero who subjugated the Romanovs,121 and the other of the left socialist revolutionaries who strongly opposed the Bolshevik plans and called on the people to continue the armed struggle against the German enemy. The treaty imposed disastrous conditions on Russia, including the independence of Ukraine, Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, along with the assignment of Transcaucasia to Turkey. Russia lost thirtysix percent of its population, twenty-seven percent of its lands fit for cultivation, twenty-five percent of the rail system, and seventy-five percent of its coal reserves, and was forced into a heavy war indemnity. Before the treaty, a great wave of actions had marked the phases of Bolshevik control of the country.122 120

Adolph Joffe’s (an alternative transliteration is Adolf Ioffe) story regarding the negotiations in the German town is interesting. Joffe, along with Trotsky, Kamenev, and Radek, was part of the Russian delegation that negotiated peace with the delegates of the Central Powers. In his memoirs, published in Russia right after the suicide of the “Political Consultant” of the “Soviet” delegation headed by Sokolnikov in Brest, some considerations deserve particular attention. He asserts that in the context of the discussion about the acceptance of the peace conditions there immediately emerged two negotiation tactics with the Germans; one by Trotsky, “neither peace nor war,” and the other taken from Lenin’s statement that now was not the time to exchange notes, that “we must stop being on hold.” Joffe also points his finger at the Rada representatives of Ukraine, through which, according to Trotsky, in order to sign a separate Peace Treaty that recognized de facto independence from Moscow, they suffered a sort of protectorate abuse from Berlin in exchange for the exploitation of wheat resources, in which Ukraine is rich, of March 22, 1918, annulled by the German revolution. Anyway, history gives a reason for Lenin’s tactics. See A. A. Ioffe, La Pace di Brest Litovsk nelle Memorie di Joffe, translated by A. Quintavalle, in AUSSME, Rome, File L 3, b. 76, f. 3. 121 It is said that Lenin’s hatred for the Tsar was personal after the death sentence in 1887 of the older brother of the Bolshevik leader for having participated in a conspiracy aimed at the murder of Alexander III. 122 Among them we recall the establishment in December 20, 1917 of the Extraordinary Commission to combat counter-revolution, sabotage, and speculation, the so-called Ceka; instead, on February 19, 1918, nationalization of the lands began. The objects of repression by the new “Soviet” government were the constitutional democrats (cadets), the social-revolutionaries (except those of the left wing) who had obtained a high percentage of votes in the election of the Constituent Assembly on January 5, 1918 with 370 seats out of 707, dissolved the next day by Lenin and the Mensheviks.

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This lay the foundations for the Civil War that exploded within a few months when forces against the revolutionary White movement, composed of officers in the Tsar’s army, Cossacks (related to the bourgeois environment), former terrorists linked to the figure of Boris Savinkov, and several intellectuals, organized an anti-Bolshevik function. Meanwhile, the social-revolutionaries returned to forms of terrorism that were implemented around the end of the nineteenth century and murdered some Bolshevik exponents, including the head of the Cheka of Petrograd (which changed its name in 1914), while Lenin himself suffered an attack in which he was injured in August 1918.123 Moscow returned to being the capital in March 1918, and as a new centre of power had to face the difficult times the country was undergoing. The south of Russia and the “far” Siberia represented a world in turmoil in which the local Cossack anti-Bolshevik governments of Don, Kuban’, and Terek were created. The resistance to the Maximalist neo-government organized itself in southern Russia where a volunteer “white” army at the command of General Michail Vasilevic Alekseev,124 soon joined by general Lavr Georgevich Kornilov,125 took shape and prepared to contrast the advancement of the Red Army, passed under the control of Leon Trotsky. Like wildfire, the phenomenon of the counter-revolution widened and took advantage of the general chaos and climate of disappointment of the people. This was caused by the harsh peace terms imposed by Germany, which made proselytes in many regions

123

In the climate of terror and suspects, opened by the party the day after seizing power, for many left Socialist Revolutionaries these became unimportant objectives for the defence of “socialist principles” betrayed by Lenin, or better the elimination of the Bolshevik leader. The author of the attack was Fania Efimovna Kaplan (1890–1918), terrorist and close ally of Maria Aleksandrovna Spiridonova (1884–1941), who became one of the protagonists of the insurgence of left Socialist revolutionaries in July 1918 in Moscow. During the attack, Kaplan injured Lenin with two gunshots. She was executed immediately after capture. Noless horrifying were the methods used by the Bolsheviks. A known episode is the one from late August 1918 when Lenin approved Trotsky’s order to “apply the principle of ‘decimation’ for anyone who retreats from the front.” 124 Mikhail Vasilevich Alekseev (1857–1918), Army Chief of Staff during the period in which Nicholas II was at the head of the Russian armies, Supreme Commander from May to June 1917. He is considered a key figure in the establishment of the first White Army in southern Russia right after the Bolshevik revolution. 125 Lavr Georgievich Kornilov (1870–1918), Commander of the Russian armies in August 1917, was head of the first White Armies in southern Russia until near the end of the famous “March on Ice.”

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of Russia,126 and in which we must remember that the agitations remained unsolved up until the period of the so-called “Bloody Sunday” in 1905. This worked to the detriment of the initial support of the Allies, who saw in Lenin’s Russia fertile ground for rampant German propaganda and the “inclination” of Germany’s Ostpolitik for the exploitation of oilfields and the Russian border resources in Siberia and Caucasus. It should be kept in mind that the Allied attitude oscillated between requesting Russia to not pursue separate peace talks with the German enemy and the study of a plan to encourage the best (i.e. favourable to the United Kingdom and the United States) situation for a political-social balance within the state that was going to be born from the ashes of the Tsarist Empire.127 After Brest-Litovsk, the Allied attention moved towards those who suddenly, as a result of Lenin’s compromise-betrayal, became heirs of the Russian resistance to Germany, or, better, counter-revolutionary armies. Thus, the Eurasian chessboard was enriched with new foreign players who triggered and hampered the development of a real opposition to Bolshevik forces. In summary, although it is true that the Allies, including French, British, Japanese, Americans, Czech, Romanians, and later Italians, had sent contingents to Russia to block the German advance towards the rich Siberian mines, in a country like Russia overwhelmed by a fully-fledged identity crises it is also true that, in a time when the role of the Central Power of the Communist Party of Russia seemed strong, it was not possible for any Allied government to delegitimize the leadership. International historiography has left a river of words flowing through the pages of history, in which the aspects related to the initial trials of the former Allies against Lenin and his comrades of the party considered “adventurers” and “a fringe of crazy revolutionaries” are analysed.128 This 126

Many of the great leaders of the revolts of 1918–21, from Makhno to Antonov, had their formative experiences in 1905–7. The villages which led the resistance to collectivization were often those distinguished in 1905 or that had produced before 1917 an abnormal number of Socialists. 127 The Entente had used all means against the separate peace agreement between Russia and Germany, starting with the Treaty of London in September 1914, to which Italy and Japan adhered, up to the secret French-Russian Agreement of March 1917 in which Russia was granted to establish “freely to her pleasure the border with Germany” as long as a neutral state be constituted, the Rhine Republic, after the dismemberment of the Reich. These attempts were destined to be unsuccessful, as testified by the Russian-German Agreement of Brest-Litovsk. 128 The historiography of the Soviet era did nothing more than highlight the heroism of the Bolsheviks and the valour demonstrated during the Civil War by the Red Army, which alone fought against the “counter-revolutionary restorer” and the “bourgeois” governments of the West. They became martyrs of the revolution,

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was an opposition that manifested with the Allies’ decision to transfer their embassies to the small provincial town of Vologda, 560 kilometres east of Petrograd, instead of Moscow when it returned to being the capital.129 Through a system of fragile international alliances, Lenin, Trotsky, and Chicherin’s Russia took their first uncertain steps, but with the goal of bringing to the world the struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeois states. In order to achieve this, it was necessary to end the conflict with Germany; it was also necessary to make Russia the first true socialist state capable of guiding the revolution through the world. This was an ambitious project with difficulties, primarily for the internal opposition that fought against the new rules imposed by the Bolshevik elite, and secondly for the international public who watched in confusion. Within just a few months, the coup of Alexandr Kerensky, prime minister of the new government, the continuous futile attempts by the Bolsheviks, the insurrection or coup of October 25, the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly of January 1918, and the system of terror were inaugurated in the country by the new regime. What emerged was a fragmented state where the Bolsheviks controlled the territorial centre between Moscow and Saint Petersburg, while the rest of the country was in the hands of secessionist anti-Bolshevik groups and anti-Maximalists who proclaimed their independence from Moscow. Between December 1917 and November 1920, the Grazhdanskaia voina raged. Russian newspapers began talking

earning a place in the Bolshevik pantheon, being political figures closer to Trotsky and Bukharin than Lenin, as in the case of Moisei Uritsky, head of Cheka of Petrograd, who was murdered on August 30, 1918. 129 W. Bruce Lincoln, author of the book Red Victory (1989), narrates that: “the sleepy centre of Vologda, about forty thousand inhabitants, was founded in 1147, the same year in which the name Moscow appeared for the first time in ancient Russian chronicles.” The author, who at the time was professor of Russian history at the University of Northern Illinois, highlights that the choice of the Entente diplomats should have been considered as purely strategic since the small town, “known for its beautiful lace produced by local women … and for a church that Ivan the Terrible had built on the model of the famous Cathedral of the Assumption in the Muscovite Kremlin,” stood at the intersection of the MoscowArkhangelsk railway with the Trans-Siberian and gave the possibility, if there was a German advance, of an escape option using the sea to the north or the TransSiberian to the east. Instead, in the case of an intervention by the European Governments against the Bolsheviks, the favourable position would be to coordinate the military advance from Siberian and northern Russia. See: Lincoln, I Bianchi e i Rossi, 146.

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about the revolution in October.130 On the vast Russian territory one of the most vicious civil wars took place in which international diplomacy assisted, through those who were sometimes unarmed. They were still attentive to developments that many economic interests could help to create on the vast Caucasian territory, considering it was rich in oilfields, and Siberian territory, in which the Americans and Japanese had already installed military bases. The country, on the brink of a severe economic crisis, fell into chaos. The climate of suspicion and distrust lingered and bounced from Moscow to Petrograd. The attack that killed Moisei Uritsky, head of the Petrograd Cheka (the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, Profiteering and Corruption, created in 1918), at the hands of Leonid Kannegiser, a young poet who entered the ranks of terrorism, and what Lenin suffered from Tania Keplan, a former anarchist who converted during her years in Siberia to the ideology of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, were destined to change the course of the revolution.131 In the Urals, in Orenburg, the Cossacks who were loyal to Tsarism were in revolt. In Omsk, western Siberia, in September 1918, a panRussian directory132 was constituted (wanted by the Allies for a unique and strong political referent in Russia), which was the result of a conference of anti-Bolshevik political parties and local governments of eastern Russia. It should have remained in charge until January 1, 1919 when, with a quorum of 201 deputies, a new Constituent Assembly would have reconvened. But the opposition led by Denikin, who was not invited to the negotiation table, deprived the institution of unanimous support from the anti-Maximalist forces in Russia. The difficulties the directory 130

Many meanings are ascribed to the term “civil war,” which will be discussed in the rest of this discussion. 131 A tough repression follows such events. Grigory Petrovsky, Commander of Internal Affairs, released an official circular which expressed the views of the government but also provided instructions for his agents: “la benché minima opposizione, la benché minima iniziativa delle Guardie Bianche deve trovare risposta sotto forma di esecuzioni di massa” [“the minimum opposition or initiative of the White Guards must be answered in the form of mass executions”]. See: Lincoln, I Bianchi e i Rossi, 137. 132 Such a directory, a sort of compromise between Siberians and Cossacks who support the idea of a military dictatorship in the hands of one authority, and Socialist Revolutionaries which, on the contrary, would have preferred a government subject to the authority of a Constituent Assembly, was the result of the last summer conference held in Ufa from September 8–23, 1918 and attended by 170 anti-Bolshevik delegates, but not the army of volunteers nor the Cossacks of the Don and the Kuban.

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faced, considered as a successor to the provisional government of 1917, were such that it was soon replaced by a new anti-revolutionary government of Admiral Kolchak, one of fourteen men of the Directorate Council, as well as a former commander of the Black Sea Fleet, who went to power with a dictatorial blitz.133 He was a controversial character, but a symbol of an entire counter-revolutionary people with anti-Maximalist ambitions. In the meantime, drastic measures were being taken by the Bolsheviks who intended to create a climate of terror through which to obtain greater discipline in the Red Army. They sought to prevent cases of desertion or abandonment of the frontline against the White advance, avoid intrigues and conspiracies against the “legitimate” power of Moscow after the chaotic organizational phase, and give way to Trotsky to leverage an army that was much better structured compared to the first months of the revolution.134 In May 1918, around the districts of Arkhangelsk and Murmansk in northern Russia, the first Allied military units headed by the UK division General F. C. Poole arrived, jeopardizing relations between Aleksey

133

The phase of birth and dispute within the “directory” is described in an analytical manner in Pipes, Russia under the Bolshevik Regime. 1919–1924, which appeared in Italian under the title Il Regime Bolscevico. Dal Terrore Rosso alla Morte di Lenin. In practice, recognized by the UK government but not by the French and Americans, in such a form of government, born from a compromise between the parties that took the field against the Bolsheviks, an arena in which the Socialists argued with the Liberals, politicians with pan-Russian ambitions proved hostile to the Siberian separatist groups, while the Socialist Revolutionaries did not feel adequately represented. Furthermore, the directorate, according to Pipes, “in addition to not working, was also unpopular [because the] Siberian peasants considered him ‘Bolshevik,’ and so did the officers at his service and local entrepreneurs.” See Il Regime Bolscevico, 40. 134 The Red Army’s weakness from its establishment consisted in the lack of welltrained officers capable of commanding battalions and regiments. Leon Trotsky thought the remedy to such a problem was to recall the Tsarist officers, but was wary of their loyalty to the new government, deeply detested by former officers of Nicholas II who sensed the instrumental nature of their calling. With a decree of September 30, 1918, the Russian medieval system of collective responsibility was restored, which encompassed the families of officers who passed to the “White” Army or defected through joint loyalty. The action of a true strategist, the author of the future Bolshevik victory did not limit himself to such a measure. Later, the penalties were extended to the military men who fled from the enemy. These were harsh measures that contributed to better and better results on the frontline.

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Jurev135 and his superiors in Moscow, with whom he quickly came into conflict by favouring the Allied intervention on a large scale in Murmansk.136 In Estonia, the country was controlled by general Nikolay Yudenich. The prospect of a large-scale Allied intervention at Arkhangelsk with the probability of being taken hostage by the Bolsheviks pushed Allied diplomats to leave Vologda and move to Kandalaksha, under British control. In Arkhangelsk, through the intervention of General Poole’s troops, an anti-Bolshevik government took charge led by Nikolay Tchaikovsky, a moderate socialist in line with what was expressed by the governments of Omsk, Komuch in Samara, and Ufa, who believed himself to be legitimized to govern according to the authority of the fallen Constituent Assembly. Meanwhile, Siberia became the site for Japanese and American landings along with the Czeck-Slovak Legion137 and other Allied military 135

Aleksey Mikhailovich Yurev was president of the regional Soviet government of Murmansk. Following the Allied landings in the territories administered by him, he repeatedly turned to Lenin and Trotsky for guidelines on what to do since Moscow considered this “a hostile act.” So, after the second British landing headed by general Maynard, Lenin and Trotsky’s answer was to reject the “mercenary invaders” by all means, considering “treason” any other type of solution. Yurev, on the other hand, having not receiving the reinforcements requested, on July 6, 1918 reached an agreement with the Allies in defence of the territory from German coalition forces. The Bolsheviks thus had to fight the new northern front that threatened the city of Petrograd. 136 In this regard, US President Woodrow Wilson opposed military action, being convinced that he must not interfere in internal matters, considering the American support in Murmansk as “limited operations designed to defend the Allied weapons depot and military equipment created before the Brest-Litovsk peace.” The British appeared to be of a different opinion in terms of military offensive actions that had the purpose of establishing bridgeheads in northern Russia 137 The Czech-Slovak Legion’s history in Russian territories played a key role in the Civil War. Captured by the military of the former Tsarist Empire after fighting on the frontline for the Austro-Hungarian Empire, who they loathed, the Bolsheviks, once peace was concluded with the Central Powers, decided to transfer from Russia to France via Vladivostok. Ordered to hand over their weapons before leaving, driven by mistrust towards any kind of Bolshevik participation in their cause, the Czechoslovakians rebelled and in June sent the Bolsheviks away from Samara, where shortly after the Committee of the Constituent Assembly Members (Komuch) was established, whose very modest army went to support the Siberian and volunteer armies. However, the only efficient anti-Bolshevik army was actually the one made up of ten thousand Czechoslovakians, whose line of action was set to the west of the Urals. Such was their efficiency that the Komuch handed

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units such as the Chinese, Serbians, Canadians, and Italians, while other White units and counter-revolutionaries were also present, in early autumn 1918 forming an anti-Bolshevik block of considerable proportions. So, counter-revolutionary governments, while torn by internal strife and the inability to find a solution to their problems, seemed to find in this new geopolitical scenario a possible offensive against Russia. Upsetting the balance, however, was the intervention of the Czechoslovakian National Council in Paris that proclaimed the independence of its country. On hearing the news, the attitude of the Czech troops, who finally saw their project of a free Bohemia realized, changed, and legionaries claimed to not want to fight against the Bolsheviks anymore. It was the French intervention that put a stop to their desire to return by asking them to temporarily stall their return to defend the Siberian railway that stretched from Omsk to Irkutsk from filo-communist partisans and bandits. It was during this time that they accumulated large fortunes, which they would bring back with them to their freed homeland. In eastern Siberia, Grigory Semionov, Cossack commander in Transbaikal, controlled the region with Japanese support. To the south, in the summer of 1918, the situation was favourable enough for the Army of Volunteers led by General Denikin to conquer Ekaterinodar and Novorossiysk, important ports on the Black Sea, capturing thousands of Red Army soldiers. But the victorious campaigns in the Kuban territories alarmed Moscow to the point of asking for a German military intervention against the volunteer army. Denikin’s obtuse insistence acted as a counterpart by not wanting to occupy Tsaritsyn, a strategic centre situated near the stretch of the Volga that flows to the east of the Don’s Cossack region, thus preventing troops from joining the people’s army to the east and the Czechoslovakians. It would have created a long anti-Bolshevik cord from the Urals down to the Black Sea. The White General was convinced of the opposite, thinking he had to consolidate the back lines, directing his actions to this end. We will later see how fatal this important decision was for the counter-revolutionary cause. Relations between Denikin and General Krasnov, Kadedin’s successor and Chief of the Don Cossacks, were never as good, and the inability to form homogeneous forces would set the Bolshevik opposition in the south of the country back. The Cossacks did not want to fight, only defend their territories, and this limit helps to explain the failure of the Army of Volunteers, which is above all attributable to a serious lack of discipline. over the command of the people’s army to a Czech officer. See: K. Pichlik, B. Klipa, and J. Zabloudilova, I Legionari Cecoslovacchi, 1914–1920, translated by Barbara Zane (Trento: Museo storico in Trento, 1997).

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In the fight against the new triumvirate government led by Lenin, military missions from countries like United States, France, and the United Kingdom were on the scene. According to the Bolshevik government, they were guilty of arming and equipping the White troops of Admiral Kolchak and those allocated in Arkhangelsk, and also sustaining the Kerensky cause right after the Bolshevik coup.138 Relations between military missions on Russian land, reactionary revolutionary troops, and the Maximalist Army were greatly affected by the collapse of Germany on November 18, 1918. One year after taking power, Lenin finally diverted a great part of the troops sent to the German front against the anti-Bolshevik armies scattered throughout the territory. The Allied intervention in Russia had an important historical role in the impact of the French, British, American, Japanese, Czech, and Italian troops by alternating themselves on Russian soil for more than two years. The double attitude seemed clear, being that adopted by the military commands which operated alongside the counter-revolutionary troops, and that of the national ministries which gave directives. As seen from a certain point of view, these reports highlighted the difficulty in interpreting military or diplomatic actions tied to the joining of national interests to those of support in building a new Russian State by the counter-revolutionary forces. The willingness of Allied powers, initially aimed at containing German expansionism towards Siberia and the Caucasus, changed over time, and the choices made by the Allied governments essentially responded to this principle, which for many months represented a condition for military missions to not participate and of non-interference in the internal affairs of the nascent Russian state. The political model set up by the Bolsheviks represented an unparalleled experience in history, even though it had a strong popular consensus, and therefore the initial international relations, apart from the feeling of having to deal with a “group of fanatics” armed by Germany, were directed to create a cordon sanitaire around the Bolsheviks. The idea was to block the spread of Marxist ideology to the West, beyond the banks of the Rhine River. In light of such events, which undermine the revival of European 138

In a dispatch sent by the Italian Naval Attaché in Stockholm and in regard to the Russian military forces aligned against Bolshevism present on the Finnish territory, the representative reported that the Russian delegation personnel “mostly conservatory, is now tied to Koltchak in hopes that he may possibly return a State body to Russia. But he is very cautious in expressing himself, because he is constrained, especially economically, to the help of the English government.” AUSSME, Rome, E. 8, R. 93, Folder 2.

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states after the disintegration of the three great empires, Europe was concerned that the proletarian revolution might spread like wildfire, thus breaking the uncertain world balances which were being built around the Versailles table. Even the Italian state took national security measures against the infiltration of Bolshevik ideas. The isolation of military men returning from missions in north Russia was emblematic. These men were not allowed to rejoin their families until after a period of “ideological control,” as they were considered to have been “infected” by Bolshevik propaganda that had its embryonic development in the pre-unified Germany (as seen in the papers in the historical military office in Rome). The Italian Military Mission in Siberia, established September 2, 1918 in Vladivostok, fit into this context, and had special tasks such as: working with other Allied missions for the maintenance of law and order in Siberia without “interference” in Russian domestic politics; to morally and materially help the Russians to protect Siberia from possible German invasions (taking advantage of the disorder caused by the Revolution could have escaped the control of the Allies and taken possession of the inexhaustible resources of this rich region); and collaborating in the work of the social reconstruction of Siberia. In addition to these tasks given by the ministry were other secondary ones regarding measures to be taken to ensure the safety of troops, especially those who went through Siberia and flowed into China. A number of Italian irredentists who were former Russian prisoners of war were also rescued by a mission sent specifically to European Russia from the Italian government. The head of the latter mission was Major of the Royal Carabinieri Corps Manera Cosma, who was already part of General Bassignano’s mission from Kirsanov. He had escaped from the Bolsheviks with a numerous group of irredentists and crossed all of Siberia to reach China. There ended up being two missions in Vladivostok; that of the irredentists, dependent on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the military one, which depended on the Ministry of War. Frederick Palmer, son of Dominic, class of 1899, as a premise to the diary compiled by the father of a member of the Italian Expedition in eastern Siberia in 1918, wrote: Krasnojarsk, Irkuts, Jenissei: geografia priva di epopee mitologica, di risonanze emotive, al cospetto di Monte Cimone, Dente del Pasubio, Passo del Tonale, Cima Undici. Eppure anche qui v’è storia che ci appartiene.139

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“Krasnojarsk, Irkuts, Jenissei: geography lacking a mythological epic, of emotional appeal, in proximity of Monte Cimone, Dente del Pasubio, Passo del

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In Versailles in 1919, with the overthrow of the monarchy in Russia, there had been a modest attempt to open a constitutional phase and the establishment of a temporary government which should have interpreted the people’s will. But the abdication of the Tsar, an extreme and vain attempt to save autocracy from the brink, released forces that up until then were compelled to have a marginal role in the life of the country; this was because the strong Tsarist censure and police force which tightened in the last decades of the nineteenth century were deprived of any practicality. These forces came to power primarily as a result of the First World War, which was not only a test for the Russian Army but also a national collective catastrophe. The Russian prime minister Pyotr Stolypin, author of an agrarian reform of great historic importance, had alleged in the first part of the nineteenth century that Russia would need decades of peace without wars to emerge as a world power. The Great War had broken this utopia and sent the monarchy into crisis, which during recent years had largely saturated its “enlightened” features that had been manifested in nuce after the granting of the Constitution of October 1905. Thereafter, an incredible escalation of events brought the focus back to the social question—the “cavallo di battaglia” of the majority parties of the first two Dumas and the following two minority Dumas. The liberal requests did not coincide with the Tsarist authoritarian program, and therefore the conflict procrastinated between revolutionaries, socialists, liberal parties, and anarchists on one side, and nobility and government on the other. This situation was radicalized in political circles of the empire until Lenin and the Bolsheviks started the phase of the proletariat dictatorship with the Revolution of 1917. The subsequent Civil War unleashed between Reds and Whites (or, better, the troops loyal to the Tsarist generals who did not accept the change of guard in power) brought Russia to its knees, already put to the test by the tough war effort against the Germans and the AustroHungarian Empire. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk of March 1918, signed by the Reds with Germany in the face of a heavy domestic commitment by Lenin to transform peasant Russia into a proletarian state, placed the French and British allies in a difficult military situation, since the eastern front would no longer keep the German troops engaged and therefore ready to be deployed to other theatres of war. The sudden fall of Germany in November and the beginning of peace negotiations in Versailles in early Tonale, Peak eleven. Yet even here is history that belongs to us.” Federico Peirone, Reserve Medical Capitan, directed on November 13, 1980 a service reminder to the Chief of the Historic Office of the Army in which he attached his father’s diary, preceded by an interesting premise of his regarding the facts of which his father, Domenico, speaks in his memoirs.

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1919 completely changed the European scenario, and Russia found itself out of a system of alliances and off the table of winners, even though its absence greatly influenced negotiations, as stated in Margaret McMillan’s book, Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World140. Until May 1919, the Allied countries kept stalling their intervention in Russian internal affairs, and helped neither the Reds nor the Whites. The two factions had been called to a confrontation on the Island of Prinkipo, but the possibility of an agreement failed miserably. Nothing else remained but to side with the Whites, and therefore it was decided to send military missions in support of former Tsarist generals without imagining that they would soon fall victim to a strong Bolshevik reaction. For the six months from January to June 1919 Paris became the centre of world attention, where major postwar political protagonists met with diplomats, bankers, soldiers, economists, lawyers, and more; from the American President Woodrow Wilson to Georges Clémenceau; from the prime minister of Italy Vittorio Emanuele Orlando to UK Prime Minister David Lloyd George. Along with them, legions of diplomats and politicians of all kinds prepared talks to achieve positive results in territorial claims that each state advanced to the conference. It was precisely such a disharmony of intentions that caused the failure of the dream of a more cohesive and united Europe.

