¹ For the former see, for example, Michael David-Fox, Peter Holquist, and Alexander M. Martin, eds., Fascination and Enmity: Russia and Germany as Entangled Histories, 1914–1945 (Pittsburgh, 2012); Michael Geyer and Sheila Fitzpatrick, eds., Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared (New York, 2009); Gellately, Robert, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe (New York, 2007)Google Scholar; and Overy, Richard J., The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia (New York, 2004)Google Scholar.

² For these latter years see Stone, Marla, ‘Italian Fascism's Soviet Enemy and the Propaganda of Hate, 1941–1943’, Journal of Hate Studies 10/1 (2012), 73–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³ Fabbri, Tonino, Fascismo e Bolscevismo: Le relazioni nei documenti diplomatici italo-russi (Padua, 2013)Google Scholar; Quartaro, Rosaria, Italia–URSS, 1917–1941: I rapporti politici (Naples, 1997)Google Scholar; Petracchi, Giorgio, Da San Pietroburgo a Mosca: La diplomazia italiana in Russia 1861/1941 (Rome, 1993)Google Scholar; Petracchi, La Russia rivoluzionaria nella politica italiana 1917/25 (Rome and Bari, 1982). There are also some who have gone beyond the restricted political diplomatic approach; see, for example, Marcello Flores, L'immagine dell'URSS: L'Occidente e la Russia di Stalin (1927–1956) (Bologna, 1990), in which, however, Fascist Italy is mentioned only in passing. There are also some works on the travel writing of Italians who visited the USSR. See, for example, Petracchi, Giorgio, ‘Viaggiatori fascisti e/o fascisti a modo loro nella Russia e sulla Russia degli anni venti e trenta’, Rivista di Studi Politici Internazionali 81/1 (2014), 35–57Google Scholar; Charles Burdett, Journeys through Fascism: Italian Travel Writing between the Wars (New York and Oxford, 2010), 218–25; Luciano Zani, “Fascismo e comunismo: rivoluzioni antagoniste,” in Emilio Gentile, ed., Modernità totalitaria: Il fascismo italiano (Rome and Bari, 2008), 191–229; Zani, Luciano, “Between Two Totalitarian Regimes: Umberto Nobile and the Soviet Union (1931–1936),” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 4/2 (2003), 63–112CrossRefGoogle Scholar; the overview by Pier Luigi Bassignana, Fascisti nel paese dei Soviet (Turin, 2000); Giorgio Petracchi, “Roma e/o Mosca? Il fascismo di fronte allo specchio,” in Vittorio Strada, Totalitarismo e totalitarismi (Venice, 2003), 3–37; and Zani, Luciano, “L'immagine dell'URSS nell'Italia degli anni trenta: I viaggiatori,” Storia Contemporanea 21/6 (1990), 1197–1223Google Scholar. In particular, the works by Zani and Petracchi advance our knowledge, although the latter tends to downplay the importance of writers’ accounts for the understanding of the image of the USSR in Fascist Italy, while Zani exhibits a rather monolithic, static, and somewhat teleological understanding of the notion of totalitarianism. Furthermore, they do not engage with the latest developments in Fascist or Soviet studies, particularly the fundamental contributions from anglophone scholars.

⁴ Ruth Ben-Ghiat, “A Lesser Evil? Italian Fascism in/and the Totalitarian Equation,” in Helmut Dubiel and Gabriel Motzkin, eds., The Lesser Evil: Moral Approaches to Genocide Practices (London and New York, 2004), 137–53. As is well documented currently, Italians committed numerous atrocities in places such as Africa and the Balkans; see, for example, the fine collection of essays edited by Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Mia Fuller, Italian Colonialism (New York, 2005); and Davide Conti, L'occupazione italiana dei balcani: Crimini di Guerra e mito della “brava gente” (1940–1943) (Rome, 2008). The place of violence in Fascist rule within Italy has been underscored by Ebner, Michael R., Ordinary Violence in Mussolini's Italy (New York, 2011)Google Scholar.

⁵ Michael David-Fox, although he does not analyze the Italian case in any great detail, has noted that during this period the Soviet presence in Italy was magnified through exhibitions and cultural exchanges by musicians, and that special attention was also devoted to Italian visitors to the USSR. See his Showcasing the Great Experiment: Cultural Diplomacy and Western Visitors to the Soviet Union, 1921–1941 (New York, 2012), 198.

