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

173 Pages·2018·2.625 MB·English

by  Francesco Randazzo

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.
2 Introduction

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
Zarstvo and Communism 3
of the territories under the counter-revolutionary government of Admiral

Kol(cid:254)ak 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 Kol(cid:254)ak 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