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M. McMillan, Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World [New York: Random House Trade Paperback, 2003]

CHAPTER FOUR FROM THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION TO THE UNITED SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLIC

The Bolshevik revolution of October 1917 rapidly gave life to a new and original economic and political system. The United Soviet Socialist Republic remained, until its decline in 1991, a special country.141 The men of the “Revolution” intended to transform the existing society in order to institute a new regime,142 first socialist and then communist, through the 141 A. Graziosi, Il comunismo sovietico, in AA.VV., storia contemporanea (Roma: Donzelli, 1997), 387. To understand the Soviet system in its entirety, or, better, as a complex and hetero genius reality built on an idealistic model of Marxist civility, we look into the final bibliographic essay within the last two volumes of A. Graziosi, L’URSS di Lenin e Stalin e l’URSS dal Trionfo al Degrado (Bologna: il Mulino, 2008), where it is possible to orient oneself within an unlimited list of books related to this theme. The volume by Graziosi without doubt represents one of the most in-depth analyses on the history of the Soviet Union constructed over years of work in the Russian archives in edited documentation and bibliographies. Amongst the innumerable volumes, many of which are in Russian, see Italian editions by V. Zaslavsky, Storia del Sistema Sovietico (Roma: NIS, 1995); R. A. Medvedev, Tutti gli Uomini di Stalin (Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1985); and Z. Brzenzinski, Il grande fallimento. Ascesa e caduta del comunismo nel XX secolo (Milano: Longanesi, 1989). 142 The meaning of “political regime” given by historians encompasses the various forms of government and/or state. The types of government have multiple classifications. The traditional one, of a platonic and Aristotelian origin, distinguishes the government and the monarchy from that of the few, an aristocracy, and from that of the many, a democracy, highlighting the risk of degenerating tyranny with oligarchy and anarchy. For Niccolò Machiavelli, the basic repartition is instead the one between monarchic and republican regimes. According to another classification, the political regimes are distinguished by the forms of participation in politics: those with limited participation, from the ancient nobility, dominate the liberal, reaching the democratic systems that foresee the participation of citizens to enjoy unnatural political rights and not the liberal theory, as a consequence of a material, utilitarian interest derived from financial participation in public affairs by tax payments. However, in the course of the

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realization of the first state industrial system in history in which the totality of the economic activities were completely nationalized and therefore “planned,” or, better, forged on the objective established by the state itself.143 The Soviet regime was characterized by the power of the Communist Party, its ideology and central role, and, until Stalin’s death (1953), the exaltation of leaders’ political and human qualities.144 The Soviet regime was able to find a solution to the cohabitation problem of the numerous communities that formed the Tsarist Empire and proceeded to undertake a route to modernization at the expense of the farmers. The Soviet experience was fuelled by the Russian Empire’s history.145 The great changes of the 1800s,146 such as urbanization, industrialization, the demographic and scientific-technological boom, and the appearance of the state and volunteer ideologies, are some of the factors that contributed to affirm the Soviet system. According to a renowned interpretation by Roy Medvedev, the Tsarist Empire entered the First World War with a seed of revolution already within it.147 There were big problems that tormented Russia, such as the imbalance between the developed areas and the underdevelopment in the many farmlands still ruled by semi-feudal powers, and the juridical discrimination of the national minorities, all reasons for tensions that weren’t resolved by the reform attempts applied by Stolypin between 1906 and 1911.148 As mentioned, the world war made the social and political instability of Russia very evident. The Tsarist autocracy did not help the freedom of expression of the opposition in any way.149 In the end, the imperial context, being multinational, comprised twentieth century, a particular form of monocratic power developed founded on the control of the military and ideological propaganda: dictatorship. These regimes usually rely on the existence of only one form of political participation, one party, in ideological opposition to the multiparty system. According to certain theories during the 1930s, this tendency to create dictatorial regimes found its evolution with the birth of totalitarian regimes, Hitler in Germany, or Stalin in the Soviet Union, uniting the authoritarian regime and the monarchic leadership with a controlled life for all people in all aspects, not only the straightforward political one. 143 M. Lewin, Russia, URSS, Russia (New Press: The New Press, 1995). 144 The exaltation of the political and human qualities of the leader was defined by Nikita Khrushchev, successor to Stalin, as the “cult of personality.” 145 W. H. Chamberlain, Storia della rivoluzione russa (Torino: Einaudi, 1943). 146 E. Hobsawn, The Age of Capital: 1845–1878 (London: Scribner, 1975). 147 R. Medvedev, La Rivoluzione d’Ottobre era Ineluttabile? (Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1976), 16. 148 A. M. Banti, Le Questioni dell’Età Contemporanea (Bari: Laterza, 2010), 171. 149 A. Graziosi, Cos’è l’URSS, in “Storica”, n. 37, (2007), p. 37.

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some of the “Russian” elements.150 The confusion between the Russian Empire,151 the USSR, Russia, and the use of these terms as synonyms constitutes numerous errors, even though we must remember that they were part of a shared range of historical experiences of the oriental area of the old continent; from the Ottoman Empire, to the Austro-Hungarian, and to Germany itself. The peculiarities of the intelligencija minority were specifically Russian and embraced revolutionary faith and a socioeconomic structure that was national and religious. Political simplicity was its character, even though it was at the same time complicated.152 During the nineteenth century about eighty-five percent of the population lived in the country, social differences were scarce, and the political system was centred on autocracy, the idea being that the Tsar’s power was derived directly from God. The religious and nationality situation was diversified as well: the Orthodox coexisted with the Uniate,153 Catholics, Lutherans, Animist, and Muslims. The census of 1897 revealed that Russians constituted less than fifty percent of the Empire’s population, a fact that provoked worries among the leaders, and consequently reinforced the tendency to negate the importance and value of the second nationality of the Empire, that being the Ukrainian one.154 The First World War caught the country by surprise during a period of great internal transformation. The state’s role grew in directing and allocating resources, including human labour which we can interpret as emblematic for the future of the socialist society. During February 1917, a new uprising erupted in Petrograd,155 catching everyone by surprise. The movement spread through the entire country in a completely spontaneous manner and forced the Tsar to abdicate, and the Soviets were reconstituted everywhere.156 The liberals, without any popular support and willing to pursue the war, took over the temporary government leadership only because the socialists, prevalent in 150 A. Graziosi, Il Comunismo Sovietico, in AA. VV., Storia contemporanea, (Roma: Donzelli Editore, 1997), op. cit. p. 388. 151 On this argument see F. Randazzo, Russia. L’Impero (Tricase: Libellula, 2013). 152 The “intelligentsia” was intended as the social level of affirmed intellectuals in nineteenth-century Russia. 153 Catholics of oriental rite. 154 O. Subtelny, Ukraine. A History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988). 155 At the beginning of the First World War, Saint Petersburg was renamed Petrograd (from August 31, 1914 to January 26, 1924), and after Lenin’s death becoming Leningrad (January 26, 1924 to September 6, 1991). After a popular referendum in 1991 there was a return to the original name of Saint Petersburg. 156 For further information on this matter see R. W. Davies, M. Harrison, and S. Wheatcroft, The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

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the Soviets, refused to assume that position. The Menshevik liberals, loyal to Marxism, believed a social revolution was too difficult to pursue in an underdeveloped country. Even the majority of socialist revolutionaries, whom manifested for the interests of the farmlands, were against the fast establishment of socialism.157 They also sustained a logic that contemplated the continuation of the war, at least from a defensive point of view. The impatience among the soldiers at the front, unhappy with the political choices of the government, associated themselves with the disatisfied farmers in the villages. By the end of the summer, wealthy properties were attacked more frequently. The Bolsheviks took advantage of this constant tension. Lenin, on his return from exile in Switzerland, announced the socalled “April Theses” which affirmed a surge guided by the socialists in the backward Tsarist Russia.158 Lenin confirmed his position in favour of national determination and the division of the land among farmers, which up to that moment had been considered reactionary objectives because they were nationalistic and bourgeois from Marxism. General Kornilov was nominated head of the army, while in August the socialist revolutionary Alexander Kerensky took charge of the government but without having cleared his “dual power” produced by the Soviet and temporary government.159 The Bolsheviks had therefore obtained, at the beginning of September, the majority in Soviet Moscow and Saint Petersburg, flipping the more moderate Menshevik and socialist revolutionary leaderships. Slogans had their role, especially among soldiers and sailors of the Naval Base in Kronstadt and workers that demanded peace, more power to the Soviets, auto determination for the oppressed nationalities, and land for the farmers. Through these theoretical objectives, in October the Bolshevik attacked.160 A new government was founded with Lenin as leader and sustained by the Bolsheviks and the revolutionary left.161 The doubts on the meaning of the October Revolution remained strong even for Lenin and Trotsky, who knew very well that their revolution could be defined as socialist. According to most accredited historiography, the basic misunderstanding was due to the 157

E. H. Carr, Storia della Russia Sovietica (Torino: Einaudi, 1964–84). On Lenin’s USSR see A. Graziosi, L’URSS di Lenin e Stalin (Bologna: il Mulino, 2007); J. Salem, Lenin e la Rivoluzione (Milano: Edizioni Nemesis, 2010); V. I. Nevskij, Storia del Partito Bolscevico. Dalle Origini al 1917 (Milano: Pantarei, 2008); and G. Walter, Lènine (Paris: Le Club Français du Livre, 1950). 159 L. Pellicani, Mondolfo e Gramsci in Mondo operaio 2 (2001): 105–10. 160 N. Werth, Storia dell’Unione Sovietica (Bologna: il Mulino, 1993), 15–75. 161 A. Salomoni, Lenin e la Rivoluzione Russa! (Firenze: Giunti, 1993), 26–34. 158

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relationship between centralism and revolution from the ground up.162 The farmers sustained and participated in the anti-centralist revolution that, after having abandoned their department and redistributed the land, auspicated a “lighter” and more pacific state that would leave more decision-making power to the local authorities. But October brought a more state-like political group out of the Russian political world to power. Within this mistake, historiography confronted itself to try and interpret the following developments. Furthermore, was it a clean break with the Tsarist past? Or is it possible to find elements of continuity of such relevance to definitively interpret an accurate analysis of the peculiarity of Soviet Russia? Among the first historians to handle this topic was Christopher Hill.163 In 1947, he published Lenin and the Russian Revolution, centred on the Bolshevik leader as the fundamental hero of the revolution. His reconstruction presents the Soviet Revolution as an epochal dislocation from its Tsarist past, centring the narration on the figure and actions of Lenin, who is considered the main architect. According to Hill, Lenin’s winning politics consisted of breaking the natural support that the farmers gave to the social revolutionary party, omitting the antidemocratic aspect and forms of violence, which the historian did not find to be of any significance.164 Hill therefore proposes a good image of Lenin and the Bolshevik revolution’s meaning. This was definitely an unusual idea that he, at the time a “historic militant,” generated by removing from his analysis the violence and authoritarianism that characterized both the Bolshevik revolution and the entire Soviet experience. A few years after his publication another British historian, Edward H. Carr,165 presented a new essay on the Soviet society and revolution entitled “Storia della Russia 162

Banti, Le Questioni dell’Età Contemporanea, 172–6. Christopher Hill (1912–2003) was an English Marxist historian who studied at Oxford where, in 1965 to 1978, he was a professor of modern history. As a member of the English Communist Party, in 1935 he spent a year in the Soviet Union. During the Second World War he worked for the British Secret Services and the Foreign Office, and left the Communist Party in 1956. 164 C. Hill, Lenin e la Rivoluzione Russa (Torino: Einaudi, 1979), 10–18. 165 E. H. Carr (1892–1982) was an English historian who at the beginning of his career worked as an Official of Foreign Affairs; then, from 1936, he taught at the universities of Aberystwyth, Birmingham, Cambridge, and Oxford. From 1941 to 1945 he was the assistant editor of The Times. In Italian, besides Storia della Russia Sovietica, two brief syntheses of this work where translated: 1917. Illusioni e Realtà della Rivoluzione Russa, 1969 (ed. it. 1970), La Rivoluzione Russa. Da Lenin a Stalin (1917–1929), 1979 (ed. it. 1980), and a histographic essay, Sei Lezioni sulla Storia, 1961 (ed. it. 1966). 163

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Sovietica.” Unlike Hill, he did not hide the violent and authoritarian components of Soviet communism. The work is composed of four volumes: La Rivoluzione Bolscevica 1917–1923 (1950–1953); La morte di Lenin. L’Interregno 1923–1924 (1954); Il Socialismo in un solo paese 1924–1926 (1958–1964); and Le origini della pianificazione sovietica (1969–1978). The first two volumes of this work were written with Robert William Davis. The political and institutional slant expands the historic research on the treated theme by concentrating on the circumstances of the state and Bolshevik Party. He highlights three factors that are essential for comprehending the 1917 facts: Lenin’s personality, the Bolshevik Party’s activity, and the “empty power” issue defined in that period in Russia. He developed a vision of the revolution that pivoted around the idea of inevitable events, since the antidemocratic turn the Bolshevik revolution took was nearly fatal because of the evident incapacity to carry out a healthy democracy in Russia. Furthermore, as already observed, the only underdeveloped condition of Russia lay in Lenin’s politics and conditioned the results. Many historians years later, such as Andrea Graziosi, judged Carr’s works to be pro-Soviet and as representing “winner’s historiography.”166 In any case, we can affirm that Carr’s works are especially relevant for their great amount of reconstruction and treatment of documents. In the years immediately after the publication of this essay, other writings on this theme came to light and therefore put into question his interpretation and approach. In 1986, the British historian Robert Service167 printed the volume The Russian Revolution 1900–1927. In 2000, he printed a bibliography on Lenin divided into three volumes, in which special attention was given to the Bolshevik leader’s antidemocratic inclination. Even Service, in agreement with the above analyses, tried to shed light on the premises for a revolutionary crisis of 1917. He made his thoughts clear by declaring that the crises were caused by the Russian Empire’s intervention in the world war, favouring the Bolshevik initiative which manipulated the unaware public opinion of labourers, soldiers, and farmers.168 The essay continues with judgements on the Bolshevik work, concluding with the NEP169 experiment up to 1927, the year in which such 166

Banti, Le Questioni dell’Età Contemporanea, 176. Robert Service (b. 1947) is professor of Russian history at the University of Oxford and fellow at St. Antony’s College, where he leads the Centre for Russian and Euro-Asian Studies. 168 R. Service, The Russian Revolution 1900–1927 (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1986), 68–72. 169 The New Economic Policy, a system of economic reforms instituted in Russia by Lenin in 1921. 167

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an economic experiment was abandoned because of the crop crises. Even Pipes’s170 The Russian Revolution: from the Agony of the Old Regime, to the Red Terror (1990), contrasts with Carr’s justificatory position. The essay tries to define, for the first time, a complete picture of the Russian Revolution as the key event of the century according to some historians. The studies on this topic are focused mainly on the political and military clashes in Russia for the acquisition of power between 1917 and 1920. According to Pipes, there is no means to establish the length of the Russian Revolution, but the historian sustains that it surely did not begin in February to March 1917 with the fall of Tsarism, and did not end three years later with the Bolshevik victory in the Civil War. The revolutionary movement had already become a fundamental part of Russian history around 1860. The first phase of the Russian Revolution, according to Pipes, began with the 1905 revolts. The situation returned under control thanks to a series of concessions and repressive measures, but the revolts broke out on a greater scale twelve years later in February 1917, culminating in October with the Bolshevik coup d’état. According to distinguished Italian historian Alberto Mario Banti, “the context’s conditioning, according to Pipes, must make the revolution’s result, in some measure, necessary. Furthermore, such conditioning did not operate only in that short period of time, when the crises initiated with the entrance of Russia in the Great War, but they have their origin much sooner”171 According to Pipes, the radical “intelligentsia” and its actions had a primary role in determining the two revolutions of 1905 and 1917. In fact, this group must be considered as the “stimulating element” of the revolution, finding itself in an obvious condition of conflict with the monarchist power. The idea launched by the radical “intelligentsia” was later accepted by the Bolsheviks. However, they did not consider the rural world as the heart of a hypothetical renovated Russia, otherwise auspicating its inedited industrial and social modernization.172 Consequently, the crises 170

Richard Pipes (b. 1923) is of Polish origin, and in 1940 he moved to the United States with his family. From 1950 to 1996 he taught at Harvard, where he directed the Center of Russian Research. 171 Banti, Le Questioni dell’Età Contemporanea, 178. 172 On the definition of socialism and the socialist state, the existing historiography is very rich. For more information see: F. Andreucci, “Il Partito Socialista e la Seconda Internazionale,” in Anna Kuliscioff e l’età del Riformismo, Mondo Operaio (ed.) (Roma: Avanti, 1978); K. Marx and F. Engels, “Scritti Italiani,” in Corrispondenza di Marx ed Engels con Italiani 1848–1895, G. Del Bo (ed.) (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1954); E. J. Hobsbawm, Studi di Storia del Movimento Operaio (Torino: Einaudi, 1972); J. Droz, Storia del Socialismo, vol. II, dal 1875–

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of the Russian society and the mass riots that erupted in 1905 and 1917 were determining factors on which the Bolsheviks acted; in a short space of time, they were able to stop the idea that they could build a new society. According to Pipes, what happened after October 1917 was the realization of a political plan elaborated decades before. A perspective for a muchlonger period, attributable to Pipes, was theorized by Orlando Figes173 in A People’s Tragedy: the Russian Revolution 1891–1924 and a scientific analysis of 1996. The interpretive analysis of Figes takes its origin in the famine that hit Russia in 1891, a symbol of the first contrast between the great mass population and the Tsarist authority, ending in 1924, the year of Lenin’s death. Figes therefore refuses Carr’s inevitability and Pipes’s necessity hypotheses. His interpretive motive is centred more on the history of social events. The national minorities, farmers, soldiers, and working classes are considered both objects and victims of the revolution. The essay is rich with numerous sources of private character: diaries, letters, and memoirs. The point here is that the Bolsheviks conquered their power as a minority political group, and for that reason thought up repressive and intimidating actions against the masses as an ordinary attempt to fill an original lack of approval. From the promise of a shining future, lacking any roots in the past, re-emerges an interpretive line of thought, a paradoxical element of continuity: the nature, violence, and authoritativeness of the communist power regarding the structure and forms of domination from its own dead autocratic Tsarist system. Other questions of historiographical nature examine the Soviet Union’s beginning period of formation, developing other interesting questions that will be analysed in the course of this study. Returning to expose the chronological aspect of the events, the elections to the Constituent (November 1917) assigned the majority of 410 seats out of 707 to the socialist revolutionaries, while the Bolsheviks obtained only 175,174 a relevant fact. The consents were mediocre for the Mensheviks and Liberals. The Bolshevik political choice was to dissolve it (January 1918), reclaiming the function of the instrument of sovereignty for the Soviets. In reality, even the Soviet central element of the Bolshevik myth had a short life as an instrument of popular self-government, and the

1918 (Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1974); and G. Haupt, L’Internazionale Socialista dalla Comune a Lenin (Torino: Piccola Biblioteca Einaudi, 1978). 173 Orlando Figes (b. 1959) is an English historian who teaches Russian History at the University of London. He is also the author of La danza di Natasha: Storia della cultura russa XVII–XX secolo (Torino: Einaudi, 2002). 174 Russia’s first freely elected parliament and with universal suffrage.

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power soon centred on other fields of the party.175 On the international scene, October assumed an independent meaning from the reality of Soviet events. The Russian people, tired from the long war, manifested great enthusiasm in front of Lenin’s first decree. In the West, a new political religion was born associating certain traits of the old socialist belief, while also being very different in the aspect of a different role assigned to violence.176 In 1919, the International Communist (Komintern) party was created in Moscow with the intent to coordinate the communist parties around the world which were separating from the social democratic parties.177 The Russian Empire was heading for a breakup. The competition for the reconstruction of a new state entity was narrowed to three groups: the new government, various national forces, and the anticommunist groups of the Whites, these last ones characterized by reactionary ideas. The majority, which had already voted for the socialist revolutionaries, was hostile to the main forces in the field during the Civil War, i.e. the Whites and Reds, and the model of a central state auspicated from these. The enigmatic nature and the doubts of October soon came to maturation. The first act of civil war, in a very significant manner, was in December 1917 with the declaration of war from Soviet Russia to the socialist Ukrainian government, prepared by Lenin and Stalin, then Commissioner for Nationalities, followed by a victorious invasion. Soon after, a German offensive forced the new leadership into an obligatory choice: either sacrifice themselves in military resistance in the name of a “world revolution,” as auspicated by the head leadership of the party and the left-wing socialist revolutionaries allied with the Bolsheviks, or defend the state and any kind of peace with the Germans. With the abstention of 175

O. Anweiler, Storia dei Soviet. I Consigli di Fabbrica in URSS (1905–1921) (Bari: Laterza, 1972). 176 The nineteenth century affirmed what the eighteenth century ignored: national passions. Politics, which in the 1700s appeared as art, and as calculated, pondered, and knowledge, became turbulent, murky, and passionate in the 1800s. Politics acquired a religious “pathos.” The nation stopped being simply emotion and became will. The nation became homeland, and homeland became the new divinity of the modern world, a new identity that was, as such, sacred. For the first time, this term was used to indicate value, affection, and the purely human, politicians who become a religion themselves. There were exceptions. In the only nonnational European state, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, patriotic religion was substituted by the cult of dynasty. For the further comprehension of these concepts see the important work of F. Chabod, L’Idea di Nazione (Bari: Laterza, 1961), 61– 91. 177 H. Konig, Lenin e il Socialismo Italiano 1915–1921. Il Partito Socialista Italiano e la Terza Internationale (Firenze: Vallecchi, 1972).

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Trotsky and the support of Stalin, Lenin was able to impose the second, and the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Central Empires (March 1918) left the Germans with the role of arbitrators to the destinies of Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltics.178 We shall return to this topic later and discover the Italian political view and internal implications of the treaty. The issue that I really want to raise here is that the Brest-Litovsk Treaty presented a decisive event determining the exit of the left-wing socialist revolutionaries from the government and inaugurated the beginning of a mono-party power of Bolshevism.179 Furthermore, that decisive event brought full consciousness of the defence of the “socialist homeland” by the new state. This choice brought forth changes in ideology because within a few days the workers and farmers stopped representing, as social classes, the new regime. The state apparatus was in constant growth and substituted such social levels quickly. The Bolsheviks recruited new personnel without any discrimination, thus fortifying another premise of their triumph: farmers and workers were united by groups of nationalities who up to that moment had been excluded from public service, such as Jews, ex-Tsarist bureaucrats, and the petite bourgeoisie that had participated in the quality of officials in the First World War, as well as all sorts of criminals who were ready to obey the orders of the new political system. Trotsky’s first step was to realize the Red Army, followed by the formation of local government bodies of political police, requisition detachments, and committees of “poor farmers.”180 Obligatory conscription, the state monopolization of primary goods, the requisition of agricultural products, and ruthless repression were in wait for any opposition in the territories of central Russia: these were the first decrees of the new leadership. But the first attempts instigated vibrant protests by the working class and farmers, which resulted in two large waves of revolt, warded off through bloody repressions and little concession. By the end of the year, the Bolsheviks had obtained control of the central territories in the old empire, stifling any groups of resistance and laying the base for its victory. This was obtained against the Whites, 178

E. Di Nolfo, Storia delle Relazioni Internazionali (Bari: Laterza, 2000). The treaty therefore sanctioned the victory of the central empires on the oriental front and the exit of Russia from the First World War. Even though the end of the war brought different results from those expected by the treaty, it was, even if not intentional, of fundamental importance in determining the independence of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. 180 For the Red Army see: C. Merridale, Ivan’s War: Life and Death in the Red Army (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007). 179

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whom the farmers had elected for the restoration of the Ancien Régime in the farmlands. The battle was extremely violent and saw the participation of a limited military action by the British, Americans, Italians, and Japanese side by side with the Whites in summer 1918. War Communism came to light, founded on the unavoidable hegemon of the state, while struggles were against the market, any form of socioeconomic spontaneity, and the maximum accumulation of resources and their redistribution on the basis of central decisional criteria.181 By 1919, the “decossackization” had taken place with the intention of improving the country’s development, even by “physically” eliminating entire social groups.182 War Communism reached its peak in 1920 with militarization, and this type of political decision impacted the farmers a lot, resulting in ulterior revolts that unleashed numerous conflicts of large proportions and forced the regime to come to an agreement. The revolts against militarization ended at the beginning of 1921 with the great farmers’ revolt in Tambov183

181

“War Communism” means those economic choices adopted after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, coinciding with a period (1918–21) of serious disorder within Russia. Such choices (inspired by communists Kristman and Larin) were very radical, expecting the complete nationalization of all industries, the strict control of these by the workers’ labour unions, the obligation to stock all agricultural products for the farmers, and the rationing of provisions. Even though such choices were at first dictated by need, like any other nation at the time of war they subsequently assumed a marked government control. As a matter of fact, a complete control of the production process was realized, with production planning occurring in every single physical aspect. Worker compensation occurred, where possible, with produce and all phases in the production of the products for consumption controlled by a central authority. Especially because the farmers refused to deliver the products due to the serious social tensions, War Communism was substituted in 1921 with the New Political Economy (NPE). 182 J. Ure, Cosacchi (Casale Monferrato: Edizioni Piemme, 1999). 183 The popular resistance and Russian Communist Revolution from October 1917 lack both interpretation and historic information. The description of the phenomena can be somewhat reconstructed through what is expressed by the Russian writer Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn in the first volume of the great Arcipelago Gulag of 1973. In it, the author tries to identify the source of the uninterrupted flow of men, communities, religions, social groups and classes, and entire ethnic groups, which, while real socialism affirmed itself, went to populate the immense amalgam of the regime, and clashed with the popular uprisings against the collectivization of lands from the years 1918–22. For further information see: M. Geller and A. Nekric, Storia dell’URSS dal 1917 a oggi. L’Utopia al Potere (Milano: Rizzoli, 1984), 107–19; A. I. Solzenicyn, Arcipelago GULag. 1918–1956. Saggio d’Inchiesta Narrativa, vol. I–II (Milano: Mondadori,

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and the mutiny of Kronstadt sailors, who had also been among the major proponents of the Revolution between February and October 1917. The regime was then forced to legitimize a new political economy—NPE184— in March 1921. The requisitions of 1920 provoked, in the spring of 1921, severe famine in the area, followed by a great drought which caused the death of almost five million people, putting an end to the uprisings in the farmlands. It took almost a year before the effects of the NPE were felt. What kind of evaluation can possibly be outlined regarding the socioeconomic, geographical, and political transformations that occurred in the country between 1914 and 1922? A new, grand, multinational state took the place of the Tsarist Empire, shorn of some of its territories (the Baltic States, Finland, Poland, and Bessarabia). According to numerous historians, both the characteristics of the new state and its social-economic basis indicated that the country, along with its political system, had taken a series of steps backward.185 The compromise signed by the NPE was therefore born under the sign of fragility. We shall come back to speak about the Russian political incident of 1922 to 1933 later when we 1995); A. I. Solzenicyn, La Verità è amara. Saggi, discorsi e interviste (1974– 1995) (Milano: Mondadori, 1995), 159–62. 184 The NPE was inaugurated in the USSR in 1921 by Lenin, and in Italy as the New Political Economy. NPE put an end to the rigid “war economy,” during which, because of the unstable political conditions, the Soviet state had enforced a tight control on all economic aspects. Within NPE was a new private interest through the concession of internal free commerce, the abolition of forced agricultural confiscation, and the reorganization of the industries according to a capitalistic model of management. On a legal level, the recognition of private property re-established several rights related to it, amongst them the right to succession. The NPE managed to make the Soviet economy more dynamic, allowing for the survival of the revolutionary state. But within it were notable innate risks of capitalistic restoration, which caused the opposition of some ideologists and politicians such as Trotsky. Furthermore, the NPE provoked an indiscriminating improvement and the birth of a new Bourgeoisie constituted by “nepmen,” provoking discontent from the more extremist popular classes. In 1928, the death of Lenin, the advent of Stalin, and the consequential authoritarian turn of internal politics of the USSR brought an end to NPE, inaugurating the collectivity politics and forced economic planning. 185 This is the interpretation of a great part of historiography. For a more in-depth study see: M. Lewin, The Making of the Soviet System: Essays in the Social History of Interwar Russia (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985); M. Lewin, RussiaUSSR-Russia: The Drive and Drift of a Superstate (New York: New Press, 1995); M. Lewin, The Soviet Century (London: Verso, 2005); M. Lewin, Political Undercurrents in Soviet Economic Debates: From Bukharin to the Modern Reformers (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974).