⁶ On the politics of mobilization during Stalinism and how it was closely linked to ideology, violence, and power see the excellent study by Priestland, David, Stalinism and the Politics of Mobilization: Ideas, Power, and Terror in Inter-war Russia (Oxford and New York, 2007)Google Scholar, esp. 189–303.

⁷ Suvich, Fulvio, Memorie, 1932–1936 (Milan, 1984), 24Google Scholar.

⁸ Ludwig, Emil, Talks with Mussolini (Boston, 1933), 151Google Scholar.

⁹ For Stalinism's quest to become the beacon of a new civilization see the excellent study by Katerina Clark, Moscow the Fourth Rome: Stalinism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Evolution of Soviet Culture, 1931–1941 (Cambridge, MA and London, 2011). However, Clark does not engage the rivalry between Italian Fascism and Stalinism in this realm.

¹⁰ For recent reassessments see David D. Roberts, Fascist Interactions: Proposals for a New Approach to Fascism and Its Era, 1919–1945 (New York, 2016), 202–5; Gerhard Botz, “The Coming of the Dollfuss–Schuschnigg Regime and the Stages of Its Development,” in Antonio Costa-Pinto and Aristotle Kallis, eds., Rethinking Fascism and Dictatorship in Europe (Basingstoke and New York, 2014), 121–54; and William D. Irvine, “Beyond Left and Right: Rethinking the Political Boundaries in 1930s France,” in Samuel Kalman and Sean Kennedy, eds., The French Right between the Wars: Political and Intellectual Movements from Conservatism to Fascism (New York and Oxford, 2014), 227–40.

¹¹ My understanding of totalitarianism is informed by David Roberts's excellent analysis in his The Totalitarian Experiment in Twentieth-Century Europe: Understanding the Poverty of Great Politics (New York and London, 2006), esp. 271–335. Other useful works include Marie-Anne Matard-Bonucci, Totalitarisme fasciste (Paris, 2018); Richard Shorten, Modernism and Totalitarianism (Basingstoke, 2012); Bernard Bruneteau, Le totalitarisme: Origine d'un concept, gènese d'un débat, 1930–1942 (Paris, 2010); Jerzy W. Borejsza and Klaus Ziemer, eds., Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes in Europe: Legacies and Lessons from the Twentieth Century (New York and Oxford, 2006); Emilio Gentile, La Via italiana al totalitarismo: Il Partito e lo Stato nel regime fascista (Rome and Bari, 2002); and Abbott Gleason, Totalitarianism: The Inner History of the Cold War (New York and Oxford, 1995).

¹² Pietro Sessa, Fascismo e Bolscevismo (Milan, 1934), 8–9. Along similar lines see, for example, Giuseppe Menotti De Francesco, Lo Stato Sovietico nella dottrina generale dello stato (Padua, 1932), esp. 1–23.

¹³ Ibid., 54.

¹⁴ Mario Nordio, Nella terra dei Soviet (Trieste, 1932), 320. This book was the product of twelve months that Nordio spent in the USSR during 1931.

¹⁵ Guido Puccio, Al centro della macchina sovietica (Foligno, 1930), 15.

¹⁶ Roberto Suster, striking a chord similar to Puccio's, solemnly proclaimed in a 1928 book that “currently, the revolution is the most grotesque paradox of our time.” See his Ai margini d'Europa (Milan, 1928), 107.

¹⁷ Angelo Oliviero Olivetti, “Per la psicologia del comunismo,” Educazione Fascista, May 1929. For the revolutionary passion and “creed” see James H. Billington, Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith (New York, 1980).

¹⁸ Olivetti, “Per la psicologia del comunismo.”

¹⁹ Angelo Oliviero Olivetti, “Psicologia comunista,” La Stirpe, June 1928.

²⁰ Ibid.

²¹ Ibid.

²² Ibid.

²³ Mario Sertoli, “La crisi in Russia e il piano industriale,” Nuova Antologia, 16 July 1932. Sertoli was a journalist who wrote several pieces on the USSR during the years under study for prominent Fascist journals and periodicals such as Il Popolo d'Italia and Critica Fascista.

