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 Kolčak 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 Kolčak 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