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chronologically see Lenin’s death, Stalin’s ascent, nationalistic “anticapitalism,” Trotsky’s expulsion, and collectivization. All these events, which changed and defined the USSR’s history in the object period of this study, will come into play when identifying the points of confrontation between the Italian political and social reality with that of Russia. Simultaneously with the moments of Russian history, Italy dealt with its first two major problems the fascist diplomacy had to confront: the Turkish-Hellenic peace, and the reparations. During the peace course of the Lausanne conference, Italy aligned itself to the side of the new Turkey, in contrast with the United Kingdom, and tried to maintain an attitude of tolerance.186 This resulted in a definitive recognition by the Dodecanese, already announced by the Treaty of Sèvres.187 Even in the reparations matter, Italy was on the French side, at least at first, when the occupation of the Ruhr was terminated by part of the French-Belgium military unit. On its behalf, the Italian government did not send its own troops but was present with a commission in charge of controlling the German complicity. Benito Mussolini, head of the government and the new foreign minister, expressed some doubts towards the French military’s opportunity of intervention, and as soon as he realized that his statement had provoked unpopularity within the United Kingdom and the United States he opted for a cautious disengagement that moved Italy’s collaboration with France to a rapprochement with the United Kingdom.188 The crises in Corfu again changed Italian foreign politics.189 This was brought on by the incident in which an Italian military mission was sent by the Ambassador Conference190 to mark the Greek-Albanian boundary, and was killed in the Greek territory on August 27, 1923. That day, in the vicinity of Ioannina, four Italians were massacred: General Tellini, the head of the mission, two officers, and a driver. No one contested Italy’s right to demand compensation from Greece, whose government was to be held responsible for such serious bloodshed. It had happened in Greek territory, at the expense of a foreign mission with an international mandate. What surprised the international public opinion was Mussolini’s reaction in declaring an ultimatum to Greece, like that Vienna had sent to 186

W. L. Cleveland, A History of the Modern Middle East (New York: Westview Press, 2004), 102–43. 187 J. B. Duroselle, Storia Diplomatica dal1919 ai nostri giorni (Milano: Led, 2004). 188 G. Candeloro, Il fascismo e le sue guerre 1922-1939 in Storia dell’Italia Moderna (Milano: Feltrinelli, 2002), 175. 189 Ibid., 165. 190 The international authority for the execution of peace treaties.

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Serbia following the massacre in Sarajevo. Italy asked for stately formal apologies, funeral ceremonies for the fallen, a homage to the Italian flag, an inquiry supervised by the Italian military representation, and compensation of fifty million lira. The Greek government accepted the Italian requests only in part, and declared that if an agreement was not found then they would appeal to the League of Nations. On August 31 Mussolini ordered the attack and occupation of Corfu. Greece, as promised, appealed to the League of Nations, whom Mussolini informed he would withdraw if his council dealt with the matter. The serious ItalianGreek crisis was overcome thanks to Poincare’s intervention, who was able to postpone the contentions until the Conference of Ambassadors. The Greek government presented its apologies and paid the compensation of fifty million Lira, while Italy agreed to an international commission, with France and the United Kingdom involved, to bring forth the judiciary inquiry. The incident de-escalated, and on September 27 the Italians vacated Corfu. The above-described situation created resentment towards Italy and suspicion by the small countries as they realized that even the League of Nations wasn’t able to defend them against oppression by the greater powers. From the moment that fascism formed it generated an enthusiastic analysis for its originality and the rigidity of its demonstrations, giving it an ethic and political judgement.191 During 1923, the publishing house of Piero Gobetti, an antifascist politician, released a volume gathering numerous articles written by Luigi Salvatorelli192 between 1919 and 1923. The book Nationalfascism retraces the phases of fascism to explain and widely interpret the fast-growing political phenomenon happening simultaneously to the Bolsheviks in Russia.193 Therefore, the question we ask ourselves is if the two political movements that arose after the First World War in Italy and in Russia have common characteristics, and how did the Italian 191

B. Croce, “Chi è Fascista? [1944],” in Renzo De Felice, Il Fascismo. Le interpretazioni dei contemporanei e degli storici (Bari: Laterza, 1970). 192 Luigi Salvatorelli (1886–1974) was a professor of history of the church at the University of Naples from 1918 to 1921, the year in which he transferred to Torino where he became co-editor of the newspaper La Stampa. In 1925 the fascist regime forced him to abandon his position at the newspaper. In the following years he dedicated himself to the studies of medieval history and the Risorgimento, publishing numerous essays, such as: “Vita di San Francesco d’Assisi” (1926), “San Benedetto e l’Italia del suo Tempo” (1929), “L’Italia Comunale” (1940), “Storia del Pensiero Politico Italiano dal 1700 al 1870” (1935), and “Pensiero e Azione del Risorgimento” (1943). 193 L. Salvatorelli, Nationalfascism (Roma: Libero, 2004).

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Communist Party, started in 1921, interact with the Soviet leadership. As we shall see later, the two countries had relations and sprang multiple surprises within the European political view. Let us return to Italy in 1923. According to Salvatorelli, to interpret the fascist phenomenon it is necessary to analyse four factors. Firstly, fascism did not seem to be the product of a simple social class reaction, as interpreted by others. Hence, he did not see it as armed farmers that wanted to destroy the Socialist Party. He believed instead that fascism was a movement of the petite bourgeoisie,194 meaning that its militants came from that social class, and that the political horizon of fascism really expressed interests and fears that were its own. According to Salvatorelli, it was possible to identify a small technical bourgeoisie, an element of the productive process, to which engineers, chemists, and those tied to a capitalistic entrepreneurial mentality belonged, and a small humanistic bourgeoisie formed by employees and functionaries of the state and public authority, from lawyers or doctors of lesser levels and teachers. Therefore, the social group that gave the most support to fascism was actually this small humanistic bourgeoisie. He sustained that this was the point of contact with the humanistic culture. In the common nationalistic language, both the small bourgeois and the fascists spoke of the Risorgimento and national patriotism. Both the important consideration for the nationalistic culture and the specific social position of the small humanistic bourgeoisie explain why a government that was at first against the proletariat was appreciated. It is here that we see the deep divergence from the ex-Tsarist Empire events. In the end, the connection with a violent and subversive fascism was assured by the bloody character that the same nationalpatriotic matter assumed during the hard political debate that in 1915 brought Italy to war. To understand the nature of the petite bourgeoisie nationalism, according to Salvatorelli it is necessary to recall the “square riots” of May 1915, similarly to Pipes who affirmed the first phase of the Russian Revolution with the riots of 1905, strongly repressed by the Tsarist Empire and that resulted, twelve years later, in new and more violent riots. Before dealing with the Marxist and post-Marxist perspectives of Gramsci, Togliatti, and Tasca on the fascist phenomenon, let us return to interpret the period between 1922 and 1927 which saw the NPE as the new 194

By the petite bourgeoisie Salvatorelli means that part of society that does not belong to capitalism, and does not even constitute an element of the productive process, remaining moreover obviously recognizable from the proletarian, not so much for the economic conditions as for the social “bourgeoisie” habits and for one’s knowledge of social class being non-proletarian.

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protagonist of the Soviet political scene.195 The good harvest of 1922 signalled a true beginning for the NPE after the disastrous drought of the year before. The speed of this recovery, founded on the concessions of a few economic liberties after the failure of the communist politics, augmented the fear of the new power, whose top brass saw, in Lenin’s words, a group of conquerors in a hostile country. Contrary to the Italian case, the top brass of Moscow had to deal with a class of enterprising farmers. Three compromises, which the new state was forced to sign with the other winning forces, formed the core of the NPE.196 The first and most convincing was, as already mentioned, with the farmers of every nationality. After the 1918–21 parenthesis, the Soviet regime returned to the program that Lenin had articulated, ingratiating himself with the propeasants of the socialist revolutionaries that allowed the Bolshevik victory in 1917, in which the freedom to manage family-run businesses and commercial ones was a strong points. The second compromise was with the nationalities: not only with the non-Russian farmers but also with the demands of the national groups and socialists with whom the Bolsheviks clashed. The symbol of this compromise was the beginning of a new federal state, the union of the Soviet Socialist Republics, among which was Russia.197 Furthermore, if the federal structure impeded the definition of the Soviet “imperial” experience, it found difficulty in denying its imperialistic traits. The third compromise was with the army officers, businessmen, scientists, doctors, and economists, or in other words the “specialized bourgeoisie” that were left in the country. Small businessmen were allowed to reopen their businesses, while the others were associated with the new bureaucracy, even if under supervision, and private citizens of all political persuasions. The combination of these compromises resulted in medium to long-term results. The economic recovery extended to industry and the cities, while the various federate republics in the USSR experienced years of revival under national communism. Despite all this, the NPE lacked political vitality.

195

N. Werth, Storia dell’Unione Sovietica (Bologna: il Mulino, 1993), 102–34. N. Bucharin and E. Preobraženskij, L’Accumulazione Socialista (Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1972). 197 J. Ellenstein, Histoire de l’URSS (Paris: Editiones Sociales, 1973), 170–224. 196

CHAPTER FIVE THE RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR, THE POLISH QUESTION, AND PEACE TALKS IN ITALIAN MILITARY DOCUMENTS FROM 1917 TO 1921

The years that followed the collapse of monarchical Russia and the onset of the Russian Civil War caused new speculative interests for the historians due to the interpretation that some schools of thought gave to the events of 1917 and the Soviet government. The military archives of the Italian army contain considerable documentation on Allied intervention in Russia during the years of the terrible Civil War fought not only between the White Army, Red Army, and Green Army, but also between these and extra Soviet armies, such as the Polish. The First World War had pointed out the limits of Tsarist foreign policy, already highlighted in the confrontation with Japan from 1904 to 1905. These limits had been overcome by the government’s decision to secure a twenty-year peace treaty for the country to foster the improvement of its military departments and a general improvement of the imperial economy. By virtue of this, Russia had been forced to swallow the bitter pill of the annexation of Bosnia Herzegovina to Austria in 1908 and the following Balkan Wars, to which it had to attend with a passivity it would not have maintained in other times. The entry into the First World War was an act of duty towards Serbia, the Slavic state to which Russian public opinion paid special attention due to the pan-Slavic feelings from the politic of magyarization that was actualized in the Balkans during the Austro-Hungarian198 double monarchy, as shown in the studies of Slovak 198

In this regard see M. Waldenberg, National Issues in Central and Eastern Europe: History and Current Issue, (Milano, Il Saggiatore, 1994); L. Grassi, Moments of Central Eastern History: 18–20th Centuries (Genova: Coedit, 2008); L. Grassi, Versailles and Bolshevik Russia in the Paris Peace Conference between Yesterday and Tomorrow, 1919–1920, Acts of the International Conference of Studies, Portogruaro-Bibione 31 May-4 June 2000, A. Scottà (ed.) (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2003).

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historian Marek Waldenberg. After the premature end of the war with the Brest-Litovsk Treaty of March 1918, which ended the Russian-German hostilities, a fierce civil war between Leninist communists and the counterrevolutionary forces led by White Generals (former Tsarist officers) that opposed themselves to the Sovietization of the empire broke out in Russian territory. Meanwhile, in autumn of the same year, Germany fell and the war ended. The meeting of the winners—the United Kingdom, France, the United States, and Italy—took place in Versailles in the very first days of the new year to re-establish order in the new Europe, and above all punish and demilitarize Germany. The Peace Conference, which was first held on January 18, 1919 in the Mirrors Room of Versailles, opened with the participation of seventy delegates from the twenty-seven winning nations, and had far more contingent tasks than dealing with the Civil War in Russia. Moreover, the former Tsar’s country signed a separate agreement—not shared with the Allies—with Germany, which was a dishonoured agreement that remained outside the negotiations table. Even the fourteen points proclaimed by Wilson as the foundations of the negotiations became less important than the conclusion of the anti-German secret treaties. After the first plenary session, control of the conference was taken by a supreme council composed of the leaders of the Big Five powers (the Big Four plus Japan), assisted by technical territorial commissions. The fact is that the absence of Russia favoured Poland’s, the Baltic Republics’, and Finland’s births. From a strategic point of view, this absence could have sped up the process of recognizing the Caucasus independence, which did not actually happen. There were two factors that led to different conclusions: first of all, the strategic position of Russia being the German antemurale to the east and guarantor of Balkan stability; secondly, the Allied representatives’ conviction that neither Lenin nor the White Generals Denikin and Kolchak would tolerate a solution to the Caucasus problem—under Moscow control since 1864—that was externally imposed. At the same time, fervent diplomatic activity marked the attempt by the Caucasus peoples to obtain the status of independent countries through Moscow’s central power. Such a condition would have allowed them to attend the Peace Conference with higher credit rather than as conflicting peoples. The necessity, never actualized, of peaceful coexistence in the Transcaucasian area is evidenced by some military documents. Many others are instead a verification of the ethnic tension level that often ended up in real armed clashes, which had the purpose of “creating in the disputed territories particular situations that were useful

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for the cause of each”199: Armenians against Azerbaijanis, Georgians against Abkhazians (who were Muslims and had a bond to the peoples of the mountains), Turkish minorities against Armenians, and Bolshevik troops against Menshevik resistances. The Kremlin, moreover, for widely debated ideological reasons, could not have allowed the Allied occupation to remain in such an area of strategic importance for the fate of the Civil War, and thus put the Allied powers, who were interested in the possible economic exploitation of the area, under pressure, so as to keep them uninvolved in a military occupation with a markedly anti-Bolshevik character. And so, as the edges of the Caucasian rebus were defined, the Allies also abandoned the latest economic penetration projects that had been carefully studied previously. The Bolshevik government, which acted to suppress the last Menshevik revolts headed by Denikin, Krasnov, Vrangel (southern Russia), and Kolchak (the Urals), claimed a kind of “protectorate” status in the Caucasus territories. With an attitude of friendly cooperation, but also encouraging an effective policy of infiltrating Bolshevik elements in the ranks of local parties, Moscow determined the necessary conditions for the transformation of simple bilateral agreements within a few years, as in the case of the Independent Republic of Georgia, in real annexations.200 The Soviet government feared Georgia would defend the repatriation of Denikin’s white armies, which was unfounded since the Georgian foreign minister reported to Colonel Gabba, in a telegram dated May 5, 1920, that Georgia had “always been against Denikin whose troops have been disarmed and interned in Georgia

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Gabba’s letter to Foreign Affairs Minister Tittoni of 28 January 1920, “Relations between the three Transcaucasian republics.” Rome, Archives of the Army’s Main Staff Office (hereafter AUSSME), Fund E-11, Envelope 108, Sheet 4. Gabba’s report expresses his concern about the damage that could be suffered by the countries of the Caucasus if the Allies abandon them to themselves. 200 The ambiguity with which the Bolshevik government had relations with Georgia was repeatedly witnessed by the correspondence of Colonel Gabba with the Italian Foreign Ministry. On May 5, 1920, in a telegram in which the relationship between Georgians and “Sovietists” was highlighted, Gabba stated that, “Chicherin assures that Soviets have no aggressive intentions against Georgia … the Georgian Foreign Minister responded by noting aggressive intentions, finding contradiction with some hostile acts by Baku’s Soviet authorities … as overruns of Bolshevik bands, Georgian Baku arrest mission, Georgian railway material seizure, telegraphic and postal communications interruption.” Rome, AUSSME, Fund E-11, Envelope 115, Sheet 13.

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… Georgia will never be a base of hostile operations against Soviet Russia who now have to clarify their attitude.”201 It has to be remembered that the organization of the Peace Conference, in the way it was actualized, put an obstacle in the way of all the minor powers not called by the Allies during the discussion of the problems about the various territories, and only when the decisions had already been taken by the Supreme War Council. The smaller powers could do nothing other than sign the agreements that were presented to them. In the Caucasus case, the situation happened even quicker. Instead of appointing a Territorial Commission to examine the issues related to the boundaries and areas of employment, this task was given to military representatives at the Supreme Council (General Belin for France, General Sackville-West for the United Kingdom, General Di Robilant for Italy, and General Bliss for the United States) during the fifty-third session, which took place in two successive convocations on February 4–5, 1919, and dealt with the argument from the logistical-military point of view only. The main problem was the British necessity to demobilize a large military contingent (about five hundred thousand men), which at that moment had been deployed to Asiatic Turkey and Transcaucasia. During the two sessions, it was decided that the British troops would be replaced in the Konia and Transcaucasia area by an Italian contingent made up of two battalions. What attracts our attention is the absolute absence of any consideration about the issues of independence and national identity of the Caucasus republics and other areas of occupation such as Palestine and Libya. The attitude of the Big Four was a source of profound disappointment for the representatives of the Caucasian Republics that expected concrete help from the West, especially in terms of supplies of arms and ammunition, in order to preserve their independence202—support that would never be given for political reasons. Allied governments were oriented differently towards what the Russians continued to claim were “national domestic issues.” By giving attention to the Caucasian areas, it continued to maintain ambiguity by not recognizing the Bolshevik government as an 201

Telegram of May 5, 1920 sent by Colonel Gabba to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Italian High Commissioner in Constantinople. Rome, AUSSME, 1920, Fund E-11, Envelope 115, Sheet 13. 202 “Under such conditions, it is not the case of a demanding action, relying solely on these provisional governments and not even supplying arms properly.” So the Italian Commissioner in Constantinople explained the reasons why it would be risky to provide aid to the emerging republics. Telegram of November 3, 1919, signed by Sforza and directed to the Italian Military Mission to Tiflis. Rome, AUSSME, Fund E-11, Envelope 114, Sheet 4.

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official referent, nor by directly supporting the army of General Anton Denikin, who many Allied powers, such as the British, would have preferred.203 Relations and bilateral contacts intensified, and so delegations from the Caucasus republics concluded peace agreements in the prevision of the imminent stability of the area and the prospect of facing the Bolshevik government at a later stage, when the understanding between the independent republics had been sufficiently consolidated. A number of official documents testify to the intense Italian diplomatic activity in those territories during the years of clashes between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks for the resolution of the Civil War. Yet, Italian politics, in particular in the passage from Orlando’s Cabinet to the Nitti Presidency, also revealed a margin of considerable ambiguity. After the collapse of the Orlando government, the proponent of the Italian intervention in Transcaucasia (despite the negative opinion expressed several times by King Victor Emmanuel III, who feared a “collision with Russia” and the necessity of sending a large contingent to keep “order in Georgia”), the first intervention by the Nitti204 government was the cancellation of the Italian military mission, too burdensome and contrary to the principle of demobilization, officially communicated to the UK government on July 30, 1919 through the Italian embassy in London. In the intentions of Prime Minister Nitti was the possibility to give the mission an essentially economic character, favoured by the diplomatic contacts initiated with local governments by the military representatives, relations that should have led to the conclusion of conventions for the exploitation of the Caucasus oil and mining resources. It is clear from the documents of the military mission that the Caucasus governments were willing to enter into economic agreements with the Allies; however, this 203

In a telegram dated October 27, 1919, directed at the Italian military mission in Tiflis, Sforza, who was the petitioner, said: “The British government does not want to hurt Denikin … there have been talks with De Martino, Pirelli, and Sazonoff, in which he reaffirmed that Russia will never recognize Transcaucasia independence that will be regained as soon as possible: Russia will not recognize concessions currently given by Caucasus governments and will consider any act indirectly capable of strengthening them as unfriendly.” Rome, AUSSME, Fund E-11, Envelope 114, Sheet 4. 204 The shift in the Italian government from Sonnino to Nitti had its political significance in the economic and financial priority of the new president of the council. Luigi E. Longo stated that Nitti “saw the economic reconstruction of Italy as linked to Russia, a loose tank of raw materials, as well as to Germany, a stateof-the-art technology country.” See L. E. Longo, The Activities of Italian Military Engineers Abroad between the Two World Wars (1919–1939) (Rome: AUSSME, 1999), 418.

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was not the case for concessions, especially the monopolistic ones, regarding the use of resources by any foreign power. This clashed with the will of the newly formed republics to maintain their independence from both Russia and the West. During the period of the Italian military presence in the Caucasus, Colonel Gabba distinguished himself by the magnitude of his work. The numerous reports on the development of the war situation in the Caucasus region reveal his diplomatic abilities. Telegrams and correspondence with Foreign Minister Tittoni fill in the lack of information about local government tendencies to establish relations with the Bolsheviks, the Denikin troops, and the Turkish elements in the region, and shed light on the ethnic groups’ separatist tendencies in the southern Caucasus. Gabba understood that the relations within the Caucasus were compromised because of the lack of a unitary line that favoured dialogue between independent states and the Moscow Bolshevik government. As expected by the Italian official, Russia, once the Polish problem was solved, drew its attention to the Caucasus by providing a series of measures to connect the fate of the republics to themselves while thinking about the creation of the future Soviet Confederation. So, the Treaty between Russia and Georgia on May 7, 1920, which should have represented a fundamental point for relations between the two states, ended Georgia’s right to independence from Moscow. The head of the Italian mission showed strong perplexity in his telegram dated June 9, 1920 addressed to Minister Tittoni, in which he spoke of the treaty in terms of “ambiguous and serious clauses that may force Georgia to take decisive action against allies in Batum and to accept Soviet help in such action.”205 The treaty, consisting of sixteen articles, was signed between Georgian representative Grigory Illarionovich Ouratadze, a member of the constituent chamber, and Lev Michailovich Karakhan, assistant to the people commissioner of foreign affairs. In this treaty, the parties undertook to respect the internal policies of the two countries: the borders between the two states were established (Art. 3), and they were committed to fighting internal forces opposed to Georgian independence or Soviet Russia (Art. 5). In particular, Art. 5, which “was drafted in such a way as to leave no freedom to Georgia in its international

205

Telegram of June 9, 1920 sent by Col. Gabba, head of the Italian military mission in Transcaucasia, to Minister Tittoni. Rome, AUSSME, Fund E-11, Envelope 115, Sheet 13.

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relations, subordinating it to Russian politics,”206 is considered one of the many ambiguous points to which the Italian soldier was referring. The treaty (in the appendix in the following volume) was expanded by a supplement that tried to resolve disputes between Georgia and Azerbaijan. One of the features of this period was the attitude that Caucasian states had towards Allied powers. On August 10, 1920 in Sèvres, Armenia, a treaty was concluded with the latter in which it tried to legitimize its autonomy in thirteen points through a wide-ranging document in which the inalienable rights of the freedom of individuals of every ethnicity and religion in their own territory were reaffirmed.207 Versailles highlighted all its limitations in dealing with the future restructuring of the region between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea. In fact, “leaving these three abandoned republics alone will lead to the creation of Transcaucasian Balkans or to the absolute command of the great Ponto-Caspica communication path by the one and only power: England.”208 That was the reading that Gabba gave of the phenomenon that invested the Caucasus in the early 1920s, and which proved to be accurate regarding the “balkanization” of the area, of which the American scholar Zbigniew Brzezinski, demonstrating the intuition of the Italian soldier, wrote in his 1997 volume The Grand Chessboard: “Eurasia too has its ‘Balkans’ but the Eurasian Balkans are much larger, more populated, and even more religiously and ethnically heterogeneous.”209 This is a definition that still perfectly corresponds to the delineated picture. The importance of military missions and shipping bodies to the Allied in Russia has been widely recognized by contemporary historians but deserves a further reading, especially as it regards the role of the Italian soldiers. The archive sources highlight the enormous commitment of Italian officers during their period of occupation in Russia. From the political consideration to the description of Russian daily life, from the strictly military episode to the economic relations—detailed and rich in their reflection of ideas—and from the study of local customs to observations of a purely diplomatic nature comes an 206

Telegram dated May 7, 1920 shipped from Col. Gabba to the Foreign Ministry of Rome and the High Commissioner of Constantinople. Rome, AUSSME, Fund E-11, Envelope 115, Sheet 13. 207 Traité entre les Principales puissances alliées et l”Arménie signé le 10 août 1920 à Sévres. Rome, AUSSME, Fund E-8, Envelope 87, Sheet 42. 208 Col. Gabba’s letter to the Foreign Affairs Minister Tittoni on January 28, 1920, “Relations between the three Transcaucasian republics” Rome, AUSSME, Fund E11, Envelope 108, Sheet 4. 209 Z. Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives (New York: Basic Books, 1997), 123.

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original image, a “new” image of Russia during the Civil War. The missions become a privileged observatory through which we observe the most disparate aspects of the multifaceted post-Revolutionary Russia, full of contradictions and in continuous social ferment. In the reports of Italian soldiers, there are also personal reflections and considerations on the “difficult crossroads” towards which the Russian people were forced during the clashes between White and Red. Russia in 1918–19 was different from Russia in 1919–21. This came out of the official relations of the Italian delegations, but also the analysis of international political issues that saw Russia confronting itself with a new role as a “model” state for other proletarian nations. This is one of the reasons why the elimination of the “formidabile incognita” about Russia’s fate was not recognized in Versailles. Pierre Renouvin said: “The Soviet government has never shown itself willing to negotiate, certainly because communist movements in Bavaria and Hungary encouraged it to hope for a rapid extension of Bolshevism.”210 The Peace Conference lacked a communication of intent, and an invitation addressed to both the Bolsheviks and the White Generals to sit at the negotiating table fell into the void. Cicerin accepted the exhortation from the Allies to the Bolsheviks and White Generals to meet at Prince Island (Prinkipo), not far from Constantinople. In this regard, Victor Serge said: l’ouverture même des négotiations de Prinkipo signifiait la reconnaissance par les Soviets des Etats contre-révolutionnaires en voie de constitution en Sibérie, dans le pays du Don, au Caucase. Politique extrêmement dangereuse que les chefs de la contre-révolution—Koltchak et Dénikine— sans doute conseillés par des généraux alliés, firent par bonheur échouer. Comptant sur les offensives du printemps, ils s’abstinrent de répondre à l’offre des puissances et à la note de Tchitchérine. Ce fut de leur part une lourde faute.211

Thus, the non-intervention of the Allies and the “cordon” policy, proposed and supported by Wilson to isolate and contain the “Bolshevik phenomenon,” were maintained until, in May 1919, the prospect of a rapid victory of the troops of the White Generals Kolchak and Denikin pushed the Big Four to write down a list of conditions to submit to Kolchak. The orientation taken by the Versailles delegates was short, as the sudden overturning of the situation, this time in favour of the Bolsheviks, made the acceptance of the proposals to the Siberian admirer void. Once again, 210 211

P. Renouvin, The Treaty of Versailles (Milano: Mursia, 1970), 115. V. Serge, L’an I de la révolution russe (Paris: La Découvert, 1997), 420.

