On February 7th, Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta participated in the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Sochi. On precisely that day, ninety years ago, Italy and the Soviet Union agreed to exchange diplomats. Italy these days is trying to invest in a “strategic partnership” with Moscow.
On February 7th, Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta participated in the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Sochi, one of a few European leaders to attend. This turned out to be a bizarre historic coincidence: on precisely that day, ninety years ago, Italy and the Soviet Union agreed to exchange diplomats. Italy was practically the first European country to recognize the Land of Soviets, though formally the UK anticipated the move with a less solemn and somehow impromptu decision by the new, and first labour government, led by Macdonald. In 1924, Benito Mussolini, dashing and still not compromised by the tragic alliance with Nazi Germany, was a supporter of clarified relations with Moscow in the name of realpolitik, probably urged on by an intellectual curiosity for what was brewing in the newly born state formation. We shouldn’t forget that fascism began as a sort of revision of Marxism, and that Mussolini was a hardliner Marxist leftist representative of the Italian Socialist Party before he was expelled. At the end of 1923, the Italian “Duce” eliminated the problem of recognition as “a famous fig leaf, with which you want to hide the real facts.” The facts were briefly synthesized in a note prepared by the Italian government for a conference in Genova on international economic aid to Russia, in 1922. “Italy considers it to be its interests that Russia will influence European politics, re-establish a balance in the European system and ensure that Italy finds a more comfortable place in it.” Mussolini was highly determined to forge a relationship with Moscow, and wanted the Kremlin to know his plans. After the signature of the Treaty of Commerce and de jure recognition of the Soviet Union on February 7th, he sent a note to Chicherin, People’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs, underlying the fact that he considered the question “already settled”, even before putting ink to this document.
For the next decade, fascist Italy tried to pursue a broader policy towards the Soviet Union – a policy of comparison, some have said – with certain circles in the fascist regime convinced that there were points of contact between the fascist revolution and the communist revolution. In 1933 Italy and the USSR signed a treaty of friendship, neutrality and non-aggression, an agreement accompanied by a vast program of bilateral visits and contracts for military supplies. During the Spanish civil war, of course, relations cooled, but still in 1940 Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov proposed to Italy a division of the Black Sea into spheres of influence, something like the pact the USSR had concluded with Germany in 1939 for Poland and the Baltic region.
Realpolitik was certainly the main driving force behind this somehow paradoxical friendship between the socialist state and fascist Italy. But there was also a certain mutual amity and mutual curiosity. Things changed after the Second World War began. But this “mutual attraction” never really disappeared. Even in the years of political and military tensions between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, the years of the so called neo-atlanticism, starting in 1958, Italy announced a new diplomatic course, with growing attention to East-West dialogue, which quickly won the favour of the Kremlin. Eni, the Italian energy company, became a major actor in building new bridges, with the support of the Italian communist party, but also of a good part of the Christian Democratic leadership. Fiat built the Avtovaz plant in Togliatti, a milestone for the Russian auto industry.
Ninety years have passed since the establishment of diplomatic relations between Rome and Moscow, and over twenty since the collapse of the Soviet Union. We need to allow a huge simplification to say that today we find the same spirit in Italian-Russian relations. But pragmatism and the search for mutual interests and convenience is certainly still high on the agenda, alongside an underlying “simpatia,” an attraction, and a will to cooperate, in both directions, whether we are dealing with the center right of Silvio Berlusconi or the center left of Romano Prodi and Letta. Italy these days is trying to invest in a “strategic partnership” with Moscow, hoping first of all that the numerous agreements signed during President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Trieste last November can be translated into contracts and new jobs for its strained economy. And Russia knows that Rome, which will be presiding in the European Union starting in July, is interested in and willing to promote cooperation at the European level in political and economic spheres, regardless of the many complicated issues to be handled, from Syria, to Ukraine, to European criticism over Russia’s human rights.