²⁴ Ibid. The argument that Stalinism was pursuing, through other methods, the Americanization of the USSR in its purportedly mechanistic and materialistic character was widely discussed during the years under study. However, this topic goes beyond the scope of the present article and will be the object of another study that I am currently engaged in. For general thoughts on the surprising affinities between Soviet and American economic models see Stefan J. Link's Forging Global Fordism: Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and the Contest over the Industrial Order (Princeton, 2020).

²⁵ Archivio Storico del Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Affari Politici 1931–1945, b. 1 “Russia,” f. “Condizioni della vita in Russia,” report sent from Tokyo, 2 Aug. 1931.

²⁶ Bruno Spampanato, Popolo e Regime (Bologna, 1932), 65.

²⁷ Bruno Spampanato, “Equazioni rivoluzionarie: dal bolscevismo al fascismo,” Critica Fascista, 15 April 1930.

²⁸ Bruno Spampanato, “Dove arriva lo Stato,” Critica Fascista, 1 Jan. 1932.

²⁹ Ottavio Dinale, Tempo di Mussolini (Verona, 1934), 164–5.

³⁰ Curzio Malaparte, Intelligenza di Lenin (Milan, 1930), 21–2. On Malaparte see, for example, Giordano Bruno Guerri, L'Arcitaliano: Vita di Curzio Malaparte (Milan, 2000); and Giuseppe Pardini, Curzio Malaparte: Biografia politica (Milan and Trento, 1998).

³¹ Malaparte, Intelligenza di Lenin, 65.

³² Ibid., 66.

³³ Curzio Malaparte, “Nella Russia dei Soviet: La libertà e il potere,” Gerarchia, Feb. 1930. It should be noted that this was Mussolini's “personal” journal.

³⁴ Ibid.

³⁵ Ibid.

³⁶ Gerhard Dobbert, “Lo Stato bolscevico e il suo sistema politico,” Archivio di Studi Corporativi, Oct.–Dec. 1932.

³⁷ Writing about the temporalization of utopia, Reinhart Koselleck has observed that, in this process, the notion of the future offered compensation for the misery of the present. See his The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts (Stanford, 2002), 88.

³⁸ Mirko Ardemagni, “L'economia sovietica: Un sogno di grandezza,” Il Popolo d'Italia, 13 Sept. 1931. See also by Ardemagni, his travelogue Russia, quindici anni dopo (Milan, 1932).

³⁹ Ardemagni, “L'economia sovietica.”

⁴⁰ Roberto Suster, “Roma e Mosca,” Antieruopa, April 1929.

⁴¹ Roberto Suster, “Il Fascismo ed il Bolscevismo nelle loro influenze sull'assestamento del mondo,” Antieuropa, May 1929.

⁴² Gustav Glaesser, “Roma e Mosca: sintesi di antitesi,” Antieuropa, Dec. 1931.

⁴³ Ibid. For the huge importance of technology under Lenin and Stalin see the pioneering work by Kendall E. Bailes, Technology and Society under Lenin and Stalin: Origins of the Soviet Technical Intelligentsia, 1917–1941 (Princeton, 1978).

⁴⁴ Corrado Alvaro, I maestri del diluvio (Milan, 1935), 12, 19–20.

⁴⁵ Antonio Palumbo, “Il piano quinquennale della Russia sovietica,” Gerarchia, Sept. 1933.

⁴⁶ Sergio Panunzio, “La fine di un regno,” Critica Fascista, 15 Sept. 1931. On Panunzio see, for example, Alexander James Gregor, Mussolini's Intellectuals: Fascist Social and Political Thought (Princeton and Oxford, 2005), 140–65.

⁴⁷ Panunzio, “La fine di un regno.”

⁴⁸ Riccardo Fiorini, “A proposito dell'antitesi Roma o Mosca,” Critica Fascista, 15 Oct. 1931.

⁴⁹ Ibid.

⁵⁰ Ibid.

⁵¹ Ibid.

⁵² Amerigo Ruggiero, “Tecnici americani in Russia,” La Stirpe, Sept. 1932.

⁵³ Ibid. For Magnitogorsk see the excellent study by Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1995).

⁵⁴ For Stalin's economic advisers see, for example, Kyung Deok Roh, Stalin's Economic Advisors: The Varga Institute and the Making of Soviet Foreign Policy (London and New York, 2018).