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the attempt to bring order failed where Allied diplomatic paralysis and the withdrawal of military contingents significantly affected the final outcome of the Civil War. The guiding principle of the considerations made at Versailles was to prevent Germany from approaching Russia and to tighten its commercial, political, and social relations with it. On the basis of this analysis, the bankruptcy of all the plans drawn up by the Allies is clear. The President of the Italian Council, Orlando, was convinced that there were two political choices: to crush Bolshevism through military expedition or tighten normal political relations with the Lenin government. The Allies could do neither of these. “We have suffered,” commented Orlando, “the most unpleasant consequences of both of these policies: we do not make war, but at the same time we are in a state of war with Russia.”212 This is a summary that perfectly sums up months of exhausting, and also unnecessary, negotiations. Diplomacy failed and the Civil War was won by the Bolsheviks, who first beat the Siberian army and then pushed Denikin’s voluntary army to flight in Crimea.213 The arm wrestling with the Caucasus republics, and particularly with Georgia, lasted for a long time, but in February 1921 it led the small state into submission to the great project of the Soviet Union. At the same time, Western governments invited those who were still deployed against the Bolsheviks to continue the struggle. This intent was also evident from the deposition made by Boris Savinkov in front of the military college of the Supreme Court of Soviet Russia in 1924, when, to the question about the Warsaw Congress of June 1921 (organized by the Popular Union for the Defence of Homeland and Freedom) involving representatives of foreign governments, he answered: They were all very careful and interested. Sologub came from Poland … then the Italian Staffini, a military officer, Major French Paguelier and some officers of the British and American military missions. They took notes, informed their governments, and during the talks they had with me 212

Ibid., 117. The epic Civil War is reflected in the writings of some Russian literary sources sensitive to the national drama of the 1918–21 years. To name two of the bestknown writers of Russia in the twentieth century, Isaak Babel wrote Red Cavalry, a monument to the Soviet victory over the White Armies, while Mikhail Bulgakov wrote The White Guard (in three parts) in which, beside the celebration of the White’s ethical value, is the detailed representation of the political and social disintegration of the old world. It is important to remember that in November 1918, when he was in Kiev where he was a practicing physician, Bulgakov took part in the defence of the city against the occupation of Petljura, by which he was inspired to write A Young Doctor’s Notebook and The Murderer. 213

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While the work of military missions in the Russian territory was almost completed, General Romei Longhena from Poland—sent there after his previous experience in Saint Petersburg as a military clerk and then in Warsaw as the Italian representative of the Allied mission in Poland—continued to describe the repercussions of the fight against the new Bolshevik system. The various White Generals’ armies had fallen one by one, except for Denikin’s in Crimea. The Polish capital became the centre of international diplomacy, which still believed that overthrowing the Bolshevik government and stopping the experience of Lenin’s “companions” were possible. The Italian Military Mission to Poland,215 from November 1919 to January 1923, remained the only one in contact with the new Soviet state and so opened the way to observing and following this evolution in the different political, social, economic, and military aspects. It was informative, and had to “observe and report, as far as possible about the mysterious neighbour in the East: Bolshevik Russia,” as well as collect information on the political situation in Eastern Europe. According to the Italian official, the numerous reports sent to Rome testified that “the mission has found ways to throw its gaze also on the former Moscow empire.” The sources of information which General Romei refers to are based on the rumours of some Russian immigrants, known during the previous assignment at Pietrogrado. Among them are Sergey Dmitrievich Sazonov (1860–1927), former Foreign Minister in the last years of the empire and a member of the liberal-constitutional party, and Boris Savinkov, a former war minister of the Kerensky government and a representative, according to Romei, of “the democratic tendencies of the people and especially Russian peasants.”216 Moreover, Romei used precious information from Italian officers who were assigned to him from 214

B. Savinkov, The Pale Horse (Venezia: Marsilio Editore, 1993), 33. On “The Italian Oil Journal,” Note no. 1, The Caucasus Oil, 1941, about a deposition made by Savinkov in the process that sees him involved in Moscow in 1924, reads: “The Englishmen told me repeatedly and insistently that it would be desirable to establish in Russia an independent South East Union, run by Denikin and to which Georgia and Azerbaijan would be aggregated: in all this I felt the smell of oil.” 215 See also the valid contribution of L. E. Longo, L’Attività degli Addetti Militari italiani all’estero fra le due guerre mondiali (1919–1939) (Rome: Historical Office SME, 1999), 422–80. 216 Report of General Romei to the Chief of Staff (Warsaw, March 5, 1922). Rome, AUSSME, Fund E-11, Envelope 63, Sheet 2.

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time to time to assist him in different functions, such as Major Giuseppe Stabile, Captain Leopold Venturi, and other officers who revolved around the mission by taking on responsibilities underlined by Alessandro Gionfrida in his volume Missioni e addetti militari italiani in Polonia (1919–1923).217 The revival of Poland between 1918 and 1919 trigged a wave of sympathy from the Italian government which actively participated in the constitution of General Haller’s army in France by sending troops of Polish prisoners to the Austrian front (577 officers and 31,800 troops).218 Polish detainees were gathered in the concentration camps of St. Maria Capua Vetere and La Mandria di Chivasso, and would be sent to France to be transferred to Poland. The aid subsequently offered to Poland, with the sale of war equipment, went in the direction of establishing a good relationship with the Polish state, even from a commercial point of view, although the sympathies between the two countries derived from the fact that they both felt themselves to be victims of a political-cultural domination—the Poles by Russia and the Italians by Austro-Hungary. Finally, in July 1919 the Italian government decided to send Colonel Umbertino Franchino’s mission to Warsaw with the aim of collecting information on the political and military situation of Poland, Ukraine, the Baltic States, and Russia. A few months later, that mission was replaced by the one of General Romei Longhena, who was already an Italian military representative of the Inter-Allied Mission to Poland, dependent on the Versailles Peace Conference, who remained in office until January 1923. Among the tasks entrusted to his mission was stopping the fighting between the Poles and Czechoslovakians for the possession of the Teschen ducat, the Poles and Germans for Posnania and Silesia, and the Poles and Ukrainians for Eastern Galicia. It was also necessary to assist the rising Polish state in its military reorganization. General Romei’s opinion at the end of the mission was merciless: the work “that had been carried out with proper consciousness and with direct checks of every element of judgment unfortunately did [not] mature any fruit.”219 Romei complained that almost all the decisions made by the mission had been ignored by the Supreme Council in Paris, making the Italian’s actions in Poland lack efficacy. A few months after the mission was withdrawn, he recalled that his task had been dictated by the need to follow “the constitution of this young state, a 217 A. Gionfrida, Missioni e addetti militari italiani in Polonia (1919–1923) (Rome: AUSSME, 1996), 80–110. 218 Ibid., 80. 219 Summary and conclusions of the commission’s work, inter-allied in Poland, in Gionfrida, Missioni e addetti militari italiani in Polonia (1919–1923), 93.

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constitution that takes place between war events and political events of great importance not only for Poland but for the whole of Europe, because they could cause serious complications.”220 With Romei, Italian entrepreneurial activities also received an excellent boost, especially the Ansaldo, which sold aeronautical equipment to the Polish government. Italy soon abdicated the economic and political role that it could play in Eastern Europe, leaving the field open to France to enter into commercial and political-cultural relations. Meanwhile, things did not work better in Russia. After the fast withdrawal of Allied powers, Moscow dealt with a difficult internal situation and the uncertain outcome of the Civil War began to justify the strategy launched by the Bolsheviks, who took over the armies of the White Generals thanks to the about-face of Western military missions and the disinterest of the United States in the fate of the new post-war organization in Russia. Everything was left in the hands of the Supreme Council of Paris, which worked uninterruptedly to solve the different issues of an ethnic-territorial nature. According to Romei, in Poland there was great exultation for the resumption of the Supreme Council about the Galician issue, thus annulling the hybrid solution that assigned those lands to the Polish administration for only twenty-five years. Newspapers attribute the merit to Clémenceau, and to France. It was rumoured that Piázudski was morally and materially supporting Petliura in the re-conquest of the part of Ukraine that Denikin had taken away. On the Galician frontier, Petliura gave the idea of being the more suitable neighbour to Poland who, hosting him before and helping him later, subordinated him to its will. Piázudski, “speaking of a future set up of Ukraine, has expressed the idea that there could be, rather than a single state, a confederation of several states, of which one, that in contact with Galicia, could be established by Symon Petliura.” Later, in a telegram sent by Georgy Chicherin to the Italian government and intercepted by the Poles in which the Soviet government expressed its rejoicing for the vote of the Italian parliament about the resumption of relations with Russia, Romei commented: My not so short stay in Moscow in contact with the Bolshevik government, the almost daily lively talks that I had with Trotsky, Chicherin and Karakhan when our military mission was their hostage, and five hundred of our soldiers had been unfairly imprisoned would make me comment on the Bolshevik radio-telegram. I refrain from doing so, 220

Report of General Romei to Head of State Staff, Warsaw, March 5, 1922, in AUSSME, Fund E11, b. 63 f. 2.

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especially when my telegrams and my reports sent from Moscow can be used as comments. I only remember that Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin repeated to me many times that Bolshevism could live and affirm itself on one condition: that its expansion was continuous.221

Romei’s fear, as was the fear of the great part of Western governments, was that revolutionary ideas coming from Russia could infect different countries and create dangerous insurrections. For this reason, the French government abandoned the policy of support for counter-revolution and opted for the umbilical cord system around Russia, a sort of quarantine for the new Moscow ruling class. The year 1920 opened with the repeated defeats of the White Army. The Army on horseback, of which Semyon Mikhailovich Budyonny was a legendary hero,222 entered Taganrog, the White military political centre, and later occupied Rostov. The reversal of the war front saw the end of the northwestern army because of Nikolai Yudenich’s order on January 21, by then disappointed by the abandonment of the war by the Allies. Most of the soldiers went through the ranks of the Bolsheviks. At the same time, a military convention between the Estonian republic and Soviet Russia for the cessation of hostilities was signed. April 1920 saw the Polish recognition of the sovereign and independent state of Ukraine, and its directory was chaired by Petliura. The former Russian Army official, Gyllenbogel, part of the Great Russian Headquarters during the war and then responsible for Finnish business in Poland, told Romei the news of the conference that was taking place in Warsaw between Finland, Latvia, Poland, and Romania to enter into agreements to start peace talks with the Moscow government, a conference in which the delegates of the four 221

General news and memorials concerning the military situation, Poland’s domestic and foreign policy, the Italian Military Mission in Poland (now MMIP) at the Rome State Command (now CSM), Warsaw, January 10, 1920, Rome, AUSSME, Fund E-11, Envelope 57, Sheet 13. 222 The value of the Cossack cavalry commanded by Semyon Mikhailovich Budyonny is Isaak Babel’s focus in Red Cavalry, a gripping book in which two worlds are confronted: the ancient one, rich in culture and traditions, and the one that is born from the revolution that brings the intrinsic characters of violence but also freedom. Babel wrote this interesting volume, fighting with the red-haired Budyonny riders, and from his novel communicated all the drama and the most disturbing phases of the Civil War and the Revolution. In 1920, the Soviet writer also made a short stop in Odessa where he found inspiration to write some stories, then collected in The Odessa Tales, in which the prominent figure was Miška Japonþik. See: I. Babel, Red Cavalry: Diary 1920 (Venice: Marsilio Editore, 1990).

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states maintained rigorous discretion. From that conversation, Romei concluded that “if we carefully study the phenomenon of Bolshevism, we see that it did not last if not in the strictly Russian territories. Populations who were not, knew in a relatively short period of time how to shake off the Bolshevik yoke and find its form of government. If the strictly Russian peoples could not do the same, it meant that Bolshevism was the best form of government for them, that was the autocratic form, both personified by the Tsar or by Lenin.”223 Romei argued that the Poles could face peace negotiations with the certainty of having superiority over their enemy: It has been said more and more that the Bolshevik army, framed with officers of the old regime, subjected to an iron discipline, had become a very good modern army. My experience in Russia has not permitted me to believe it … If several officers of the old regime entered in the Red Army, it was because they were forced to do so by the draconian laws or by the necessity of not letting their families starve. But what feeling of devotion can such officers be fostered of for a regime that, when it did not kill them, martyred them in all sorts of ways and urged the soldiers to take off their grade insignia and spit on their faces? The Bolshevik plans, drawn up by former regime officers and even more by German officers, seemed good and conceived with all the rules of military art. What fails is the execution.

Having highlighted the weak character of the Russian soldier, Romei Longhena spoke about the Bolshevik mentality, which was an attempt at limited military action in order to impress and induce Warsaw to accept the proposals of Moscow. It should always be remembered that the true basis of the whole Bolshevik program, the great force its entire future was based on, was propaganda. Where weapons failed, propaganda won, and armistice and peace are the most comfortable means for propaganda.224 All the states of the Entente pushed Poland to not negotiate peace with the Russians, but then did not provide them with weapons and ammunition. In the Italian press of that period the critical judgement towards those Allied states can be clearly seen, with the impression that they were guilty of that kind of attitude towards the Polish government, understanding it as: a game that solves the damaged socialism of Poland and of those nations of the Entente who were lucky enough to have chameleons in government and some socialist mobs who took advantage of the weaknesses of the 223

Facts about Finland, MMIP at CSM (Warsaw, March 17, 1920), Rome, AUSSME, Fund E-11, Envelope 57, Sheet 25. 224 Romei’s report on the Polish army appreciations and recent military operations, MMIP at CSM in Rome (Warsaw, April 8, 1920), Rome, AUSSME, Fund E-11, Envelope 57, Sheet 21.

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government itself. Italy is just one, the only one. America played its eternal double cross. While it supplied the Soviet government with agricultural vehicles, tyres and spare parts for cars, at the same time it provided everything it could to Poland (including a number of volunteer men in the army), but sparingly because Poland could not pay in gold as the Bolsheviks did. England, despite getting full confirmation of Polish political behaviour, perhaps so as to not fail in its traditions of good speculators, offered Polish airplanes and cannons for sale, while France also offered airplanes, cannons and even a small party of horses. Italy, which never put on a solemn attitude in Poland, or an interested tutor one, offered oranges and lemons, while no war was won with such weapons.225

The Italian journalist was critical towards the Allied support but, at least for Italy, there was an explanation. The blame would be put on the proletariat who refused to carry weapons and ammunition to use against the Russian proletariat, which was the largest and most negligent among the proletariat. For these reasons, it had the right to do whatever it wanted, including the right to kill the Polish proletarians. Neither the British nor the French proletariat dreamed of seriously hindering their governments in doing what they believed was in the interest of the national industry and were happy to have ensured continuous work.226 In August 1920, incitements to join the Soviets were directed at Polish soldiers with radio telegrams227 and continued for a long time so as to create the basis of a cultural penetration of Bolshevik ideas at multiple levels of social life. The defeat of the only survivor of the White Generals, Vrangel, was imminent, and Romei was also aware of such an imminent defeat as he knew that in the first days of October the agreement between Nestor Makhno and the Bolsheviks about cooperation in combat was to be

225

“La fine dell’avventura” by Ugo Dadone (Warsaw June 1920). Rome, AUSSME, Fund E-11, Envelope 57 Sheet 38. 226 Ibid. 227 One year later, Romei said: “Colonel Kukowski, head of the cabinet of General Sikorski, confided to me that the Polish government has discovered a vast communist plot led by Karakhan, which includes local elements, especially Jewish, Ruthenian, and Russian elements, clandestinely entered in Poland.” Communist insurrection would have to burst in Warsaw on October 7. In another telegram it was said that the movement was to burst in Warsaw and occupy by surprise the residence of the Head of State, the Diet, the castle where he was the Minister of War and the Palace of the State Staff. Complaint stricken by the measures taken by General Sikorski. Romei Letter-telegram at SMRE in Rome (October 3, 1921). Rome, AUSSME, Fund E-11, Envelope 58, Sheet 14, “Communist Activities.”

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signed.228 On November 10, 1920, the defeat of Vrangel’s troops in the Perekop region and the arrest of prisoners by the Red Army put an end to the Civil War. After the defeats of Vrangel, Petliura, and Baáachowicz, their military and diplomatic representatives remained in Warsaw. The denomination of their missions changed, and their uniform was replaced with civilian dress: general Makarov, with all the officers of his retinue representing Vrangel’s army; General Permikin, with his major staff, who was already commander of the Third Russian Army; and General Zelinsky with a retinue of officers, representing Petliura’s troops. There were still some of the old mission diplomats sent by Denikin; there was also Savinkov, former head of Russian terrorists at the time of the Empire, then minister of war during the Kerensky dictatorship and organizer of the revolutionary and terrorist movements of the leftist socialists during the first months of the Bolshevik government. Savinkov formed the Third Russian Army in Poland and, after its defeat, continued the war against the Soviet army, following Baáachowicz’s small army in his operations in White Ruthenia. As Romei said: But, it is not believable that all these diplomatic and military committees work in agreement against their common enemy: Bolshevism. Everyone pulled the water to his mill. The leaders tried, each on his own, to secure the support of the Polish government and of the representatives of the Entente’s powers to have material support at that time and the promise of greater rewards in the future. So, instead of a cooperative effort, a disruptive competition is being created. Of all the characters mentioned above, Savinkov is certainly the most important, both because he is essentially an action man and because his highly democratic and clearly anti-Tsarist program is the one that best suits the current aspirations of the Russian people; and at least because it enjoys the material and moral support of the Head of State Piázudski and the Minister of War Sosnkowsky, who had communions of aspirations and worked with Savinkov in the past.229

Savinkov later said: Bolshevism will not hit with the force of weapons. Any foreign armed intervention will do nothing but worsen the situation and help the 228

“Information Report on November 1, 1920. Crimea and Caucasus.” Reports of the Supreme Army of the Polish Army. Rome, AUSSME, Fund E-11, Envelope 57, Sheet 18. 229 MMIP at the Ministry of War (Warsaw, February 9, 1921). Rome, AUSSME, Fund E-11, Envelope 58, Sheet 10, “Russian Anti-Bolshevik Military Committees and Commands in Poland.”

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Bolshevik cause. The facts show that armed intervention has been not only useless but harmful. Bolshevism is destined to fall by itself, not so quickly as it was born but with the same ease.230

Between June 13–15, 1921 Savinkov organized the Russian AntiBolshevik Congress in Poland, which was attended by forty-one congressmen from different places in Europe, and in which it was decided to: continue the struggle against the Bolsheviks in the extreme, a fight against all attempts to restore the old regime; to demobilize the Red Army after the overthrow of the Soviet regime; to leave the land to the farmers constituting the small private property; to regenerate industries on the basis of private property and of professional unions, cooperatives under the control of the state, except any concept of socialization; to apply democratic concepts based on the will of the people; to convene the Constituent with equal and direct general vote; to recognize the independence of the peoples and regions that have departed from the former Russian Empire and conclude with the same military, political and economic agreements on the basis of free alliances.231

Such hopes came to fruition, in different ways and with different characteristics, only seventy years later.

230

Ibid. In the same file there is a list of the activities of Russian anti-Bolshevik emigrants in Poland (February 2–December 12, 1921) and a letter from Boris Savinkov to General Romei, head of the Italian Military Mission in Poland (in French), in which the Russian “Democrat” reiterated the possibility of still hindering Bolshevik projects because “les armées polonaise et roumaine dépassent de beaucoup, en effectif, la soviétiste, et sont beaucoup mieux armées et équipées,—en dépit de toutes les difficultés financières et autres, que celle-ci.” 231 MMIP at the Ministry of War, Division of State Staff and Major State Regimental Army of Rome (Warsaw, June 21, 1921). Rome, AUSSME, Fund E11, Envelope 58. Sheet 11, Russian Anti-Bolshevik Congress in Poland, Report no. 154 by Romei, in sixteen pages.

CHAPTER SIX TEN YEARS OF CONFLICTUAL POLITICS BETWEEN FASCIST ITALY AND SOVIET RUSSIA (1922–33)

The first twenty years of the twentieth century saw relentless conflict between Lenin’s and Stalin’s ideas. Stalin, Lenin’s lieutenant, was seen by Lenin as the main suspect for the party’s regressive trend.232 Lenin died soon after in 1924. On this date, Stalin took charge of the regime, even though Trotsky, the great leader of the October Revolution, was hostile to him. In the meantime, in October 1929 the last revolutionary struggle in Germany failed, ending the hopes and illusions regarding the opportunity of a Western revolution that would justify the 1917 adventure from a Marxist point of view. What was the USSR’s destiny? How to manage the new state? How to resolve the economic problems? Using the Marxist language and helped by a solid historiography on this theme, we can affirm that the Bolsheviks, who were suddenly in an absurd situation, had to dispose of a superstructure (the state), which was more advanced compared to its own foundation, both socially and economically (with thousands of small independent farm labourers). For this reason, in those days the Stalinist proposition to create socialism in only one country was confirmed, which was a reasonable proposition but not very Marxist. At this point a left, right, and central force took shape representing the Stalinist faction. The right commonly identified itself with the group led 232

On the Soviet’s complex internal political events and the figure of Stalin, among the many contributions, see: I. Deutscher, Stalin: a Political Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967); J. L. H. Keep and A. L. Litvin, Stalinism: Russian and Western Views at the Turn of the Millennium (Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions) (New York: The Russian Review, 2004); E. Radzinsky, Stalin: the First In-Depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia’s Secret Archives (New York: Doubleday, 1996); A. B. Ulam, Stalin: the Man and His Era (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989); C. Ward, The Stalinist Dictatorship (London: New Prospective, 1998).

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by Nikolai Bukharin,233 born in Moscow. He was an intellectual and politician, an exponent of the left wing, and favourable to the NEP development but with serious doubts regarding a socialist revolution inside the Tsarist Empire. Most of the population supported him due to the moderation of his group, and probably of his party too.234 The left, mainly inspired by Trotsky, sustained the urgency for Russia to modernize by moving capital and energies from agriculture to the industries.235 The economist Yevgeny Preobrazhensky sustained that, for the realization of socialism, the Soviet power should have thoroughly developed something similar to the process of capital accumulation which, according to Marx, the British bourgeoisie had originally done at the expense of the farmers, which had later brought about the development of capitalism.236 The left, 233

A. Larina, This I Cannot Forget: the Memoirs of Nikolai Bukharin’s Widow (London: Norton and Co., 1991). 234 Bukharin guided the opposition of the communist left to the Treaty of BrestLitovsk. He affirmed that the Bolsheviks had to continue the military effort and transform it into a worldwide push for the proletarian revolution. In 1921 he changed his position and accepted Lenin’s policies, encouraging the development of the New Political Economy. In Lenin’s will, Bukharin was dearly defined “the Party’s favourite son.” After Lenin’s death he became a fully-fledged member of the Politburo in 1924 and president of the Communist International (Comintern) in 1926. S. F. Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: a Political Biography, 1888–1938 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 45–170. 235 P. Blackledge, “Leon Trotsky’s Contribution to the Marxist Theory of History,” Studies in East European Thought 58 (1) (2006): 1–31. 236 Yevgeni Preobrazhensky (1886–1937) was a Russian economist and politician who joined the Bolshevik Party in 1904 and in 1917 was called to join the Central Committee. He fought so that Leon Trotsky would also be admitted, since their ideological positions had always been similar. His first important piece of work appeared in 1919 in collaboration with N. Bukharin, L’ ABC del Comunismo, which had wide appeal within the Communist International Movement. Between 1920 and 1921 he was part of the party’s administrative office where he openly sided with the international left. However, he supported the NEP institution which he defended it from its opponent’s attacks through his work Anarchismo e Comunismo (1921). Later, he didn’t accept the socioeconomic consequences, the implications of which he highlighted in a series of booklets that instigated a vast controversy: Dalla NEP al Socialismo (1922) and Crisi Economica Durante la NEP (1924). In 1924 a first sketch of his new economic theory appeared in Legge dell’Accumulazione Socialista Originaria, which found a more in-depth and meticulous exposition in La Nuova Economia (1926). This was his most important contribution to the Soviet Union’s economic recovery. In it, he sustained the necessity to give absolute priority to heavy industry (at the time almost nonexistent) as the main frame for the economic structure. For this, all resources must

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right, and centre each represented different terms in the debate, accepting the idea of creating something non-capitalistic in the USSR using the states as levers. The politics used during these debates led the NEP towards a crisis. The decision to build a state market economy founded on heavy industry determined the concentration of weak resources available in sectors unable to give the farmlands the products they again requested.237 All this pushed the indignant farmers to direct their productions towards sectors which price politics had not yet reached. Therefore, in 1927 a first drastic drop occurred in the quantity of agricultural products delivered by the farmers to the state agencies.238 Shortly after, the conflict between state and farmers resumed. At the end of 1927, thanks to Bukharin’s support, Stalin was able to progressively augment his full control over the party. He expelled the executives of the left opposition, among whom was Trotsky, who was exiled. Meanwhile, during the same years, the “questione Adriatica” [Adriatic issue] was at the centre of political debate.239 Since his debut in the consult, Mussolini’s attention was directed at the Danube-Balkan area, in particular the Adriatic-Balkan sector of Fiume, Yugoslavia, and Albania. The “questione fiumana” [Fiume issue] was solved with the Italian-Yugoslav Treaty signed in Rome on January 27, 1924. Salvatore Contarini240 put forward the merit of having reduced the interference of nationalistic ideology in foreign politics during the early years of fascism.

be sacrificed, and in particular agriculture, to which benefits would have inevitably returned, in the near or more distant future. This was the planned theory to which Bukharin (1927) rose against. A further condemnation of the Soviet economic system of the 1920s is found in Equilibrio Economico nel Sistema dell’URSS (1927), which earned him suspension then expulsion from the Communist Party in 1929. However, readmitted in 1931, during the XVII Congress (1934) he intervened with an important speech, in which, underlining the important results obtained with the new economic management, he admitted his theoretical errors. 237 R. W. Davies, From Czarism to the New Economic Policy: Continuity and Change in the Economy of the USSR (New York: Cornell University Press, 1991). 238 S. Fitzpatrick, Russia in the Era of NEP (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991). 239 S. Liberali, Un Sogno Eroico: Fiume Italiana, in Italia: Ventesimo Secolo: la politica, le guerre, i rivolgimenti sociali, le scienze, la tecnologia, le arti, gli spettacoli, lo sport, la moda, il costume (Milano: Selezione dal Reader’s Digest, 1985), 122–5. 240 For a more in-depth insight of Salvatore Contarini’s political work see R. Cantalupo, Vita Diplomatica di Salvatore Contarini (Italia fra Inghilterra e Russia) (Roma: Sestante, 1947).

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He continued to do so, even through the liberal Italian Balkan policies.241 The negotiations with the Serb, Croat, and Slovene reigns were pursued with such politics in mind.242 These were aimed at the joining of Fiume to Italy.243 While Porto Barros and the remaining territories of the ex-free state passed over to Yugoslavia, Fiume became Italian. Furthermore, a five-year friendly agreement was stipulated to obligate those who signed up to respect the pact. Mussolini recanted revisionism through taking up Carlo Sforza’s political view, who had been Giolitti’s foreign minister in 1920–1 and was also the first to confront the Adriatic problem in a rational manner. Thanks to the friendly agreement, Italy was able to expand peacefully through the Balkans. To complete this “good neighbour” diplomatic agreement, the Treaty of Nettuno followed on July 30, 1925. This treaty regulated the Italian situation in Dalmatia and the relations between Zara and the Dalmatian area. Italian foreign politics seemed to have undertaken a more moderate tendency. On February 7, 1924 the Soviet Union was officially recognized, while in May Foreign Minister Beneš visited, and on July 15 a colonial agreement with the United Kingdom was obtained, through which the Jubaland territory was assigned to Italy, a commitment taken within the London Pact of 1915.244 The year 1925 was one of Locarno and a noticeable approach to the United Kingdom. Italy obtained the oasis of Jaghbub, a rectification of the Cyrenaica boundary lines, the right to an economic expansion in western Ethiopia, and the right to build a railway, which should have connected Eritrea to Somalia through the Ethiopian territory. Italy furthermore sided 241

G. Carocci, La Politica Estera dell’Italia Fascista, 1925–1928 (Bari: Laterza, 1969). 242 C. Sforza, L’Italia dal 1914 al 1944 Quale Io la Vidi (Roma: Mondadori, 1945), 152. 243 D. Mack Smith, Storia d’Italia 1861–1958, vol. 2 (Bari: Laterza, 1965), 701. 244 Jubaland (in Somali language known as both Jubaland and Dooxada Juba) is in the southern Somali region located south of the Juba River. Jubaland, under article thirteen of the London Treaty, was ceded to the Kingdom of Italy with the AngloItalian Protocol of July 15, 1924 and annexed to the Italian Somali land with R. D. L. on May 7, 1925, behind an annual compensation of one thousand pounds to the Sultan of Zanzibar in addition to a one-time payment of twenty-five pounds. As an Italian colony it had a short existence as the Jubaland Colony, under governor Corrado Zoli (1877–1951), who held the position from July 16, 1924 to December 31, 1926. It was later incorporated into the neighbouring Italian colony of Somalia on June 30, 1926. In 1941 it was occupied by the British until 1950. From 1950 to 1960, together with Italian Somalia, it was under Italian fiduciary administration. On July 1, 1960, Jubaland, along with the rest of Italian and British Somalia, became part of the independent Somali Republic.

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with London in the matter concerning the oilfields of Mosul, which were assigned to Iraq (British mandate) by the council of the League of Nations on December 16, 1925. The anti-Turkish attitude engaged by Mussolini was reinforced the following year by the clamorous re-vindication of Italy’s right to expansion in the eastern Mediterranean which alarmed Ankara’s government, who saw the old threat of an Italian plan to penetrate the area of Adalia in Asia Minor. Mussolini did not take advantage, in a positive manner, of the cordial agreement with the United Kingdom; therefore, he did not agree with the peaceful stabilization policy in the Danube-Balkan area. Mussolini preferred an action directed at the removal of French influence in this area, at the same time weakening Yugoslavia. The main Italian-Yugoslav conflict was in Albania. The government of Belgrade favoured, from 1924, the return to power of Ahmed Zogu, and so did Mussolini. This resulted in a secret agreement based on which Tirana would allow the use of its territory, in the case of a war against Yugoslavia, in exchange for freedom of action in territories of Yugoslavia where Albanian citizens lived. This policy of pressure on Albania was brought to the signing of the first Treaty of Tirana on November 27, 1926, which committed both parties to maintain the political, territorial, and juridical status quo of Albania.245 An attentive historiographical analysis, as seen by Salvatorelli, influenced the first significant Marxist elaborations on interpreting fascism. Antonio Gramsci entrusted his interpretation from a document he elaborated with Palmiro Togliatti for the Third Convention of the Communist Party of Italy (PCd’I), held in Lioni in January 1926, called La Tesi di Lione.246 It was not a true historiographical analysis but an attempt to understand the Italian politics of those years and, in this case, its complex internal articulation. According to Gramsci, fascism was an armed reactionary movement aimed at breaking up and disorganizing the working class to 245

S. Paçukaj, Albania.Antropografia degli Anni ’20 (Roma: Nuova Cultura, 2012), 157–69. 246 The Tesi di Lione is the political document, elaborated by Antonio Gramsci, presented in the name of the majority of delegates at the Third Congress of the Italian Communist Party, held secretly in Lioni from January 20–26, 1926. Seventy delegates participated, along with major officials: Gramsci, Bordiga, Tasca, Grieco, Leonetti, Scoccimarro, and even Serrati, who had recently left the Socialist Party, of which he was director for a long time. He assisted, on behalf of the Communist International, Jules Humbert-Droz. The congress, with the approval of the thesis by the majority of delegates, signed the end of the political hegemony, exercised by the party up to that moment by Amedeo Bordiga’s left-wing trend within the Communist Party. For a more in-depth study see: P. Spriano, Storia del Partito Comunista Italiano, vol. I (Torino: Einaudi, 1973).

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immobilize it, falling under the traditional profile of the Italian ruling class and in the struggle of capitalism against the working class.247 In the following years, Togliatti’s considerations continued on the same lines in Lezioni sul Fascismo, prepared in 1935 for the Leninist school of Moscow. He elaborated the definition of fascism as a mass reactionary regime wanting to underline what to him seemed to be the peculiarity of Mussolini’s regime and his relentless strain to involve the masses in the regime structure.248 Two of the sharpest and most influential liberal analyses of the fascist experience are those of Piero Gobetti and Benedetto Croce. Gobetti died in 1926 aged twenty-six after a fight with a fascist troop. He was politically active in sustaining the necessity of a radical democratic development of liberalism. Gobetti published a book two years before his death called Rivoluzione Liberale (1924), in which he proposes interpreting fascism as history’s coherent development from its Risorgimento origins.249 He considered the reactionary historical period launched with the unity of Italy as having the same ruinous effect as the Risorgimento itself. According to Gobetti, it was a “failed revolution” because it was incapable of secularizing and modernizing the Italian masses, and transforming them into active individuals. Years later, Benedetto Croce moved in a totally different direction. He was a great philosopher and historian of a liberal tendency, and assumed a position of a sharp refusal of fascism. Between 1943 and 1947, he wrote important essays and short considerations on the fascist regime, affirming that: “il fascismo trovò i suoi fautori e sostenitori in tutte le classi e in tutti gli ordini economici e intellettuali, in industriali e in agrari, in clericali e in vecchi aristocratici, in proletari e in piccolo borghesi, in operai e in rurali; ma trovò del pari oppositori ardentissimi in tutte queste classi.”250 Numerous studies by other authors followed and expanded the historiography regarding the fascist phenomenon. Returning to the historic chronology, on November 21, 1927 the second Treaty of Tirana was signed putting Albania ever more on Italy’s path. This specific filoAlbanian policy culminated in September 1928 when Ahmed Zogu, after three years as president of the republic, proclaimed himself, with Italy’s

247

L. Cafagna, R. Martinelli, C. Natoli, S. Scamuzzi, and C. Vivanti, Le Tesi di Lione. Riflessioni su Gramsci e la storia d’Italia (Roma: FrancoAngeli, 1990). 248 P. Togliatti, Sul Fascismo (Bari: Laterza, 2004). 249 P. Gobetti, La Rivoluzione Liberale (Milano: Einaudi, 2006). 250 B. Croce, “Chi è ‘Fascista?’,” in Il Fascismo. Le Interpretazioni dei Contemporanei e degli Storici, R. De Felice (ed.) (Bari: Laterza, 1970), 146–7.

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support, King of the Albanians as Zog I.251 During 1927, Mussolini accentuated the anti-Yugoslav policy through the support of internal separatists, in particular Croatians and Macedonians. Mussolini’s foreign policy during the years 1924–9 revealed some bright but also dark aspects. With regards to the Soviet Union, officially born on December 30, 1922, a moment that is well covered by Eric J. Hobsbawm in Secolo Breve,252 those historians that undertook the task of explaining this immense country had to deal with the problem of source traceability. It is known that sources from the Russian Archives have been available for regular consultation only in the past few years. Furthermore, the printed material itself or photographs were for a long time hard to find or of doubtful reliability. All this has caused misinterpretations of the Soviet Union’s history or made it the object of a hyper-idolized exposure, as observed by Nicholas Werth, for example. In his book Storia dell’Unione Sovietica of 1990, he sustained that up until the Second World War the USSR, as a subject of study, was mainly the worry of those that shared the socialist ideal, embodied in the October Revolution.253 From enthusiasm and later to disillusion, Worth stated, a fundamental interrogative formed asking in what measure the USSR was still revolutionary. The idea was that the cause was betrayed by a destructive bureaucracy defined as “thermidorian,” through its analogy with the other great revolution. If the first issue, which reconnects to Trotsky’s way of thinking about the betrayed revolution had great importance for the relations between the Soviet Union’s Communist Party (PCUS) and the western European communist parties, the second issue stimulated a heated debate around the concepts of totalitarianism concerning the Soviets.254 In what way did the concept of totalitarianism fit the USSR’s history? During its entire existence, the Soviet Union underwent multiple transformations. Consequently, it had been difficult for Werth to sustain the hypothesis of a totalitarian system which was unchanging. Victor Zaslavsky moved in the same direction in his Storia del Sistema Sovietico: L’ascesa, la Stabilità, il Crollo, published in 1995. 251

B. Fischer, King Zog and the Struggle for Stability in Albania (London: Boulder, 1984). 252 E. J. Hobsbawm, Il Secolo Breve, 1914–1991: L’era dei Grandi Cataclismi (Milano: Rizzoli, 1994). 253 N. Werth, Storia della Russia nel Novecento. Dall’Impero Russo alla Comunità degli Stati Indipendenti (1900–1999) (Bologna: il Mulino, 2000). 254 Totalitarianism is an ideal type that describes in an abstract and general form the traits of a political training, the nature of which is deduced by the observation of a few tangible political regimes formed in Europe during the twentieth century, i.e. communism and Marxism, a dyad to which some scholars often add fascism.

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In this essay, Zaslavsky reconstructed the origin of the Soviet Union’s mode of operation, which was characterized by a political, social, and economic system based on a single party by centralized economic planification and the militarization of the country.255 According to the historian, the Soviet Union, which proposed itself as an alternative to the Western industrialized nations, was a nation built on an advanced economy and technological progress. Industrialization was the moving force in the social-economic change, while urbanization and massmigration from the farmlands to the cities destroyed a way of life and rural structures that represented the traditional farmer’s system. The Soviet society achieved mass literacy and constantly extended education in broad sectors of the population and for longer periods of time. The increased specialization of jobs brought forth a new phase in which occupation and level of education became demonstrative of social status. From Zavlavsky’s interpretation emerged a distinctive image of the Soviet Union, a country that modernized itself through the war industry and extensive economic development, even though it was based on the use of outdated technologies. However, even Zaslavsky, like Werth, believed the Soviet Union’s regime was not entirely a static one. Its evolution after the destalinization diminished its totalitarian traits, which were well evident in the regime during the Stalinist period. In any case, the best availability of sources, thanks to a freer possibility to consult the ex-Soviet archives, during recent years has permitted the realization of a new and systematic synthesis of the history of the Soviet Union and its relations with Italy. Before trying to understand the complex situation of international relations between the two countries, we will analyse, in a chronological manner, the events that articulated the Soviet history from 1928 to 1933. Towards the end of 1927, mainly thanks to the support of Bukharin, Stalin managed to increase his contribution to the party by expelling the leftwing executives, among which was Trotsky, who was exiled. Stalin shared with his group of followers a series of ideals and informal procedures which went beyond the common Marxist formation. The above still influenced the range of choices and their expression. There was a feeling of omnipotence which, interacting with the Bolshevik volunteerism and the vozd [Duce] cult, gave way to the belief that reality could not resist the firm will to mould it.256 Through this interpretation, Stalin and his loyalists 255

V. Zalavsky, Storia del Sistema Sovietico, L’Ascesa, la Stabilità, il Crollo (Roma: Carocci, 2001). 256 Stalin was able to organize an actual cult of the vozd by controlling mass communication. He loved to be photographed with children and flowers, didn’t want to be near people taller than him, and preferred to have photos taken from the

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fought the Crisis of the Clusters of 1927.257 Rid of his left-wing opposition and accused of going against the farmers’ interests, Stalin ordered the resumption of the anti-farmer policy of 1918–21 in January 1928. Bukharin tried to stop his ally, but the right wing was defeated and Stalin was free to deal with the farmlands. During 1928–9, the clusters were characterized by harsh violence, to which the famers responded by reducing the cultivated land surface and expressing poorly organized individual reactions. Stalin, tired of this exhausting guerrilla warfare, launched a full-blown war. On the one hand this meant banning the kulak as a social class, therefore eliminating both economic and political elites from the farmlands, while on the other they wanted to group the millions of families within a few tens of thousands-large Kolchozy258 to facilitate the imposition of tributes required by industrialization. In January to February 1930, dekulakization (the requisition of property and deportation) bottom up. Later, the workaholic phenomenon developed, where the absolute dedication to the communist cause came through work, a true competition of who was able to work better and longest. Stakanov, a miner, was said to be able to extract tons of carbon without interruption. All these people weren’t forced to behave in this manner, but there had been a sincere adhesion, an active acceptance. Thanks to the use of terror, propaganda, and consent, the USSR became a great industrial power. In 1941, a little before Hitler attacked, the Soviet Union was considered one of the top countries in the world for its workmanship with steel and crude oil. 257 In 1927 there had been serious crises with the grain harvest, and exportation and supply in the cities had been put at risk. According to the Bolsheviks, this was a sign of the NEP’s failure. The farmers refused to sell the grain at such a low price as it would have hardly covered the costs of production. Stalin decided to change and restored the forced requisitions and activated propaganda campaigns against the kulaks, considered enemies of socialism, but within a few years he carried out forced land requisitions. This damaged relations between the Soviet power and the farmlands because obtaining grain had become a true war by the state against the farmers, with political and economic intent: taking away resources from the farmlands to finance the industries, integrating the farmers within the Soviet system, and eliminating resistance to the state’s power. See: N. Buckarin and E. Preobrazenskij, L’Accumulazone Socialista (Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1969). 258 Collective farms or cooperative farms in which farmers worked the land together, sharing agricultural tools and machinery. These were initially established in 1918, substituting the artel, but it was after the collectives of 1927 that they were officially instituted. Starting in 1929, the participation in a kolchoz or sovchoz was made obligatory by the Soviet authorities. That year saw the entry into kolchozys by not only single farmers but entire villages, and at times entire areas. This meant the subscription of average farmers to the productive cooperative farms.

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and forced collectivization followed. Tens of thousands of families were deported in the utmost chaos, but protests grew in the villages as it reached its peak in the non-Russian areas and in those of grain production. According to the Political Police in 1930, there were 13,754 agitations in which millions of farmers participated. In 1930, both collectivization and dekulakization were recommenced because of the good harvest of that year. Quite significant was the fact that the deportations in 1932, up to that point based on the principal of social class, were extended to the “suspect” nationalities of inhabitants of the border regions. Meanwhile, the share of the harvest seized by the state reached twelve to fourteen percent during the NPE years to twenty-two percent in 1929 and thirty-four percent in 1933. Stuck in their modus vivendi and affections, the farmers who were forced to work for the state were often pushed to the margins of survival, and rose up by running away from the farmlands. They slaughtered millions of animals in order to not hand them over to the state agencies, and therefore contracted the production of capital productivity. The year 1932 will also be remembered for the massive waves of famine that spread over the country and half of Europe, which began in spring of that year. Within a few months the death toll was six to seven million, mainly in the areas of cereal cultivation, particularly those nonRussian areas such as Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and the northern Caucasus. For this reason, some researchers saw the famine as a move by the Russian Imperial power to destroy the nationality. Having seen the proportions of the disaster, these interpretations cannot surprise anyone. It seems possible to affirm that Stalin and his establishment, whose policies generated the famine, did not expect nor want a tragedy of such proportions. The existence of the famine was denied and international aid was refused. At the end of 1933, after the farmers returned to work in exchange for a bit of grain, and National Communist members in Ukraine were liquidated or suicided, it was clear that both lessons had been imparted with success. The fact that for years this, which was the greatest tragedy of Europe’s history between the two world wars, was almost neglected by both political observers and historiography brings unpleasant reflections to the effect of faith or other interests, such as those of the state who pushed fascist newspapers in Italy to exalt certain successful cases of collectivization and our capability to understand it. Right before the first farmland assaults, after long debates the volumes for the first quinquennial plan for the farmlands were approved in 1926.259 In line with socialist 259

The first quinquennial plan (1928–33) was the beginning of the Soviet Union’s forced industrialization. This decision was made at the end of 1927 at the XV Congress of PCUS. In sight of the difficult industrial start during the NEP, the

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tradition, it foresaw a harmonic growth of the Soviet economy, but the hypotheses contained within it were soon forgotten. A forward race began at that point and entailed a constant revision of the plan’s objectives. The launch of the plan coincided with the attack on the pro-worker legislation of 1917 and what remained of the union’s autonomy, even if conducted demagogically with the workers’ anti-bureaucratic slogan. In 1929, by request of the Political Police (OGPU), forced labour was introduced. During the spring of 1932 an ulterior concentration of efforts for heavy industry was achieved, distinguished by the birth of a dedicated commissariat (NKTP) which absorbed the best administrative, technical, and scientific talents of the country. However, the manufacturing industry was once again in a tragic condition. The country did not bring forth a satisfactory production of metals, of which there was great need in order to continue work on the construction sites and in workshops, and the agricultural crises limited exportation. The crisis at the end of 1932, the most oppressive after that of 1920–1, was overcome by an ulterior coincidence of withdrawals, concessions of new powers to the technicians and administrative workers, and repressive measures. The country’s structure was in this way reinforced by a new class of “little Stalins,” that is somewhat competent functionaries able to exercise almost unlimited power towards their subordinates. In the Western public opinion of the right and left wings, the Soviet industrial growth generated great interest, presenting itself as a way out of a capitalistic crisis. In Italy, the period from 1917 to 1933 marked the constant but decisive work of international relations that also involved the distant Soviet organism. PCUS opted for a direct intervention of the state in the economic life behind the socialist ideological slogan of “one country,” through the centralized redistribution of resources. The basis for this plan should have been economic rationality, which would have allowed an elevated rate of development without violating the basic economic equilibrium (between agriculture and industry on one hand, and between production, expenditures, and investments on the other). During the harsh political struggle that led to the victory of Stalin’s executive group, these indications were abandoned. The plan, taken up in spring 1929 (retroactive as of October 1928), marked a not-unrealistic objective (industrial production had to triple); later on, the production rhythm increased even more. The plan was realized in four years and three months, and the results were significantly inferior to expectations. The costs were extremely high and caused a strong inflationary pressure, and the population’s standard of life dropped drastically. The absolute priority assigned to the heavy industry destroyed the fundamental economic equilibrium, compromising further development. See: H. R. Knickerbocker, Il Piano Quinquennale Sovietico. Inchiesta sul Fronte Industriale Russo (Milano: Bompiani, 1931).

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After having interpreted the differences and points of agreement between the two political realities (the Italian liberal and fascist, and the Russian communist), we will follow the first phases of these contacts in light of what has been said so far and of the historiography examined regarding the topic. Italy has historically had few direct interests in common or contrast with Russia, and we can affirm with certainty that this has never wandered along the country’s borders, as happened with the central European countries, nor close to its colonial frontiers, as for example with the United Kingdom. From 1945 the Soviet influence reached Trieste, but it was short lived and within three years was pushed away by the schism of Tito. Italy was not only far from Russia geographically but also politically, without ever realizing explicit agreements or disagreements. The few times Italian military units fought on Russian soil, with the Grand Army in Crimea, with the Entente, or with the Germans, public opinion confronted these events as something uncalled for or unbelievable. Italy’s economic relations were also poor, and it even lacked an essential union based on having enemies in common, like the one the North Americans often had with the Russians, with whom they shared animosity for the British nautical hegemony, and later the German and Japanese demands. Because of this distance and the difficulty, as mentioned previously, finding valid sources until up to a few years ago created, according to some historians, the indifference with which Italy looked upon Russia as different, disturbing, and Asiatic. One of the first translations available in Italy on the Slav people was by Alexander Bruckner with regards to the German universal history, who defined the Russian society as full of tyranny, foolish anarchy, and brutality.260 Due to geographical/cultural distances, Russia played a strong role in the myths, fears, and hopes of the Italians. It is not by chance that the only Italian entity that had tangible interests to protect the Russian Empire, then Soviet, was the Holy See, in order to protect the vulnerable Catholic minorities.261 In the Italian political culture, the church and diplomacy 260

A. Bruckner, I Popoli Slavi, in Storia Universale: lo Sviluppo dell’Umanità sotto l’Aspetto Politico, Sociale ed Intellettuale (Milano: Società Editrice Libraria, 1934), 123. 261 During the first partition of Poland, Empress Catherine II constituted in Mogilev the first Roman Catholic diocese on Russian territory; under its jurisdiction were Moscow and Petrograd. In her initiative, Catherine did not think to ask the consent of Rome; in choosing a Bishop they turned to the Catholic Bishop of Vilnius, and by imperial decision the cathedral of Mogilev was transformed into an archdiocese in 1782. In this way, the Catholic church as an institution rose in the Russian Empire with very peculiar traits compared to the rest

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dodged the collective suggestion of Russophobe and Russophile myths. The story of Italian-Russian relations, because of its lack of treaties and negotiations, is therefore subject to being accepted in its most general character. Historians researching the relations between two countries must bring up the stories of conflicts, contacts, and interactions, starting with the cultural, ethnic, religious, political, and spiritual frontiers which are ideal starting points. Surely the history of the Italian Communist Party, born during the period under examination, is dense with historic-political relevance and interpretation. Which moments and historic incidents were most indicative in establishing the relations problem between the PCI and the Soviet Union? The PCI was created in Livorno in January 1921 after the division of the left wing from the Italian Socialist Party, and its main political leaders were Amadeo Bordiga and Umberto Terracini.262 Antonio Gramsci had been an intellectual and political figure of great relevance in the Turin group and was absorbed by the Ordine Nuovo organization. At the founding of the party he did not carry out a major role, even though he did shortly after. The same happened to Palmiro Togliatti, who was also a part of the communist group of Turin, which mainly elaborated the topic on factory councils starting from the occupation experience of the Turin establishment right after the war. In the formation of the PCI the Soviet influence, due to the Bolshevik success in conducting the October Revolution and taking power in 1917, was inevitably very strong. The groups and militants that joined were not mere “imitators” of a foreign experience. The “abstentionist” faction was the basis for the formation of the Communist Party during the conflict towards the extreme left of the Socialist Party. In it merged two tendencies already provided with their own cultural and political profile, partially independent from the Bolshevik Party’s profile. Besides the Ordine Nuovo group, the other side, initially more significant, was formed around the Soviet party, created in Naples and animated by Amedeo Bordiga, who became to all effects the first leader of the Communist Party at the moment of the Livorno division. Lenin’s way of thinking, which guided the Bolsheviks to power and formulated their political strategy in a more complete way, was in the Italian communist case not accepted in a superficial way but was inserted of the universal church. From that moment on, relations between the Vatican and the Imperial Court were marked by conflicts and tensions due to the imperial will to determine, in an absolutely independent manner, the Catholic church’s life in its territory. See: A. Judin and G. Protopopov, Cattolici in Russia e Ucraina (Roma: La Casa di Matriona, 1992); I. Osipova, Se il Mondo vi Odia. Martiri per la Fede nel Regime Sovietico (Roma: La Casa di Matriona, 1997). 262 A. De Clementi, Amedeo Bordiga (Torino: Einaudi, 1971).

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in a political-ideological foundation already provided with a certain depth. Although the Socialist Party declared itself a proponent of the Soviet theory and a loyal maintainer of the revolutionary prospect indicated by the Terza Internazionale [Third International], to which it adhered, it remained entirely reticent in accepting the organizational and political propositions that were solicited by Moscow. In particular, Serrati and his maximalists did not accept the pressing invitation to expel Turati’s moderate reformist component. According to the most widespread historiography, the PCI, born in 1921, was not a docile executer of the Soviet will or of the Communist International. The Communist International was born in 1919 and was formed on the conviction that it would oversee a phase of revolutionary expansion in Europe. This would have gone well beyond Tsarist Russia and involved other countries, such as Germany and Italy. For this reason, in the first phase there was persistence in directing newly formed communist parties to take on a more radical form, freeing themselves of those uncertain members. Between 1923 and 1925 the policy of the Communist Party came into conflict with the Soviet leadership. Initially, the whole managerial group joined Bordiga, including Gramsci and Togliatti. The only exception came from a small right-wing fringe led by Bombacci (who later became a fascist), Graziadei, and Angelo Tasca,263 who came from the Ordine Nuovo experience. The new group of leaders critically re-examined Bordiga’s policy, considered ever more unproductive and incapable of entrenching the party among the masses. The Italian political situation was dominated by the fascist expansion, Mussolini’s rise to power after the march on Rome, and a growing repression of the communists and all democratic forces. In general, the strength of fascism and its capability to become a regime were underestimated. Matteotti’s assassination occurred mainly because of the crises effects, the only moment of real difficulty during the fascist rise to power. For Bordiga, there were no relevant differences between fascism and democracy, for it was a simple matter of different forms of exploitation and capitalistic domination. The change of the political tendency within the PCI found great opposition initially, especially among the intermediate functionaries. As a matter of fact, during the conference of Como the Bordigans still held a majority, even though the burden from the International’s intervention made it so that the control of the party remained with the new leadership. The Lione Convention of 1925 allowed the consolidation of the Bordiga majority 263

A. Tasca, I Consigli di Fabbrica e la Rivoluzione Mondiale: Relazione letta all’Assemblea della Sezione Socialista Torinese la Sera del 13 Aprile 1920, Libreria dell’Alleanza coop (Torino: Torinese, 1921).