⁵⁵ Amneris Fassio, “Teoria e pratica del bolscevismo,” La Stirpe, Dec. 1933. Ettore Lo Gatto, one of the most knowledgeable Italians of the period with regard to Soviet affairs, could not help but notice on one of his journeys to the Soviet Union that, despite the enormous sacrifices and privations imposed upon the population by Stalin's crash industrialization, there was a “moral tension, an exasperation of every human capacity and possibility … a heroic aspect that leaves one pausing for thought.” See his URSS 1931: Vita quotidiana, piano quinquennale (Rome, 1932), 37–8.

⁵⁶ Archivio Storico del Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Affari Politici, 1931–1945, b. 1, “Russia,” f. “Piano quinquennale russo,” report from Moscow, 3 June 1932.

⁵⁷ Eugenio Anagnine, “Letteratura sovietica,” Il Popolo d'Italia, 11 Sept. 1932.

⁵⁸ Mario Da Silva, “Il piano quinquennale,” Critica Fascista, 1 July 1931.

⁵⁹ Luigi Barzini, L'Impero del lavoro forzato (Milan, 1935), ix. This book contained observations of a journey he made to the USSR during 1934.

⁶⁰ Ibid., ix–x.

⁶¹ Ibid., 171–2.

⁶² Ibid., 173.

⁶³ Ibid., 192–3. For the Soviet politics of youth see, for example, Seth Bernstein, Raised under Stalin: Young Communists and the Defense of Socialism (Ithaca and London, 2017); Matthias Neumann, The Communist Youth League and the Transformation of the Soviet Union, 1917–1932 (London and New York, 2011); and Anne E. Gorsuch, Youth in Revolutionary Russia: Enthusiasts, Bohemians, Delinquents (Bloomington, 2000).

⁶⁴ Enrico Emanuelli, Racconti Sovietici (Milan, 1935), 99. Emanuelli was the author of the novel Radiografia di una note. For the urban commune movement see the excellent study by Andy Willimott, Living the Revolution: Urban Communes and Soviet Socialism, 1917–1932 (Oxford, 2017).

⁶⁵ Argo, “Idee d'oltre confine,” Educazione Fascista, Feb. 1933.

⁶⁶ Ugo D'Andrea, Le alternative di Stalin (Milan and Rome, 1932), 150.

⁶⁷ Gastone Silvano Spinetti, “Fascismo e Bolscevismo,” Gerarchia, Nov. 1936.

⁶⁸ Delio Cantimori, “Fascismo, rivoluzione e non reazione europea,” Vita Nova, July 1931.

⁶⁹ Ibid. For Fascist understandings of the French case see, for example, Giovanni Belardelli, Il ventennio degli intellettuali: Cultura, politica, ideologia nell'Italia fascista (Rome and Bari, 2005), 237–59; and George L. Mosse, The Fascist Revolution: Toward a General Theory of Fascism (New York, 1999), 69–95.

⁷⁰ Cantimori, “Fascismo, rivoluzione e non reazione europea.”

⁷¹ Ibid. Having long considered the corporatist thrust present in Fascist ideology to be mere propaganda, scholars have only recently have come to acknowledge its importance, as well as its transnational dimension and appeal. See, for example, Antonio Costa Pinto, ed., Corporatism and Fascism: The Corporatist Wave in Europe (Abingdon and New York, 2017); Matteo Pasetti, L'Europa corporativa: Una storia transnazionale tra le due guerre mondiali (Bologna, 2016); Didier Musiedlak, ed., Les expériences corporatives dans l'aire latine (Bern, 2010); Alessio Gagliardi, Il corporativismo fascista (Rome and Bari, 2010); and Gianpasquale Santomassimo, La terza via fascista: Il mito del corporativismo (Rome, 2006).

⁷² The study of Fascism as an alternative modernity has been intensely debated in recent years. See, for example, Fernando Esposito, Fascism, Aviation and Mythical Modernity (Basingstoke, 2015); Gentile, Modernità totalitaria; Roger Griffin, Modernism and Fascism: The Sense of a Beginning under Mussolini and Hitler (Basingstoke and New York, 2007); and Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922–1945 (Berkeley, 2001).

⁷³ This was a lecture entitled “Corporativism e principi dell'ottantanove” that he delivered at the University of Pisa on 10 November 1930, now in Giuseppe Bottai, Scritti (Rome, 1965), 169–77, at 172.

⁷⁴ Ibid.

⁷⁵ Ibid., 173.

⁷⁶ Ibid., 176.