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during the Comintern debate, bringing to attention a real problem in the risk that the communist movement operating in the more-advanced capitalistic countries could be negatively conditioned by the Russian revolutionary and party models. Less convincing were the critiques directed at the political strategy, proposed and sometimes imposed by the International, which tried to send out the communist parties from the sectarian minority. Bordiga remained in the PCI until he was expelled in 1930, and gradually left politics. Only at the end of the Second World War did he return with a small militant group, more obsessed by the research of doctrinal purity then the capacity to really intervene in political and social conflicts. According to Bordiga, the party had to safeguard Marxism from any form of ideological degeneration while waiting for the working class, under the inevitable push of the capitalistic crisis, to rediscover communism. During the second half of the 1920s, the evolvement of the Soviet Union’s internal situation, through the process in which Stalin imposed his power, produced moments of crisis within the Communist Party but remained mainly confined to the managing group. A first “case” was determined by the letter Gramsci wrote on behalf of the PCI to the Soviet leadership in 1926.264 This was the moment of confrontation between Stalin and Bukharin on one side and the so-called “Nuova Opposizione Unificata” [New Unified Opposition] of Trotsky and Zinoviev on the other. There were two main topics in the clash: the economic policy and the management of the party. With regards to the economy, Stalin sustained the economic safeguarding of the farmer class and the middle class as a foundation to produce a primitive accumulation which would have brought a gradual industrialization to the country. Instead, Trotsky and Zinoviev requested an acceleration of industrialization, even if this meant displeasing the farmer class. The opposition also 264

Gramsci’s ideas rarely corresponded with the Stalinist and reformist propaganda. First of all, Gramsci did not waste his life in the struggle for the bourgeois democracy. He never theorized an Italian Republic based on the collaboration amongst classes to obtain a capital advantage. He was instead one of the first Italian Communists to understand the social nature and role of the Russians that emerged during the revolutions. He understood that they were bodies of proletarian power and could also have developed in Italy. Gramsci favoured the transposition of the Soviet experience in Italy since the conditions were extremely favourable during the Biennio Rosso [Red Biennium].This is how the Factory Councils of Turin came to be true fighting instruments during the hottest moment of class conflicts. Gramsci stimulated them by dedicating pages and pages of L’Ordine Nuovo to them.

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criticized the increased bureaucratization and the reduced democratic scope within the party. The PCI and Gramsci himself joined Stalin and Bukharin’s majority, mainly for its economic choices, but were worried about the rupture with the Bolshevik executives, which under Lenin’s leadership directed the revolution. Gramsci invited both majority and opposition to not pursue the dispute to an extreme point. Another turning point in Russia’s path towards Stalinization occurred at the end of the 1920s when the alliance with Bukharin was severed. Togliatti seemed more favourable to Bukharin’s political layout. Even among the PCI front, Togliatti’s administration went through a difficult period because the administrative part of the group pushed international changes in order to obtain an immediate implementation of the communist policy through the deployment of Italian clandestine militants. This policy was not successful and the militants sent from Italy were arrested by the fascist policy, ending up in jail or banished.265 Furthermore, the extremist analysis which prevailed in the Comintern generated the conviction that the fall of fascism, which was thought imminent, would immediately lead to a socialist type of revolution. The PCI’s setup, in line with the “social fascism” theory sustained by the Comintern, which equates social democracy to fascism, led the political party to isolation. With regards to Italy, considering its critical condition of illegality, this policy would not produce such disasters as it did in other places like Germany. In the historical and political discussion that followed, there were those who sustained that from a bad political setting the PCI derived something good, favouring its establishment in Italy. Different and rich in interesting interpretable ideas for a study purpose is the perception Italian diplomats had of the reality that surrounded them 265

On his return from Vienna, Gramsci found the party devastated by the repression: 1923 was the year of the communist hunt by which the government and monarchy tried to avoid the fusion of the PCd’I with the PSI. Thousands of militants and communist executives at all levels were arrested, their funds confiscated, and the printing presses were destroyed; Turin alone counted twentythree executions in its streets within a few weeks. The structure of the left-wing parties had experienced a strong blow. On the other hand, the communists had complied only formally with the decisions of the IC Congress, but continued their refusal to carry out a united front against fascism. While still in Vienna, Gramsci refused to sign a document proposed by Bordiga and the majority of the party’s management. Togliatti also opposed the IC lines head on. Gramsci, who returned ill, tried to create a group within the party to contrast the sectarian lines. He managed only partially and with Togliatti founded L’Unità at the beginning of 1924, created by the fusion with the PSI, which would remain the official newspaper for the PCI until 1991.

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during those years. Also, the knowledge and image of a nation they had and conveyed to their superiors ended up weighing on the story of the nation’s relations. From the reports and diplomatic writings we can draw out singular ideas about the relations between Italy and Russia during the period of our study. Let us therefore take a small step back. In 1907 the Council President Stolypin dissolved the second Duma, modified the electoral law, and endorsed an agricultural reform which aimed at forming a class of owner-farmers. The third Duma inaugurated that period which was defined as parliamentary autocracy.266 The attention of the Italian ambassador at that time, Andrea Carlotti di Riparbella, after his arrival in Russia, was attracted by foreign and not internal policy. His interest was focused on the expansion objective of the Russian establishment, but the situation suddenly changed and in August 1915 internal policies again became the centre of his interest. He excluded the onset of a revolution during the war, using the 1905 riots as interpretive guidelines. According to Carlotti di Riparbella, different from that of 1905, the 1915 movement was connoted by a political instead of a social character.267 The political struggle in Russia was analysed by Carlotti under an essentially bellicist key in which the social question determined strikes of an economic character. For this purpose, the ambassador had requested a specific study on the war industry committees from consul Adelchi Gazzurelli that had sprung up in Moscow following a great entrepreneurial initiative. From the analysis, it emerged that the Muscovite society was the most reactive in the country compared to the Saint Petersburg society, which was more static and bureaucratic. His conclusions hypothesized an arms production 266

In 1906, in a Russia besieged by serious economic problems and deep and unacceptable social imbalances, Pyotr Arkadevich Stolypin was nominated president of the council by Tsar Nicholas II. The statesman immediately launched a serious and brave reform program, especially in the agricultural field, attempting to implant a decisive switch in Russian politics. The objective was to elevate the economic prosperity of the country, stabilizing social justice and loosening the revolutionary pressure. The subversive forces as a matter of fact would not have found fertile grounds for their actions, and maybe many horrors and tragedies could have been avoided not only in Russia but in the whole world. Unfortunately, that great reforming endeavour, which was very audacious for its time and context, was interrupted by an assassin’s hand armed by the international and masonic finance centres. In this way began the political, economic, and military collapse which brought on the communist dictatorship. See: B. Tarquini, Pyotr Arkadevich Stolypin, il ministro dello Zar che fu ucciso per la sua riforma agraria e cambiò il corso della Storia (Roma: Controcorrente, 2005). 267 MAE, s. APOG (1915–18), Russia, b.170, T. Gab. 500 ris., Petrograd, November 1, 1915.

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that would, within two years, supply the army.268 What was happening in Russia was also an object of interest for the Italian military mission. In 1916, a mixed parliamentary mission of the Duma and the Empire’s Council came to visit Italy, where it stayed during the period June 1–8. Ambassador Carlotti di Riparbella entrusted the delegation to the ministry, ensuring they were welcomed in the best way possible. In Rome, the Russian Parliament members were treated as future exponents of the hoped-for ruling government.269 Therefore, the progressive group’s politics found full approval from the Italian politicians. On his return to Russia, Pavel Miljukov270 reported to the military commission of the Duma his awareness regarding the assignment of the entire Dalmatia area to Italy, for geographical-strategic reasons. Singarev271 talked about his meeting with the major representatives of the Credito Italiano, of which the director guaranteed him a loan for one hundred million. It was in this spirit that in October 1916 an Italian commercial mission was organized and would find itself in Russia during the 1917 Revolution. The Italian industrialists moved ahead of time to conquer a privileged economic position that had been held by Germany before the war. The Italian industrial class furthermore worked with the government’s patronage. The foreign minister had assigned Marquis Pietro Tomasi Della Torretta as consultant for the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, to whom was entrusted the mission presidency. Meanwhile, Ambassador Carlotti continued to not take an imminent revolution into consideration. Not convinced by this analysis, Sidney Sonnino sent Prince Scipione Borghese to Russia, who had been officially appointed to the propaganda mission.272 Circumstances had it that between January and February 1917 three delegations left Italy: an economical-commercial one, a political-military one, and a propaganda-investigative one by Scipione Borghese. None of the above foresaw what soon would have happened with the end of Romanov.273 In his travelogue Queigiorni del Febbraio 1917 in Russia, 268

MAE, s. APOG (1915–18), Russia, b. 170, rap. Ris mo, conf. Rec., Mosca, September 11, 1915, p. 9. 269 For details regarding the Russian delegation’s visit to Italy see documentation in ACS, Pres, Cons, Min,. G. M., s. 19.3.11. 270 The future foreign minister of the temporary government. 271 The future agriculture minister of the temporary government. 272 MAE, Cabinet archive, cas. 70, fasc, 1270, Roma February 15, 1917. This is the letter in which Sonnino communicates to the embassies the official character of Prince Scipione Borghese’s mission. 273 G. Petracchi, Diplomazia di Guerra e Rivoluzione. Italia e Russia dall’Ottobre 1916 al Maggio 1917 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1974).

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Zaccaria Aberti, vice-president of the Economic-Commercial Commission, did not give anything away regarding the interpretations of the Italian ambassador in Moscow.274 Furthermore, Minister Scialoja declared, after his return to Rome, that everything was going well. On March 14, 1917, the day on which Tribuna published the interview, the revolution had inflamed Petrograd for the past six days and the revolutionary movement had reached Moscow and other cities. According to Carlotti, Russia was trying to get rid of an incompetent monarch, by liberal interpretations. Based on the ambassador’s telegrams, as a matter of fact the revolution seemed to be happening due to the Duma and liberal parties. The exact opposite was happening! The revolution was caused by anonymous urban crowds, proletarian and non-proletarian, which the army joined, and to which the leaders of the Duma and Zemstva adhered a bit at a time.275 Contrasts regarding the evaluations of the Russian reality started to emerge. The council started having serious doubts about the ambassador’s work and that of the various delegations that left Rome. Carlotti left Petrograd at the end of October after sending a last telegraph. The news of the ambassador’s departure was known by the new consul in Moscow, Cesare Majoni, on November 24 and did not surprise him. The last time he saw him in Petrograd, Carlotti confirmed his faith in the Russia that came out of the February Revolution.276 The diplomatic world of that time knew very little about the conspiring and secret policies of Russia. The diplomats had no idea who the men were that would shortly be key players in the revolution, nor the ideology, inspiring doctrine, and psychology of the Russian masses. Lenin would not enter the Italian diplomatic magnifying glass and public opinion until 1917. The same can be said for the other Bolsheviks and the idea of Bolshevism as being revolutionary. To the diplomatic field, Lenin and his collaborators appeared as detached ideologists totally disconnected from the Russian society and lacking any strong ties with the national culture. When the Bolsheviks 274

Z. Oberti, “Quei giorni del Febbraio 1917 in Russia,” a cura di G. Petracchi, in Nuova Antologia 2122 (1987): 115–58. 275 Zemstvo, a form of local government introduced by Tsar Alexander II in 1864, was suggested by Minister Nikolaj Miljutin as an administrative and consultation district organ. Elected with suffrage based on census, these assemblies represented the nobles and local bourgeoisie and were substituted by the Soviets after the revolution of October 1917. See: T. Emmons and W. S. Vucinich, The Zemstvo in Russia: an Experiment in Local Self-Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). 276 G. C. Majoni, A Mosca, nell’Anno Rosso. Agosto 1917–Settembre 1918 (Milano: Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale, 1936), 26.

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were not considered as theorists of a world revolution they were simply taken for German agents. Therefore, the October Revolution was at the time underestimated from every point of view, along with its causes, but even more in its effects. Italian diplomacy, as with the Allied one, considered Lenin’s success as temporary. For a long time, no diplomat took the Bolsheviks as heads of state seriously as they were waiting for the regime to fall at any moment. According to the great part of the historiography regarding this theme, the underestimation of the Bolshevik leaders, demonstrated in particular by Councillor Giuseppe Catalani who held the embassy before Torretta (the successor to Carlotti), was responsible for the ignorance of the doctrine and the Bolshevik psychology, as well as the forma mentis of the usual diplomacy. Torretta took note of the facts without understanding the symbolic sense of the event. Diplomacy in general did not have the moral sense necessary to analyse the new phenomenon, compared to the models of the European revolutions introduced by Bolshevism during the Russian revolutionary process. Once the “liberal model” of Western traditional revolution was broken, what occurred in Russia seemed to be a manifestation of chaos to the diplomats. Pietro Tomasi Della Torretta did not see a national government in the Soviet one, but an ideological state. When Majoni left Moscow in September the Italian diplomacy cut the last contact with Soviet Russia. From that moment, the new Russian regime remained an object of mystery for the council. During the summer of 1918, before the end of the war, Italy had already developed, in the country and government, the awareness that the war had been a huge revolutionary stage. Too many people had been mobilized, too many areas had been involved, and too many interests had been overturned, and the world could be reconstructed according to a pre-existing order of rules.277 The implications of this new type of worldly interdependence made the old international institutions suddenly inadequate.278 That great revolutionary event imposed the transformation of many institutions of the state’s administration, in particular its diplomacy. In an article published in 1918 in Nuova Antologia, ex-ambassador Giulio Melegari started to doubt diplomacy’s role, and defined it as incapable of changing according to the new international scene’s needs.279 Therefore, this was a strong attack on the diplomatic profession. Public opinion and the Italian diplomats 277

C. B. Falls, The First World War (London: Longmans, 1960). G. J. Meyer, A World Undone: the Story of the Great War 1914 to 1918 (New York: Delacorte Press, 2006). 279 G. Melegari, “Della Diplomazia e dei Suoi Organi,” Nuova Antologia VI (195) (1918): 8. 278

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handled the querelle through the national newspapers. The controversy put the fundamental role of diplomats and the function of a diplomatic career up for discussion. Furthermore, it marked the end of an epoch. The war had destroyed the concept of diplomacy understood as a true technocracy. Italy had entered an epoch of ideologies; the assertion of mass movements had made it more defined and hence almost foreign to a diplomatic body. This epochal crisis hit other countries such as the United Kingdom and France, who had always been major players on the international stage and flaunted a secular baggage of knowledge and competence, now seeming suddenly inadequate in dealing with the changes determined by the events mentioned above. From this awareness grew the necessity to form a culture that was more focused on problems of an international type. With this intent, for example, the British Institute of International Affairs was created in London in 1920.280 But let us return to the Italian economic mission in Russia. The group of professionals and state officials had returned in 1918. In the course of their stay they were surprised by the onset of the Petrograd Revolution in February. The delegation members lived through the end of the regime and the following events from the Italian embassy, along with the substantial diplomatic staff. Giuseppe Battaglia underlines, in a book published that same year, certain explanatory notes regarding what was happening in Russia between the Italian diplomats: All’ambasciata tutti parlano, tutti discutono: nessuno sa riaversi dalla sorpresa per la insospettata rivolta militare. Non so qual sia stata a tal proposito la perspicacia del nostro ambasciatore, né mi curo di saperlo. So che il marchese Carlotti è un diplomatico e quindi ha le virtù e i difetti della nostra diplomazia. La quale è vecchia, pedante, piena di acciacchi, e si esaurisce nello sforzo stilistico della selezione e della dosatura dei vocaboli. Inoltre questa vecchia è una sfinge, ha una maschera impenetrablile...e custodisce il proprio vuoto.281

280

Known as Chatham House. “Everyone speaks, everyone discusses at the Embassy: nobody is able to recover from the unsuspected military revolt. I don’t know what the perspicacity of our Ambassador was, in this respect, nor do I care to know. I know that Marquis Carlotti is a diplomat and so has the virtues and defects of our diplomacy. Which is old, pedantic, full of aches and pains and it wears out in its stylistic effort of selecting and dosing vocabulary. Furthermore this is an old sphinx, which has an impenetrable mask … and hides its emptiness.” G. Battaglia, A Pietrogrado nei Primi Giorni della Rivoluzione. Note di Viaggio (Varese: Arti Grafiche Varesine, 1917), 133–4.

281

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Someone in the council had surely tried to comprehend the grand political and social phenomenon that shocked the habitual scenario in a more specific manner. It was not judged as a simple event and neither was it ignored, as it was without historical precedents in Russia and provoked no interest in the other countries. What matters to us to now in this study is the opinion regarding Italian diplomacy and Russia before and after 1917. One of the few people who realized immediately the greatness of the revolution was Giovanni Amadori Virgili. Also a diplomat by profession, he too was not blinded by easy interpretations during the October outbursts, and nor did he only see the final result of the destruction, but tried, with wisdom, to ponder if it was possible to reconstruct a tormented history. The request made to the ministry to be sent to Russia, in order to analyse the Bolshevik phenomena, when all other Italian and foreign diplomats had left the main Russian cities, offered the following historiography a clue to evaluating the works in a positive manner. The ample report he wrote represented one of the few sources of information available which deeply influenced the formation of the diplomatic personnel’s opinion on the Bolshevik phenomenon. The ambiguous behaviour of the super powers towards the Soviet regime had up until now depended on the fact that each government appreciated the internal conditions in Russia in a very different and vague way.282 It resulted that the policy followed by the Entente towards the Soviets was the unhappy result of a compromise between those who thought the regime would fall any day and those that thought the regime would hold and therefore deserved closely tied relations.283 From almost two years, the Entente’s diplomacy had severed all ties with Soviet Russia.284 As mentioned, the foreign minister no longer had direct relations with Russia since, during March 1918, Pietro Tomasi Della Torretta had left Petrograd for Vologda, and at the end of July retired in Arkhangelsk. In September, after the assassination attempt on Lenin and the arrest of Consul Lockhart, even the Italian consulate and military mission left Russia.285 Bolshevism was 282

G. Boffa, Storia dell’Unione Sovietica, Dalla Rivoluzione alla Seconda Guerra Mondiale (Milano: Bompiani, 1976). 283 G. Lehner, Economia, Politica e Società nella Prima Guerra Mondiale (Messina-Firenze: D’Anna, 1973). 284 The Entente countries were France, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Portugal, Russia, Romania, Serbia, Greece, Italy, Japan, China, Montenegro, the United States, Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Panama, Cuba, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Haiti, Honduras, Ecuador, Liberia, and San Marino. 285 The socialist revolutionary Fanny Kaplan seriously wounded Lenin with two gunshots. This episode, and the contemporary assassination of Moisei Uritsky,

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therefore taken into consideration only for the consequence of its diffusion in Italy and Europe. In June 1919, after the government of OrlandoSonnino fell, the Foreign Minister Tommaso Tittoni took a marked antiBolshevik stance. The new Ministerial team guided by Nitti and Tittoni immediately noticed the necessity to learn the Bolshevik peculiarities. Something had changed. Carlo Sforza, newly nominated undersecretary of the Foreign Ministry, tried to create at the Consulta a specialized service to collect information on Russia.286 In July 1919 he nominated Cesare Majoni as head of the cabinet with the task to follow everything that concerned the Bolshevik regime. Everything had to be analysed as no original documentation on Soviet Russia existed in the council. The first reliable study on Bolshevism was presented on March 5, 1919 by Colonel Ettore Trojani, head of the European section “R” of the Army’s Information Service. This piece of work recreated a static profile of the analysed phenomena, and an optimistic profile of the effects. Greater newsworthiness had been obtained by news published by the Regia Marina information services, which had their own agents within the Bolshevik outpost in Western countries. Majori tried to obtain copies of Pravda and Izvestija, part of the Bolshevik Party and Soviet government. Searching for Russian publications was not an easy task. Stockholm, at least until December 1919, was the most important Bolshevik outpost in the Western world. All the propaganda material from Russia spread throughout Europe and the Allies arrived in the Swedish capital worried about this expansion, and saw themselves being forced to exercise pressure on Sweden in order to block any contact with the Soviets. Thus, the government of Stockholm was basically forced to pull out its delegations in Russia but without stopping the Bolshevik propaganda.287 The Swedish capital therefore represented a special observatory to interpret the Bolshevik phenomenon. The Naval Ministry had its own naval representative, Captain Manfredi Gravina, who filled out periodical reports on the situation of Soviet Russia and Bolshevism. The sources Gravina drew upon were various and his job as informer continued throughout 1920, becoming the best-informed diplomatic agent regarding Bolshevism in those years. His main works and notes were collected in a short volume in 1935. The other Western Soviet outpost was Copenhagen. For geographic reasons, its neutrality during the war, and the Socialist Party’s position, Denmark benefited from a fair started off an arrest campaign, deportations, and murders known as the Terrore Rosso [Red Terror]. 286 F. Bartolotta , Parlamenti e Governi d’Italia dal 1848 al 1970, vol. 2 (Roma: Vito Bianco Editore, 1971). 287 T. Sillani, Scritti di Manfredi Gravina (Roma: Rassegna Italiana, 1935).

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amount of freedom in handling its relations with Soviet Russia.288 The Danish government de facto recognized the Soviet one and, between the end of 1918 and the beginning of 1919, a diplomatic mission and the Bolshevik propaganda289 office worked together in Copenhagen. Many were the Soviet delegates sent to distribute propaganda material in France, Germany, and Italy. Diplomatic functionaries of the Entente insisted that the Western governments exerted on Denmark the same pressure as Sweden for the Litvinov issue.290 But the British government thought that the risk of having the Bolshevik presence in Europe could entail benefits for the European intelligence. During 1919, a year in which the Entente countries had extended the political and economic block around Bolshevik Russia, the UK government asked the Danish one to leave the Danish Ministry in Petrograd with the intention of protecting British persons in Russia. After the departure of the Allied Consulates, the Danish Red Cross was put in charge of defending all foreigners in Russia. In March 1919, Doctor Carlo Martini arrived in Moscow to take over the Danish Red

288

K. Winding, Storia della Danimarca: Breve profilo (Roma: Istituti Editoriali Poligrafici, 1997). 289 The term “propaganda” derives from the Latin idiomatic expression “de propaganda fide” [spreading the faith], with which the church appoints the congregation responsible for proselytising Catholic principles in the world. The contemporary use of “propaganda” is meant as the intentional systematic circulation of information and messages intended to give an image, positive or negative, of certain phenomena, events, situations, or people, but also to allow appreciation of a certain commercial product (in this case a synonym for advertisement). Used for the first time on a wide scale by the Socialist parties, political propaganda soon became an essential component of mass society, especially starting from the First World War when the state authorities seized the methods and techniques of propaganda to make the war cause popular in the public opinion. The mass development of means of communication (radio, movies, and television) gave the propaganda activity a new dimension and a new capability of penetration. The regimes made wide use of these possibilities, directly controlling the information channels and creating forms of persuasion and indoctrination more effective and sophisticated than those used in the past. Even because of these experiences the term “propaganda” ended up assuming a negative connotation, tied to the idea of manipulation or at least of unilateral and distorted information. See: V. O’Donnell and G. S. Jowett, Propaganda and Persuasion (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2005). 290 On the Litvinov incident in Copenhagen see the studies of Bent Jensen in German.

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Cross management.291 From that point on, the Danish capital became the crossroad for international correspondence from and to Russia under the skilful British leadership. The Italian correspondence had to be delivered to the British legation in Copenhagen, which took on the responsibility of sorting operations.292 The British influence was such that after months of repeated negotiations the Danish government agreed to host Litvinov in the capital under official cover. The Italian legation was involved in the hard task of supporting in any way the Italian emissaries that reached Copenhagen under various titles. To this observation point were added Warsaw and Helsinki, as they were used to observe the real Soviet culture. Poland and Finland were the first nations created after the end of the Russian Empire that were officially recognized by Italy. Business representative Francesco Tommasini arrived in Warsaw from Stockholm in October, sent by Francesco Saverio Nitti, while a month earlier the Legation Councillor Marchetti Ferrante reached Helsingfors. For a long time, Italy was absent in the Baltic States, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. The official recognition of the countries happened only in 1920. Poland became the main outpost against Western Russian expansion, while the Baltic States built a flipped northern iron curtain, which at the time went from the Gulf of Finland to the Black Sea, the “cordon sanitaire” much wanted by the Allied leaders,293 so defined in 1919 and later democratically 291

Ferretti a Sonnino, N. 43/11, Mosca, March 24, 1919, in MAE, Ambasciata Mosca, Consolato Province del Nord, Arcangelo, b. 38, fasc. I. Giuseppe Ferretti was in charge of Italian affairs at the Danish Red Cross in Moscow. 292 R. Pirone, Ricordi di Russia, 1902–1920 (Milano: Edizioni Paoline, 1996), 273. 293 In 1919 the Allies established a common policy of isolation of Soviet Russia, defined later with the expression “Cordon Sanitaire.” On August 8, 1919 the interallied Supreme Council discussed the possibility of carrying out an embargo towards Russia, a measure already used towards the government of the Council of Hungary led by Bela Kun. The American representative, Polk, had however pointed out the fact that no declaration of war had been made on Russia. Furthermore, since supplies to Russia could be made from Germany, with which the Allied Powers already signed the Peace Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919, the Supreme Council arranged, in the reunion of August 19, to send a notice to the German government and the neutral states on behalf of the main Allied powers and their associates, asking them to refuse departure documentation to all ships directed towards the Bolshevik Russian ports; that such embargo be posted on all goods destined to be sent by ground to Russia; to refuse all passports of persons headed for or coming from Russia; to prohibit the banks from doing business with Bolshevik Russia; to refuse to admit, in telegraph offices or wireless telegraph stations, messages destined for or originating from Bolshevik Russia and sending mail to or from Russia, and to inform that the Allied and associated powers had the

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renamed the “Barrier des Nations.” Its acknowledgement de facto excluded that the Italian government could send representatives to those governments with a title of minister or charge d’affaires. The only solution possible was to use a commissioner or political agent. To recap: Stockholm, Warsaw, and Helsinki were the first windows to open on the Soviet scene. From the start, the two missions reflected a sceptical vision of the Soviet reality. The Bolshevik scope was interpreted as a state that was at the service of an ideology which differentiated itself from all known examples. Marchesi Ferrante studied the Russian language to better fulfil his duty. During the spring of 1920, the most advanced observation point for Italy in Russia moved to Reval, known today as Tallinn. Estonia was in fact the first country to sign the Peace Treaty with Russia in Dorpat on February 2, and the Italians would later enter the Soviet country in March 1920. Agostino Depretis took on the management of the political agency in Reval, hosting the first eye witnesses of that society which was being created. The Estonian city remained a privileged observation point until May 28, 1922, when Cavalier Amadori arrived in Moscow and opened the economic agency. Meanwhile, in September 1921 the legation’s person in charge changed to Paolo Brenna, a watchful diplomat who served as second to Tommasini in Warsaw. The Bolshevik experiment was stated as being finished, both in the diplomatic areas and consequently within the offices of the Foreign Ministry; but it was not so. Let us take a step back and return to 1920. After January 16, 1920, the Supreme Council declared the end of the Russian embargo. Nitti was in a hurry to make contact with the Russian government to organize his recognition. The council president was worried that Italy would be preceded by other governments on their way to Moscow, to which he had contributed decisively to its opening. Amadori was sent in reconnaissance. While awaiting his Russian visa, the delegate made his way into Ukraine up to Kamenec-Podol’skij. In drawing up his report on the Ukrainian situation, Amadori described the various grain burial systems thought up by the farmers in order to save their harvest from being searched by the Bolsheviks and the Whites. However, crossing the Polish frontier would have been complicated, and therefore he moved into Estonia which, as mentioned earlier, had become an open window from Russia onto Europe intention in their countries to enact similar measures to those the neutral countries were asked to perform; and the Allied Naval ships, guarding the execution of the embargo project on the Russian Bolshevik ports, would act in the name of the Allied and associated governments. On September 29, 1919, the Supreme Council decided to send to the neutral states a notice regarding the measures against Soviet Russia, submitted by the Block Commission.

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after the Dorpat Peace Treaty. The Soviet mission operated in Reval, guided by Gukovskij. The trip from Reval to Moscow lasted three days. A complex report was written by Amadori on his return to Rome regarding the mission, being a conceptual elaboration of politics, Bolshevik ideology, the organization of the state according to Soviet laws, and domestic and foreign policies.294 The Italian delegate noted much destruction among the cities he visited, and he came into contact with the survivors of the Italian colonies. The Russia he observed was still in full-blown war communism. The Bolsheviks, after having defeated the White Army, had practically won the Civil War. General Vrangel remained to agitate the counterrevolutionary Crimean flag. Behind the Russian-Polish frontline they organized their armies, waiting for the decisive conflict on which the Bolsheviks entrusted their last hopes of bringing the revolution to Europe. The nationalization of the city’s populations was complete, while relations with farmers were dictated by the requisitions. What shocked Amadori was the impression of an accelerated destruction of things—the eighteenthcentury city wanted by Pietro. After all, the memories of travellers from those days of revolution were associated with destruction.295 According to Amadori, the regime felt the dead weight of its construction and the need for revolution in order to save itself. Nothing in Russia seemed essential to him, and even the sociological analysis of the Soviet power seemed inadequate. Amadori understood society’s de-structuration well, in that it had regressed to an almost primordial state, constituting the peculiarity of the Russian Revolution compared to the European ones. The delegate observed the crumbling of Russian administrative units and local Soviets disconnected from one another and removed from a true leadership unit of their own. The psychological description made by Amadori of the Bolshevik leaders is very close to certain verdicts by historiography on dissident Russia, which speaks of a police-like forma mentis type picked 294

G. Amadori Virgili, La situazione russa e i suoi probabili sviluppi: Gli obiettivi italiani in rapporto ad una eventuale ripresa di contatto col Governo dei Sovieti, Roma 10 Luglio 1920, in MAE, Ufficio Personale, Miscellanea, n. 175. 295 H. G. Wells describes the disastrous conditions of Petrograd in Russia in the Shadows (New York: Doran, 1921). Walter Schubart explains the horror of the destruction as innate within the European as a manifestation of the middle culture, socially established on the middle class and psychologically on a central state of mind, the virtues of which are self-control and discipline. The destructive Russian attitude is instead the manifestation of the culture of the end, set on nonequilibrium, the waste of things and humans, and the contrast between secularity and religiousness. See: W. Schubart, L’Europa e l’anima dell’Oriente (Milano: Edizione di Comunità, 1947), 99, 116, 257.

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up by the revolutionary Bolshevism. We have seen that a negative function was therefore assigned to Bolshevism. Returning to foreign policies, the Italian official discouraged at that moment the Italian government from recognizing the Soviet one, preferring a simple de facto recognition with the right to create respective offices. Amadori also suggested that the Entente countries not fight Bolshevism so that its implosion would be generated only by internal causes. In conclusion, his observation appeared punctiliously verified by the sources and first-hand observations, therefore presenting itself as superior to many other accounts written in evidence either in favour of or against the Soviet regime. On February 17, 1921 Russia was still in mourning for Lenin’s death while Count Gaetano Manzoni, sent by Benito Mussolini, left Rome for Moscow. The Count was the minister plenipotentiary, that is the ambassador. The economic agency thus changed its denomination, officially assuming that of the Italian embassy.296 Subsequently, Manzoni searched for an adequate location and found Villa Berg, which allowed in Moscow, as in Constantinople, the most functional arrangement in order to permanently host all personnel in the embassy along with the chancery services.297 This late nineteenth-century Russian villa is situated in one of Moscow’s most silent and secluded streets, one of the most beautiful neighbourhoods of the city between Ulica Kropotinskaia and Arabat. The first Italians to visit it did not feel themselves to be in the heart of the Soviet machine.298 The personnel were formed of about fifty people who made a sort of permanent “Italian island” in Moscow. Some of them remained in Russia until 1941, leaving indelible traces in the human memory and diplomatic documents. The most representative and institutionally relevant figure for the embassy’s history between the two wars was Guido Relli, an ex-subject of the Austro-Hungarian Empire of Italian nationality. He was the cohesive element between the Italian and Russian cultures, and thanks to his long stay contributed to making the not-easy Italian diplomacy more effective. Even the Italian press between the two wars frequented the embassy in Moscow, and later even writers and intellectuals in search of a different idea of that country from the one perceived within their own did the same.

296

E. Cerruti, Visti da vicino. Memorie di un’ambasciatrice (Milano: Garzanti, 1951). 297 P. Quaroni, Ricordi di un Ambasciatore (Milano: Garzanti, 1954). 298 Manzoni a Mussolini, Tell. no. 39, 48, Rap. N.493/66, respectively of February 19 and March 1, 1924, MAE, Archivio del personale S. VIII, b. 46, fasc. 124 (Moscow, 1923–7).

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If anything, the dismissal of Cicerin and the beginning of Pjatiletka signed a rupture in the internal Russian history and even in the relations between the diplomatic body and the Soviet authority. From September 1929, the Italian diplomacy had completely lost the respect and prestige it benefited from up to the previous year. The newspapers did not neglect to amplify the scandals in which diplomats were the main players. The custom of informal relations almost completely stopped and became related to protocol only. But then we must say that the regime needed new interlocutors better suited for the country’s modernization effort and preferred practical professionals, different from the diplomats, such as economists, engineers, and technicians that spoke the language of numbers and elaborated complex statistical charts.299 The Italian embassy itself, even if not involved directly in the scandal campaign, felt the effects of this mutated climate. However, in a short time it managed to find other resources and channels to win isolation and come into contact with the Russian world. In 1930, hundreds of Italian technicians contributed to creating excellent relations between the two countries. The new quinquennial plans had brought many professionals from Italy to visit Russia, and journalists, engineers, economists, and men from the financial world all came to study Soviet politics. Even the president of the Italian Commercial Bank (Banca Commerciale), Ettore Conti, arrived in Moscow in 1932 and was a guest at the embassy. Those were extremely unpredictable times and from one moment to another the residents in Villa Berg could increase. The Italian politicians, who had had enough of the Soviet Union and wanted to repatriate, started to flow into the villa. All in all, we can state that the Italian diplomats looked upon the Russian events in their usual way, through the mental categories of political realism. Basic concepts of social class conflicts, class interests, and internationalism are still attributed, even recently, to a greater heuristic and interpretative validity, both in and out of the Soviet country, and are continuously deciphered without complications or doubts. The ambassador’s relations during the period in consideration (1917–33) speak of the personal character of the conflict between executive groups fighting for power, the contrast between cities and rural areas, the interests of great power, and the conflict between nations. This capacity to look at the facts and stick with them confers demonstrative strength, even to the infrequent but inevitable generalizations. The study of facts and the choices of being on site to compare the ideological presumptions with evidence, working 299

Cf. E. Lo Gatto, URSS 1931. Vita quotidiana-Piano quinquennale (Roma: Anonima Romana Editoriale, 1932).

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up the trail of available sources, allows them to correctly evaluate even the ideological phenomena. The Russia of the 1920s, not so different from that of the nineteenth century, was seen by the Italians as having the image of an archetypal “grandmother,” perceived positively and negatively at different times. The logic and conceptual categories that Trotsky and Bukharin had in common resulted in being more comprehensible compared to those used by Stalin. The perception and interpretations were clearly different. Stalin’s strength, besides his role in the party, was seen mainly in his non-Russian character, which the Italian functionaries often found to be stereotypical in Russian literature. The fact that Stalin was not Russian was detected in his dynamic spirit, stubbornness, disagreeableness, and indifference, which were also signs of a great extraneousness towards the Russian population. This interpretation was widely used in Italian historiography which summarized Stalinism as an Asian-Marxist combination and a forma mentis created from a mix of revolutionary and police methods. Furthermore, the events those diplomats witnessed are without comparison in recent history, and therefore the sociological models of dictatorship and despotism were completely inadequate in describing the Stalinist phenomenon.300 Stalinism was not considered a creative phenomenon, but destructive and necessary for politics, destined to perpetuate a regime that otherwise would not have lasted. Stalinism developed not for knowledge of that model but for a coercive mobilization on the one hand and the collective enthusiasm of the younger generations on the other, which was incited to nurture limitless ambitions. This model was not considered exportable, and as a matter of fact did not work elsewhere. Diplomats in Russia at the time were therefore less able than others to explain why Russian communism had taken that universal meaning of cogency. Italy and Russia had found a solid base for friendly relations through national policies and economic benefits. This is why a modus vivendi was created between fascism and Bolshevism, dangling between advantageous commercial exchanges and diplomatic favours and a faint but controlled ideological debate. The observance of the modus vivendi by fascism had impeded the publication of all anti-Russian literature in Italy by Russian emigrants, at the time very numerous in France. Other answers are found in the rooted, ambivalent, fascist attitude towards the USSR. This was characterized by an oscillation, which fascism had never been able to give a plausible recap of, between an extremist revolutionary aspiration and the cultural heritage of a traditional and conservative tendency. 300

The totalitarian model was unknown during that historical period.

DOCUMENTARY APPENDIX

Mosca, 23 dicembre 1923301 Signor Ministro, Al fine di fornire a V.E. un concetto esatto sull’andamento attuale della stampa russa, mi onoro trascrivere due articoli della “Economicieskaja Zisn” a commento delle dichiarazioni da Lei fatte al Parlamento in occasione dell’accordo provvisorio Italo-Russo … Tratto da “Ekonomicieskaja zisn” del 23 dicembre 1923 NUOVA FASE DELLE RELAZIONI RECIPROCHE ITALIANE Il 1923 può ritenersi la data del cambiamento delle relazioni reciproche tra l’Italia e la S.S.S.R dopo la rivoluzione. In tale data il Parlamento italiano ha esaminato l’accordo Preliminare Russo-Italiano dell’anno 1921 e lo ha approvato. Noi abbiamo adoperato la parola “esaminato” pure è stato approvato senza discussione. Il sistema fascista e la dittatura sono così forti che senza discussioni in un sol giorno il Parlamento Italiano approvò macchinalmente 6 accordi presentati dal Governo per l’approvazione. Veramente l’accordo Italo-Russo è da due anni pronto per la discussione e l’approvazione presente è stata una mera formalità nella quale il Governo ha voluto provare le forze del Partito opposto al Governo e l’opinione pubblica generale riguardo al programma della questione russa. Il 30 novembre Mussolini si è presentato al Parlamento con un discorso riguardo la questione russa che noi già conosciamo dai telegrammi. Questo discorso è estremamente interessante da tre punti di vista. In primo luogo come splendido esempio di vera arte parlamentare. In secondo perché precisa il programma di Mussolini verso la Russia ed in ultimo come dimostrazione della politica verso la Francia e l’Inghilterra. Dal punto di vista di tecnica parlamentare il discorso è veramente classico. L’arma dell’opposizione contro il Governo era il riconoscimento della Russia, Mussolini col suo discorso ha infranto detta arma, dichiarando che tratta coi rappresentanti russi per riconoscere la SSSR “de jure”. Per ciò l’opposizione socialista con Bombacci, Lazzari Riboldi ecc. 301

The following documents come from the Archives of the Historical Office of the Army General Staff of Rome.

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si è trovata completamente battuta. All’opposizione di destra Mussolini ha risposto che le trattative da lui cominciate sono basate nell’interesse nazionale e che l’accordo definitivo sarà basato sulla condizione di un utile accordo commerciale, il quale garantirà gli interessi nazionali italiani e che per ciò l’opposizione di destra (liberali e popolari) possono stare tranquilli. Queste due dichiarazioni furono fatte con tono forte e calmo che ha causato una grande impressione, il Parlamento rimase sbalordito. Dal punto di vista del programma, riguardo la questione russa, il discorso di Mussolini appare quale un grande passo in avanti, mettendo detto programma su basi solide e chiare. Questo è un primo caso che in un Parlamento dell’Intesa si è svolto il tema di riconoscere la SSSR “de jure” passando sotto silenzio la questione del pagamento da parte della Russia dei vecchi debiti. (sic) Questo discorso è una vittoria del Potere Sovietista cha ha saputo rompere l’unico fronte dell’Intesa grazie alla sua forte Economia Nazionale. Perciò il 30-XI-23 si può calcolare come il principio di una nuova era nelle relazioni Italo-Russo ed anche come giorno storico della diplomazia Sovietista. In ultimo il discorso di Mussolini è interessante sotto il punto di vista della politica estera italiana riguardo all’Inghilterra e la Francia. In ogni modo il riconoscimento ed il riavvicinamento della SSSR sarà utile all’Italia. I commenti della stampa italiana circa il discorso di Mussolini sono favorevoli. (firmato) Boris Sch.

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Tratto da “Economicieskaja Zisn” del 22 dicembre 1923 DOPO IL DISCORSO DI MUSSOLINI È già passato più di una settimana dal momento che Mussolini apertamente in Parlamento dichiarò d’essere pronto di riconoscere “de jure” la S.S.S.R. e concludere con Essa l’accordo definitivo, se in cambio di questo la Russia pagherà bene. Per pagamento ha domandato “ una buon trattato commerciale e delle concessioni”. Secondo il suo punto di vista Mussolini ha chiamate le relazioni politiche colla SSSR “realisteche” dirette a difendere gli interessi nazionali. Pure ha confermato che anche gli altri Governi guardano alla loro politica estera riguardo alla Russia come Egli fa, ma non si decidono di chiamare apertamente le cose col proprio nome. In questa sua confermazione Mussolini ha ragione; la questione del riconoscimento della SSSR “de jure” e della ristabilitazione delle relazioni diplomatiche da molto tempo ha finito di essere una questione di principio ( se pure tale questione prima di adesso è stata di principio ). Da molto tempo, in ogni caso dal tempo della Conferenza di Genova, è diventata una questione di trattative. Questione aperta o mezza-aperta oppure segreta ma ciò non cambia il fatto. Con questo Mussolini pel primo ha dichiarato il commercio e con questo ha messo la questione su reali base politiche.- Noi abbiamo dichiarato fino all’anno 1919 che il riconoscimento “de jure” ed il ristabilimento delle relazioni diplomatiche coi Governi dell’Europa occidentale appariscono quale condizione dello sviluppo regolare delle reciproche relazioni economiche tra la SSSR e l’Europa occidentale e per quanto tale complesso delle norme giuridiche l’Europa borghese vende, noi siamo pronti di acquistarle e pagare per tale acquisto. La questione sta adesso; quanto pagare e come pagare. Vi è stato un momento quando la SSSR ha trovato conveniente di pagare la pace di Brest. Questo momento è passato e non tornerà più.- Cominciando dall’anno 1920 al 1922 l’Europa occidentale trovava l’unico pagamento per il riconoscimento “de jure” e per la riattivazione delle relazioni diplomatiche – era il pagamento dei vecchi debiti e la restituzioni della proprietà ai sudditi esteri.- Per questo le Conferenze di Genova e di Aja non hanno dato concreti risultati. A Mussolini appartiene l’onore ed il merito d’aver seppellito le speranze.Per il riconoscimento “de jure” Mussolini non ha chiesto né il pagamento dei vecchi debiti né la restituzione delle proprietà private.- Questo, senza dubbio, è una nuova fase nella storia della lotta diplomatica della SSSR per il suo rinascimento.- Allego altresì una vignetta del Giornale “Mosca Operaja” che può considerarsi l’organo il più acuso del comunismo russo.Voglia gradire, Signor Ministro, gli atti del mio maggior ossequio.Firmato Boris Scht.

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“ISVESTIA” 14 Settembre 1923 n. 207 LO STATO MILITARE DELL’ITALIA La riorganizzazione dell’esercito italiano durante il Governo di Mussolini. La durata del servizio militare di 8 mesi (prima) fino a 18 mesi (adesso). La cifra generale dei soldati ammonta a 320 mila. L’aumentazione della cifra degli Ufficiali. L’Aumentazione della Artilleria. L’Aviazione sorpassa i 1000 velivoli. Il Ministro della Guerra prenderà il Comando supremo in caso di guerra. Lo stato Maggiore è sottomesso al Ministro della guerra. È stato formato il Comitato Supremo della Difesa Nazionale. Le organizzazioni militari fasciste ammontano a 150 mila. “PRAVDA” 7 Settembre 1923 n.201 L’IMPORTANZA DEL CONFLITTO ITALO-GRECO L’eccidio dei membri della Commissione Italiana a JANINA è stato molto favorevole per la Politica Estera di Mussolini, il quale immaginava l’Italia Grande secondo la tradizionale Potenza della Roma Antica. Mussolini nella Politica Estera per forza deve avere qualche successo per gettare polvere-nazionalista negli occhi delle masse Popolari, ai quali egli promettendo molto per la ristaurazione dell’Economia Nazionale, non ha fatto niente. Per questo le vere cause del Conflitto non sono nascoste nell’eccidio occasionale ma nella natura politica Estera. Se non ci fosse stato l’eccidio a Janina, Mussolini farebbe una simile storia colla Jugoslavia per la questione di FIUME e l’altra di Tangere. L’Albania, Corfù, Fiume, Tangere – sono le questioni per le quali Mussolini si fa strada per dare un nuovo colpo e peggiorare le controversie Internazionali, preparando il terreno per le nuove guerre (Firmato) N. Tanin “PRAVDA” 6 Settembre 1923 n. 200 LE NUOVE MINACCE DELLA PACE EUROPEA (Apprezzamenti strategici nel caso l’ITALIA entrasse in Guerra) In questo articolo il Corrispondente Russo, D. ANTONOFF, dice: “Dato che in Grecia, dopo una sconfitta Militare in ASIA MINORE, il POTERE del GOVERNO GRECO è diminuito”. Di questa situazione attualmente l’Italia vuole progittare per stabilire la sua egemonia nell’Adriatico. Nel caso di guerra ITALO-GRECA, considerando che la Jugoslavia non prenderà parte contro l’Italia, tutte le preferenze sono alla parte dell’Italia come POTENZA che molte volte più sorpassa la GRECIA, e specialmente dal lato Navale, avendo l’Italia una Flotta molto

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più superiore. Per questo l’Italia può facilmente fare diversi sbarchi sulle coste Greche e assediare SALONICCO e CAVALLA. Il pericolo per l’ATENE è molto più grande, dato che la Flotta Italiana può facilmente fare uno sbarco nel Peloponneso. Siccome che l’esercito Greco in confronto a quello Italiano è molto più inferiore (per il quantitativo e la qualità) non parlando poi della flotta greca la quale non potrà nemmeno entrare in azione. La comparazione delle Forze Armate dell’Italia e della Grecia dimostrano quale parte avrà il successo Militare in caso di guerra, e per questo è facile spiegare perché da un lato Mussolini si permette di comandare il Governo Greco. Nel suo territorio la fratellanza dei popoli e l’eguaglianza di tutte le nazioni vede nella continua tendenza dei più forti Governi che vogliono imporre la loro volontà ai più deboli con orrore questo svolgersi di cose che guastano le relazioni internazionali e preparano future gravi lotte. La S.S.S.R. non ha base speciale per appoggiare il Governo ellenico ma ha constatato che la Grecia è stata sottoposta a delle misure repressive con occupazione di una parte del suo territorio da un avversario più forte di essa. Ugualmente la S.S.S.R. non ha bisogno di esaminare la questione dal destino di Fiume poiché sono esclusivi gli interessi fra l’Italia e la Jugoslavia anche perché la Jugoslavia finora non ha nessuna relazione “de facto” colla S.S.S.R. e continua a dare l’appoggio ai nemici del popolo Russo ma tuttavia vede con rincrescimento questa contesa. (firmato) D. Antonoff

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Accordo preliminare Italo-Russo302 Poiché è nell’interesse della Russia e dell’Italia di riprendere immediatamente il pacifico traffico commerciale tra i due paesi ed, in attesa della Conclusione di una Convenzione commerciale e di un formale Trattato generale fra i Governi di questi paesi, che regoli per l’avvenire le loro relazioni economiche e politiche, essendo necessario che si giunga ad un accordo preliminare fra il Governo italiano e il Governo della Repubblica federale socialista dei Soviet di Russia, qui appresso indicato col nome di Governo russo dei Soviet, le predette parti hanno di comune accordo concluso il presente accordo preliminare allo scopo di riprendere il traffico e il commercio fra i due paesi. La presente Convenzione è subordinata all’adempimento delle seguenti condizioni, cioè: a) che ognuna delle due parti si astenga da ogni atto o iniziativa ostile all’altra parte e si astenga dal fare, fuori dei propri confini, propaganda diretta o indiretta contro le istituzioni del Regno d’Italia e della Repubblica russa dei Soviet. Sotto il termine “fare una propaganda” rimangono compresi l’assistenza o l’incoraggiamento dato da una parte a qualsiasi propaganda fatta fuori dei propri confini; b) che a tutti gli Italiani, compresi gli originari delle Provincie redente, trovantisi in Russia sia immediatamente permesso di tornare in Patria, e che tutti i cittadini russi residenti in Italia che desiderino di tornare in Russia, siano parimenti lasciati liberi di farlo. Le parti si impegnano di dare immediatamente tutte le necessarie istruzioni agli agenti o a tutte le persone sottoposte alle loro autorità perché si conformino alle condizioni predette. Art. 1 - Le parti convengono di non imporre o mantenere alcuna forma di blocco contro l’altra, convengono per le merci che possono essere legalmente esportate o importate nei rispettivi territori verso o da ogni altro paese estero, di rimuovere tutti gli ostacoli che hanno impedito finora la ripresa del commercio fra l’Italia e la Russia, di non sottoporre tale commercio ad alcuna condizione di inferiorità in confronto a qualsiasi altro paese estero e di non ostacolare le operazioni bancarie, di credito e finanziarie relative a tale commercio, ma di applicare la legislazione ordinaria vigente nei rispettivi paesi. Rimane intenso che questo articolo non toglie alle parti la facoltà di regolare il commercio di armi e munizioni 302

The document is found in the book Italia-Urss. Pagine di storia. 1917–1984 (Roma: Ministero degli Affari Esteri d’Italia-Ministero degli Afari Esteri dell’Urss, MAE, Servizio Storico e Documentazione, 1985), 27–31.