⁷⁷ An Italian Fascist who had spent two years in the USSR could confidently write in 1934 that while the Soviet state under Stalin's rule practically left no room for the unfettering of the individual's creative energies, Mussolini's corporatist stato nuovo, by contrast, “with prudence, historical sense, tact, and balance … has known how to reconcile in Italy the very new social demands with respect for private property and individual freedom.” See Peregrinus, Grandezza e servitù bolsceviche: Sguardo d'insieme all'esperimento sovietico (Rome, 1934), 9.

⁷⁸ Benigno Crespi, “Organizzazione orizzontale,” Il Popolo d'Italia, 19 Oct. 1932. Carlo Scarfoglio, during a journey to the USSR in the summer of 1932, similarly observed the abstruse character of Stalinist principles and how “scientific socialism” had increasingly lost touch with men's and women's concrete lives and demands. Instead, with “a priori mental forms … which have nothing to do with life as it is lived, remote institutions and principles” are substituted for men. See his Nella Russia di Stalin: Russian Tour (Florence, 1941), 49–50.

⁷⁹ Eugenio Anagnine, “Letteratura sovietica: Luomo e la macchina,” Il Popolo d'Italia, 15 Jan. 1932.

⁸⁰ Domenico Carella, “Coscienza collettiva e coscienza individuale,” Critica Fascista, 1 Dec. 1932.

⁸¹ Ibid.

⁸² René Fulop-Miller, Il volto del bolscevismo (Milan, 1932), 46. This book by the noted Austrian writer and journalist had a tremendous influence in Fascist circles. It was prefaced by the above-mentioned Curzio Malaparte. For the fundamental importance of the notion of the New Man within Italian Fascism and more broadly within radical right movements and regimes see Jorge Dagnino, Matthew Feldman, and Paul Stocker, eds., The “New Man” in Radical Right Ideology and Practice, 1919–45 (London and New York, 2018); Patrick Bernhard and Lutz Klinkhammer, eds., L'uomo nuovo del fascismo: La costruzione di un progetto totalitario (Rome, 2017); and Dagnino, Jorge, “The Myth of the New Man in Italian Fascist Ideology,” Fascism: Journal of Comparative Fascist Studies 5/1 (2016), 130–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸³ Gustav Glaesser, “Roma e Mosca: sintesi di antitesi,” Antieruropa, Dec. 1931.

⁸⁴ For universal fascism see, for example, Cuzzi, Marco, Antieuropa: Il fascismo universale di Mussolini (Milan, 2006)Google Scholar; Cuzzi, L'internazionale delle camicie nere: I CAUR, 1933–1939 (Milan, 2005); and Michael Arthur Ledeen, Universal Fascism: The Theory and Practice of the Fascist International, 1928–1936 (New York, 1972).

⁸⁵ Among this growing field see, for example, Christian Goeschel, Mussolini and Hitler: The Forging of the Fascist Alliance (New Haven and London, 2018); Arnd Bauerkamper and Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe, eds., Fascism without Borders: Transnational Connections and Cooperation between Movements and Regimes in Europe from 1918 to 1945 (New York and Oxford, 2017); Benjamin J. Martin, The Nazi–Fascist New Order for European Culture (Cambridge, MA and London, 2016); Matteo Albanese and Pablo Del Hierro, Transnational Fascism in the Twentieth Century: Spain, Italy and the Global Neo-fascist Network (London and New York, 2016); and Garau, Salvatore, Fascism and Ideology: Italy, Britain, and Norway (New York and London, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸⁶ Antonio De Simone, “Problemi esteri,” Civiltà Fascista, Feb. 1934.

⁸⁷ Bertoni, Renzo, Il trionfo del fascismo nell'URSS (Rome, 1934), 211Google Scholar.

⁸⁸ Giesse, “Fascismo e bolscevismo,” Universalità Fascista, Dec. 1936.

⁸⁹ Archivio Storico del Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Affari Politici 1931–1945, b. 1 “Russia,” f. “Condizioni della vita in Russia,” report from Naples, 20 Nov. 1931.

⁹⁰ Ciocca, Gaetano, Giudizio sul bolscevismo (Milan, 1933), 199Google Scholar. On his time in Russia see Jeffrey T. Schnapp, Building Fascism, Communism, Liberal Democracy: Gaetano Ciocca, Architect, Inventor, Farmer, Writer, Engineer (Stanford, 2004), 21–35.