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con norme generali di legge, che venissero applicate a tutta la importazione di armi e munizioni da paesi esteri e alla esportazione. Nessuna disposizione di questo articolo deve essere interpretata come deroga a Convenzioni internazionali generali che leghino ciascuna parte da cui sia regolato o possa essere regolato il commercio, di qualsiasi merce speciale. Art. 2 - Le navi italiane e russe, i loro comandanti, equipaggi e carichi, debbono, nei porti russi e italiani, ricevere, sotto ogni rispetto il trattamento, i privilegi, le facilitazioni, le immunità e la protezione che sono abitualmente accordati dagli usi stabiliti dalle nazioni commerciali, alle navi mercantili estere, ai loro comandanti, equipaggi e carichi che visitano i loro porti, comprese le facilitazioni accordate di solito circa carbone, acqua, pilotaggio, ancoraggio, bacini, gru, riparazioni magazini e in generale tutti i servizi, le agevolazioni e i locali connessi con il traffico marittimo. Inoltre il Governo italiano prende impegno di non partecipare o aderire ad alcuna misura che restringa o impedisca, o tenda a restringere o ad impedire alle navi russe di esercitare i diritti di libera navigazione in alto mare, stretti e canali di cui godessero le navi di altra nazionalità. Questo articolo non menoma il diritto di ciascuna delle parti di prendere le misure autorizzate dalle loro leggi rispettive circa l’ammissione di stranieri nei propri territori. Art. 3 - Ciascuna parte nominerà quel numero dei suoi connazionali che verrà stabilito volta per volta come ragionevolmente necessario per l’esecuzione del presente accordo, avuto riguardo alle condizioni nelle quali si esercita il commercio nei suoi territori; l’altra parte dovrà permettere a tali persone di entrare nel suo territorio e di soggiornarvi e commerciarvi. Rimane inoltre nella facoltà di ciascuna delle due parti contraenti di restringere l’ammissione di dette persone o enti in alcune zone specificate e di rifiutare l’ammissione e il soggiorno nei suoi territori a ognuno che le sia persona non grata. Le persone ammesse in conformità di questo articolo nei territori di ciascuna delle due parti debbono, nel tempo in cui vi soggiornano per ragioni di commercio, essere esenti da ogni servizio coercitivo di qualsiasi genere, sia civile, navale, militare o altro e da ogni contribuzione sia pecuniaria che in natura imposta come equivalente del servizio personale, e devono avere il diritto di uscire quando credono. Debbono avere libertà di comunicare liberamente per posta e telegrafo e di usare codici telegrafici sotto le condizioni e i regolamenti fissati nella Convenzione telegrafica internazionale di Pietroburgo 1875 ( forma riveduta di Lisbona nel 1908 ). Ciascuna parte si impegna a tenere i conti e a pagare la differenza dovuta all’altra per i

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telegrammi diretti e in transito e per le lettere di transito, sulla base dei regolamenti della Convenzione telegrafica internazionale e della Convenzione e dei Regolamenti della Unione Postale Universale. Le differenze accennate, se dovute, saranno pagate nella valuta dell’una o dell’altra parte a scelta della parte ricevente. Le persone ammesse in Russia ai termini da questo accordo, avranno facoltà di importare liberamente merci quali le bevande alcoliche, di cui l’importazione e la produzione sono o possono essere proibite in Russia), destinate solo al loro uso domestico o al consumo nella quantità ragionevolmente richiesta per tale scopo. Art. 4 - Ciascuna parte può delegare uno o più agenti ufficiali in numero da convenirsi scambievolmente, che potranno risiedere ed esercitare le proprie funzioni nei territori dell’altra parte; questi agenti godranno personalmente tutti i diritti e le immunità di cui all’articolo precedente, ed anche le immunità da arresto e da perquisizione, immunità dei locali di ufficio e di abitazioni, ma resta inteso che ciascuna parte si riserva la facoltà di rifiutare l’ammissione come agente ufficiale di ogni persona che le sia persona non grata, e può compiere atti contrari alla presente convenzione o alle norme di diritto internazionale. Tali agenti saranno accreditati presso le autorità del paese in cui risiedono, allo scopo di facilitare l’esecuzione di questo accordo e di proteggere gli interessi dei loro connazionali. Gli agenti ufficiali debbono avere facoltà di comunicare liberamente col proprio Governo e con gli altri rappresentanti ufficiali del proprio Governo in altri paesi, per posta, per telegrafo, e telegrafo senza fili in cifra e di ricevere e mandare corrieri in sacchi sigillati, soggetti ad una limitazione di otto chilogrammi per settimana che saranno esenti da visita. I telegrammi e radiotelegrammi di agenti ufficiali godranno tutti quei diritti di precedenza sui dispacci privati che sono generalmente accordati a dispacci dei rappresentanti ufficiali dei Governi esteri in Italia e in Russia. Gli agenti ufficiali russi in Italia godranno gli stessi privilegi riguardo la esecuzione delle imposte generali e locali che sono accordati ai rappresentanti ufficiali dei Governi esteri. Gli agenti ufficiali italiani in Russia godranno privilegi analoghi che però non saranno in caso alcuno inferiori a quelli accordati agli agenti ufficiali di qualsiasi altro paese. Gli agenti ufficiali saranno competenti a vistare i passaporti delle persone che chiedessero di essere ammesse in conformità all’articolo precedente, nei territori delle due parti. Art. 5 - Ciascuna delle parti si impegna in generale di assicurare, alle persone ammesse nei suoi territori in base ai due precedenti articoli, tutta la protezione, i diritti e le facilitazioni che sono necessari per esercitare il

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commercio, ma restano sempre sottoposte alla legislazione ordinaria vigente nei rispettivi paesi. Art. 6 - Le due parti contraenti convengono di riprendere dal momento della conclusione del presente accordo commerciale, lo scambio della corrispondenza privata postale e telegrafica fra i due paesi, come pure le spedizioni e l’accettazione di messaggi telegrafici e di pacchi postali, conforme alle norme e ai regolamenti che vigevano fino al 1914. Art. 7 - I passaporti, i documenti di identità e le procure, e documenti analoghi, emessi o autenticati dalle autorità competenti in ciascuno dei due paesi e dai loro Agenti ufficiali allo scopo di render possibile l’esercizio del commercio conforme a questo accordo, dovranno essere considerati nell’altro paese come se fossero emessi o autenticati dalle autorità di un Governo estero riconosciuto. Art. 8 - Il Governo italiano dichiara che non farà alcun passo in vista di sequestrare o di impossessarsi di oro, fondi, garanzie o merci non identificati come proprietà del Governo italiano, che venissero esportati dalla Russia in pagamento o come garanzia di importazioni. Nessun passo verrà fatto neppure contro le proprietà mobili o immobili che venissero acquistate dal Governo russo dai Soviet in Italia. Esso rinuncia a ogni legislazione speciale non applicata ad altri paesi, contro la importazione in Italia di metalli preziosa dalla Russia in moneta ( altro che Italia alleata ), in verghe, lavorati, ovvero, contro l’oro importato per essere immagazzinato, analizzato, raffinato, fuso o dato in garanzia o comunque collocato in Italia. Art. 9 - Il Governo russo dei Soviet si impegna di non avanzare la domanda di disporre in modo alcuno dei valori o proprietà dell’ex Governo imperiale e del Governo provvisorio russo, esistenti in Italia. Il Governo italiano assume un impegno corrispondente riguardo ai valori e alle proprietà in Russia del Governo italiano. Questo articolo non pregiudicherà l’inclusione nel Trattato generale, previsto nel preambolo, di alcune disposizioni relative alla materia di questo articolo. Le due parti convengono di custodire e di non trasferire a nessun reclamante prima della conclusione del Trattato accennato i valori e le proprietà sopraindicate soggetti al loro controllo. Art. 10 - In considerazione della dichiarazione aggiuntiva alla presente Convenzione nei riguardi dei reclami di ognuna delle due part contraenti e dei rispettivi cittadini verso l’altra per proprietà o diritti o per obblighi assunti dai Governi esistenti o da quelli precedenti di ciascun paese, e nei riguardi dei compensi a persone private italiane o russe che avessero fornito merci o prestato servizi rispettivamente alla Russia o all’Italia, resta convenuto quello che segue: L’oro, i fondi, i titoli, le merci, e in genere i beni d’ogni specie dei due paesi, importanti o acquistati

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posteriormente a questa Convenzione, non saranno sottoposti, nei due paesi, a sequestro, o ad azione giudiziaria che ne limiti la disponibilità, in conto di obblighi assunti o di responsabilità, incorse dai Governi esistenti o da quelli precedenti di ciascun paese prima della firma della presente Convenzione Art. 11 - Le merci, i prodotti e i manufatti di un paese, importati nell’altro in conformità di questo accordo, non dovranno esservi soggetti a requisizione coatta da parte del Governo o di alcuna autorità locale Art. 12 - È convenuto che tutte le questioni relative ai diritti o ai reclami dei connazionali dell’altra parte circa le patenti, marche di fabbrica, progetti e diritti d’autore nel territorio dell’altra parte saranno equamente regolati nel Trattato di cui nel preambolo. Art. 13 - Il presente accordo preliminare entrerà in vigore immediatamente e le due parti prenderanno subito tutte le misure necessarie per l’esecuzione. Subito dopo la firma dell’accordo le due parti inizieranno la discussione della Convenzione commerciale di cui al preambolo che regolerà le relazioni economiche fra i due paesi finché non sarà sostituita dal trattato generale. La Convenzione commerciale dovrà essere firmata entro sei mesi dalla firma della presente convenzione preliminare. Nel caso di infrazione da parte di una delle parti in qualunque momento, di una delle norme di questo accordo e delle condizioni di cui nel preambolo, l’altra parte è immediatamente libera dagli obblighi contrattuali. Tuttavia rimane convenuto che prima di fare alcuna azione contraria all’accordo, la parte lesa darà all’altra parte il tempo ragionevole per fornirle spiegazioni e per rimediare all’errore. È convenuto scambievolmente che in ciascuno dei casi contemplati nelle clausole precedenti le parti offriranno tutte le facilitazioni necessarie per liquidare, conforme ai principi dell’accordo, le transazioni già avviate e le facilitazioni per il richiamo e la uscita dai loro territori dei connazionali dall’altra parte o per il ritiro delle loro proprietà mobili. Nel caso di decadenza dell’attuale convenzione senza che sia stata surrogata dalla Convenzione commerciale è stabilita per la liquidazione degli affari in corso una proroga che non superi un anno; e in favore delle persone indispensabili per curare tale liquidazione resteranno in vigore le immunità di cui all’art 3. Dichiarazione di riconoscimenti dei reclami. Al momento della firma della presente Convenzione ambedue le parti dichiarano che tutti i reclami delle parti e dei propri nazionali contro l’altra parte circa proprietà, o diritti, o circa obblighi assunti dal governo esistente e da quello precedente di ciascun paese, saranno equamente regolati nel trattato definitivo generale di cui al preambolo. Frattanto, senza pregiudizio

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dei criteri generati del Trattato di cui sopra, il Governo russo dei Soviet dichiara di riconoscere in principio le proprie responsabilità per il pagamento d’un compenso alle persone private che avessero fornito merci o prestato servizio alla Russia per i quali non fossero stati pagati. I particolari della esecuzione di tale impegno saranno stabiliti dal trattato di cui nel preambolo. Il Governo italiano fa un’eguale dichiarazione. Resta in teso che le dichiarazioni di cui sopra, non implicano affatto che i reclami considerati debbano avere un trattamento di favore nel predetto trattato in confronto ad altre specie di reclami, che dovessero essere presi in considerazione da quel Trattato. Fatto a Roma, addì 26 dicembre 1921 Della Torretta Vaclav Worovsky

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Mappa Europa 1922. Fonte: www.hipkiss.org

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Mappa Russia 1920. Fonte: www.worldmapsonline.com

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INDEX OF NAMES

Aberti Zaccaria, 127 Albertini Luigi, 29 Alekseev Mikhail Vasilyevich, 43, 64, 64n Alexander III Romanov, 10n, 15n, 16, 63n Aleksey (Czar), 68, 69n Alexander II Romanov, 7, 15n Amadori Virgili Giovanni,130, 134, 135, 135n, 136 Andreucci Franco, 81n, Antonov Ovseenko Vladimir A., 65n Anweiler Oscar, 83n Ashoor Muhammed, 17n Baáachowicz Stanisáaw Buáak, 106 Banti Alberto Mario, 76n, 79n, 80n, 81, 81n Barbiera Raffaello, 10n Barnes Gina L., 5n Bartolotta Francesco, 131n Bassi Ugo, 6, 6n, 7n Bassignano Achille, 44, 44n, 52n, 61, 72, Battaglia Giuseppe, 129, 129n Belin Émile, 46n, 94 Beneš Edvard, 112 Bertuccioli Giuliano, 19n Bismarck Otto von Edvard Leopold, 8, 13 Blackledge Paul, 110n Bliss Tasker Howard, 46n, 94 Boffa Giuseppe, 130n Bombacci Nicola, 122, 139 Bordiga Amedeo, 113n, 121, 121n, 122, 123, 124n Borghese Scipione, 126, 126n Borsa Giorgio, 6n

Bottaro Costa Francesco, 31 Bourtzef Ivan, 57 Brenna Paolo, 134 Brin Benedetto, 9 Bruckner Alexander, 120 Brzezinski Zbigniew, 97, 97n Budberg Aleksey, 43n Budyonny Semyon Mikhailovich, 103, 103n Bukharin Nikolay Ivanovich, 49, 66n, 86n, 110, 110n, 111, 111n, 116, 117, 123, 124, 138 Cadorna Luigi, 34, 35 Caetani di Sermoneta, 31 Cafagna Luciano, 114n Tchaikovsky Nikolay, 69 Cairoli Benedetto 11, 11n, 12 Calvi Di Bergolo Giorgio, 16n Camion Paul, 37n Carletti Tomaso, 10, 10n Carlotti di Riparbella Andrea, 2, 25, 30, 30n, 33, 35, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 129n Carocci Giampiero, 112n, 116n Carr Edward H., 50, 50n, 78n, 79 Cassese Emilio, 3 Catalani Giuseppe, 128 Cavour Camillo Benso, 7 Cerruti Elisabetta, 136n Cervi Mario, 29n Chabod Federico, 8n, 83n Chamberlin William Henry, 42, 42n Chanžin Mihail Vasilevich, 3 Chicherin Georgy Vasilyevich, 62n, 66, 93n, 102, 103 Clark Christopher, 29n Clémenceau Georges, 49, 74, 102 Cleveland William L., 87n

162

Index of Names

Cohen Stephen F., 110n Contarini Salvatore, 111, 111n Conti Ettore, 137 Coppino Michele, 9 Cova Enrico, 13 Crispi Francesco, 8n, 9, 14 Croce Bendetto, 88n, 114, 114n Curtopassi Francesco, 13, 31 Dadone Ugo, 105n Davies Robert William, 77n, 111n De Clementi Andreina, 121n De Courten Ludovica, 19n De Felice Renzo 88n, 114n De Launay Edoardo, 8 De Martino Niccolò, 95n De Miller Eugenio, 55, 57 Del Bo Giuseppe, 81n Delcassé Théophile, 33 Denikin Anton Ivanovich, 3, 43, 43n, 44n, 47n, 55, 61, 67, 70, 92, 93, 95, 95n, 96, 98, 99, 100, 100n, 102, 106 Depretis Agostino, 9, 11, 12n, 134 Derjabin Alexander, 42, 43n Deutscher Isaac, 48n, 109n Di Nolfo Ennio, 84n Di San Giuliano Antonino, 30, 30n Diaz Armando, 43n, 44n Dolgoruky Vasily Lukich, 32 Droz Jules, 81n, 113n Durnovo Pyotr, 24 Duroselle Jean Baptiste, 87n Dutov Alexander, 3 Emmons Terence, 127n Engels Friedrich, 81n Erdmenger Katharina 48, 48n Fajnberg Esfir Jakovlevna, 6n Falls Charles Buckles, 128n Fassini Camossi Edoardo, 46n, 47n, 52, 52n, 61 Ferdinand of Habsburg, 29 Ferigo Luciano, 38, 38n Ferraioli GianPaolo, 30n

Ferrari Aldo, 47n Ferraris Maggiorino, 54 Ferreri Annibale, 17n Ferretti Giovanni, 11 Ferretti Giuseppe, 133n Figes Orlando, 82, 82n Filippi of Baldissero Vittorio, 47n, 52 Fischer Louis, 154 Fischer Bernd, 115n Fitzpatrick Sheila, 111n Fleming Peter, 45, 45n Flotow Hans von, 30, 30n Foch Ferdinand, 53 Gabba Melchiade, 47n, 52, 52n, 61, 93, 93n, 94n, 96, 96n, 97, 97n Gajda Rudolf (Geidl), 3 Galkin Alexander, 17n Garibaldi Giuseppe, 32 Gaselee Alfred, 18 Gazzurelli Adelchi, 125 Geller Mihail, 85n Ghisalberti Carlo, 9, 9n Ghulam Mohi, Khan, 17n Gibelli Antonio, 29n Giolitti Giovanni, 25, 32, 112 Gionfrida Alessandro, 101, 101n Gladstone William Ewart, 57 Gobetti Piero, 88, 114, 114n Gorchakov Aleksandr Michaylovich, 7, 8 Goremykin Ivan, 24 Gramsci Antonio, 45, 78n, 89, 113, 113n, 114n, 121, 122, 123, 123n, 124, 124n Grassi Lauro, 48, 48n, 91n Graziadei Corrado, 122 Graziosi Andrea, 50, 50n, 75n, 76n, 77n, 78n, 80 Grieco Ruggero, 113n Gyun Cho S., 19n Haller Jozef, 101 Harkevitch Nina, 58 Harrison Mark, 77n

Zarstvo and Communism Haupt Georges, 82n Heihachirǀ Tǀgǀ, 21 Heller (see Geller), 51, 51n Henshall Kennet G., 5n Hesse Wartegg Ernst von, 5n Hill Cristopher, 79, 79n, 80 Hitler Adolf, 76n, 117n Hobsbawn Erich J., 29n Holt Frederick Appleby, 33n Humbert Droz Jules, 113n Imperiali Guglielmo, 34n, 54 Isaak Babel, 99n, 103n Ivan the Terrible, 56, 66n Izvolsky Alexander, 20, 25, 31, 59, 60 Japonþik Miška, 103n Jensen Bent, 132n Jessop Thomas Edmund, 47, 47n Joffe Adolf, 63n Jowett Ghart S., 132n Judin Aleksey, 121n Kamenev Lev Borisovich, 49, 63n Kannegiser Leonid, 67 Kaplan Fanja Efimovna, 64n, 130n Karakhan Lev Michailovich, 96, 102, 105n Karlovich Nikolay, 31 Keep John L., 109n Kerensky Alexander, 49, 50, 66, 71, 78, 100, 106 Kitahara Hatsushi, 18n Khormach Irina Alexandrovna, 45, 45n Khrushchev Nikita, 76n Klipa Bohumir, 70n Knickerbocker Hubert Renfro, 119n Kokovtsov Vladimir Nikolaevich, 23n Kolchak Alexander Vasilyevich, 43, 43n, 45, 45n, 52, 61, 68, 71, 92, 93, 98 Kolomiez Viaþeslav, 32, 32n Konig Helmut, 83n

163

Kornilov Lavr Georgievich, 43, 64, 64n, 78 Krasnov Piotr Nikolaevich, 43n, 70, 93 Kruger Peter, 48, 48n Krupensky Anatoly, 30, 32 Kuliscioff Anna, 81n Kun Béla (pseud. Ábel Kohn), 133n Larin Yurii, 85n Larina Anna, 110n Launay Michel, 8, 47, 47n Lehner Giancarlo, 130n Lenin (Vladimir Ilich Ulianov), 41, 42, 42n, 45, 49, 50, 50n, 51, 52, 53, 59, 61, 62, 62n, 63, 63n, 64, 64n, 65, 66, 66n, 67, 68n, 69n, 71, 73, 75, 77n, 78, 78n, 79, 79n, 80, 80n, 82, 82n, 83, 83n, 84, 86n, 87, 90, 92, 99, 100, 103, 104, 109, 110n, 121, 124, 127, 128, 130, 130n, 136 Lensen George Alexander, 6n Leonetti Alfonso, 113n Lewin Moshe, 76n, 86n Liberali Stefano, 111n Lincoln Bruce Walter, 42, 42n, 66n, 67n Litvin Alter L., 109n Lloyd George David, 74 Lo Gatto Ettore, 137n Lockhart Bruce, 130 Longo Luigi E., 95n, 100n Lvov Georgy Yevgenyevich, 49 Machiavelli Niccolò, 75n Makhno Nestor, 65n, 105 Mack Smith Denis, 34, 112n Maffei of Boglio Carlo Alberto, 14, 15, 15n, 17 Majoni Cesare, 127, 128, 131 Majoni Giovanni Cesare, 127n Majorana Ettore, 9 Makarov Kikolay Fedorovich, 106 Mancall Mark, 6n Mandrot Maria Carolina, 11

164

Index of Names

Manera Cosma, 72 Manzoni Gaetano, 136, 136n Marchetti Ferrante, 133 Marconi Wilhelm, 54 Martinelli Renzo, 114n Martov Julii, 45 Martuscelli Ernesto, 12, 12n Marx Karl, 81n, 110 Masini Federico, 19n Mayer Arno Joseph, 47, 48n Maynard Charles, 69n Mazzini Giuseppe, 8, 10n, 11n, 32 Mazzonis Filippo, 18n, 155 McMillan Margaret, 74, 74n Medvedev Roy, 75n, 76, 76n Melchionni Maria Grazia, 48, 48n Melegari Dora, 11n Melegari Luigi Amedeo, 9, 10n, 11n, 12 Melegari Giulio, 1, 9, 10, 11n, 12, 12n, 13, 13n, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 18n, 19, 19n, 20, 20n, 21, 21n, 22, 22n, 23, 24, 25, 26, 26n, 27, 31, 128, 128n Meljukov Pavel’, 55 Melograni Piero, 29n Merridale Catherine, 84n Meyer Gerald J., 128n Mezzacapo Luigi, 9 Michail Bulgakov, 99n Miljutin Nikolaj, 127n Miller Eugenio, 55, 57, 58, 59, 60n Milza Pierre, 5, 5n, 21n Modrich Giuseppe, 10n Montagu G. Gerard, 17n Montanari Mario, 35n Montanelli Indro, 29n Morra Di Lavriano Roberto, 10, 27 Muchacev Boris I., 43n Muravyev Nikolay, 25 Mussolini Benito, 26, 26n, 29, 87, 88, 111, 112, 13, 114, 115, 122, 136, 136n, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143

Napoleon III Carlo Luigi Bonaparte, 7 Natoli Claudio, 114n Nekric Alexander, 51, 51n, 85n Nelidov Aleksander, 32 Nevskij Vladimir Ivanovich, 78n Nevsky Alexander, 26 Nicholas II Romanov, 1, 15, 16, 18, 23, 26, 50, 59n, 64n, 68n, 125n Nicholas Romanov, 62 Nicotera Giovanni, 9 Nigra Costantino, 31 Nitti Francesco Saverio, 54, 95, 95n, 131, 133, 134 O’Donnell Victoria, 132n Oberti Zaccaria, 127n Oldoini Filippo, 8 Orlando Vittorio Emanuele, 74, 82, 82n, 95, 99, 131 Osipova Irina, 121n Ouratadze Grigory Illarionovich, 96 Pierre Renouvin, 98 Paçukaj Sokol, 133n Paléologue Maurice, 33, 33n Pellicani Luciano, 78n Pepoli Gioacchino, 8 Peirone Domenico, 73n Peirone Federico, 73n Petitti Di Roreto, 36n Petljura Harlan, 99n Petracchi Giorgio, 1, 8n, 24n, 25n, 30n, 31, 34, 34n, 35, 126n, 127n Petrovsky Grigory, 67n Pichlik Karel, 70n Piázudski Joseph, 102, 106 Pipes Richard, 42, 42n, 45, 68n, 81, 81n, 82, 89 Pirone Raffaele, 133n Pobedonostsev konstantin Petrovich, 16 Poincaré Henri Jules, 88 Polk Frank L., 133n Ponafidin Petr, 17n Poole Frederick, 68, 69

Zarstvo and Communism Povalo-Tchveykovsky Alexander, 17n Preobrazhensky Yevgeny, 110, 110n Prinetti Giulio, 18 Protopopov Grigorij, 121n Quaroni Pietro, 136n Quintavalle A., 63n Radek Karl, 50, 63n Radzinsky Edvard Stanslavovich, 109n Ragghianti Pier Leo, 54n Randazzo Francesco, 1, 2, 41n, 77n Rasputin Gregory, 59n Reichel Daniel, 9n Relli Guido, 136 Renouvin Pierre, 19n, 48n, 98, 98n Riccardi Luca 36, 36n Riva cavalier, 12 Robilant Mario Nicolis di, 46n, 94 Roger Lévy, 5n Rogestvensky Zinovy, 23 Romanov, dinasty, 7, 10, 126 Romei Longhena Giovanni, 43, 43n, 44, 44n, 54, 54n, 100, 100n, 101, 102, 102n, 103, 104, 104n, 105, 105n, 106, 107n Romolotti Giuseppe, 47, 48n Roosevelt Theodore, 23 Rossler Hellmuth, 48, 48n Rudinì Antonio Starabba, 9, 13, 13n, 14 Ruggeri Laderchi Paolo, 21n, 44, 44n Rykov Aleksey Ivanovich, 49 Sackville, West Victoria Mary, 46n, 94 Salem Jean, 78n Salomoni Antonella, 78n Salvatorelli Luigi, 50n, 88, 88n, 89, 89n, 113 Salvemini Gaetano, 57, 58, 59, 59n, 60n

165

Sargeri Giovanni, 19n Savinkov Boris, 64, 99, 100, 100n, 106, 107, 107n Sazonov Sergey Dmitrievich, 26, 30, 31, 32, 34, 100 Scamuzzi Sergio, 114n Schmidt Glintzer Helwig, 6n Schmitt Hans A., 48, 48n Schubart Walter, 135n Scialoja Vittorio, 54, 127 Scoccimarro Mauro, 113n Scottà Antonio, 48n, 91n Semionov Grigory Mikhaylovich, 70 Serge Victor, 98, 98n, 158 Sermoneta Caetani Gelasio, 15, 15, 31 Serrati Giacinto Menotti, 113n, 122 Service Robert, 80, 80n Sforza Carlo, 94n, 95n, 112, 112n, 131 Sifola Augusto, 47n, 52, 52n Sikorski Wáadisáaw, 105n Sillani Tommaso, 131n Silvestrelli Giulio, 12 Silvestrelli Giuseppe, 31 Simonazzi Maria, 10n Singarev Stephan, 126 Smolin Anatoly Vasilevich, 42, 43n Sologub Fyodor, 99 Solzhenitsyn Alexander I., 85n Sonnino Sidney 2, 33n, 95n, 126, 126n, 131, 133n Sosnkowsky Wáadisáaw, 106 Spriano Paolo, 113n Stabile Giuseppe, 101 Staffini Vitaliano, 99 Stahl Friedrich, 48, 48n Stalin Iosif, 49, 50n, 75n, 76, 76n, 78n, 79n, 83, 84, 86n, 87, 109, 109n, 111, 116, 116n, 117, 117n, 118, 119n, 123, 124, 138 Stolypin Pyotr Arkadevich, 2, 21, 24, 50, 57, 73, 76, 125, 125n Strižova Irina Borisovna, 6n Subtelny Orest, 77n

166

Index of Names

Svetaþev M. I., 43n Swain Geoffrey R., 42, 42n Tarquini Bruno, 125n Tasca Angelo, 89, 113n, 122, 122n Tchaikovsky Nikolay, 69 Tellini Enrico, 87 Tittoni Tommaso, 21n, 22n, 25, 33, 54, 93n, 96, 96n, 97n, 131 Togliatti Palmiro, 89, 113, 114, 114n, 121, 122, 124, 124n Tǀgǀ Heihachirǀ, 21 Tomasi Della Torretta Pietro, 2, 25, 31, 126, 128, 130 Tornielli Luigi, 31 Trèves Claudio, 10n, 45, 153 Trotsky Lev Davidovich, 3, 44, 49, 62, 62n, 63n, 64, 64n, 66, 66n, 68, 68n, 69n, 78, 84, 86n, 87, 102, 103, 109, 110, 110n, 111, 115, 116, 123, 138 Trojani Ettore, 131 Trubetskoy Evgeny, 31 Tuchachevsky Mikhail Nikolaevich, 49 Turati Filippo, 45, 122 Umbertino Franchino, 101 Uritsky Moisei, 66n, 67, 130n Urusov Lev, 25, 32 Vagnini Alessandro, 19n Venturi Leopold, 32, 101 Viefhaus Erwin, 48, 48n Vigoni Giulio, 13 Visconti-Venosta Emilio, 16n, 17, 27 Vittorio Emanuele II di Savoia, 32 Vittorio Emanuele III di Savoia, 34

Vivanti Corrado, 114n Von Flotow Hans, 30, 30n Von Jagow Gottlieb, 30n Voruntsov Daskov, baron, 16 Vrangel Pyotr Nikolaevich, 43, 43n, 93, 105, 106, 135 Vucinich Wayne S. 127n Waldenberg Marek 91n, 92 Weber Max 24 Wells Herbert George 135n Werth Nicholas 78n, 90n, 115, 115n, 116 Wheatcroft Stephen 77n Wheeler, Bennet John 54n Wilhelm II 13, 34n, 54 Wilson Woodrow 49, 53, 55, 61, 69n, 74, 92, 98 Winding Kjeld 132n Witte Sergey 16n, 20, 23 Wollemborg Leo, 32n Wuest Erich, 48n Wust Erich, 48 Yudenich Nikolay Nikolaevich, 69, 103 Yurev Aleksey Michailovich, 69n Zabloudilova Jitka, 70n Zabughin Vladimir Nikolaevich, 54, 54n Zanardelli Giuseppe, 9 Zane Barbara, 70n Zaslavsky Victor, 75n, 115, 116 Zelinsky, general, 106 Zinoviev Grigory Yevseevich, 123 Zogu Ahmed, 113, 114 Zoli Corrado, 112n Zonova Tatyana Vladimirovna, 7n