Italy, Relations with
From the time of Italy's unification in the mid-nineteenth century
through the post-Soviet era, schizophrenic collaboration and competition in the
Balkans and Danubian Europe has marked Italo-Russian relations, with national
interests consistently trumping shifting ideologies in both countries.
The schizophrenia was there from the beginning. Although Tsar Alexander
II, for example, objected to Italy's unification, the wars fought to that end
could not have been arranged and contained without the Tsar's complicity. By
the late 1870s liberal Italy was becoming enmeshed in the Triple Alliance with
Austria and Germany. Although primarily directed against France, the Italians
hoped the alliance would also blunt autocratic Russia's penetration of the
Balkans. Later, Russia's defeat at Japanese hands in 1905 removed the
counterbalance to Austria's influence in the Balkans, and Italy became every
bit as aggrieved as WAS Russia by Austria's conduct during the First Bosnian
Crisis (1908-1909). The result was the Italo-Russian Racconigi Agreement
(1909). Of the European powers, only Italy supported Russia on the Straits
Question. Although Rome promised several times to stand by its obligations
taken at Racconigi, Russia proved unable to use the Italo-Turkish War (1911-12)
as an excuse to reexamine the Straits Question.
During World War I, both Rome and Petrograd feared Austro-German
advances into the Balkans. Rome, however, was no more eager to see Germanic
dominance replaced by Russian-led Panslavism than Russia was to see it replaced
by Italian influence. The complex, multilateral negotiations that brought Italy
into the war (1915) required the uneasy compromise of Russian and Italian
ambitions in the Balkans. These compromises seriously eroded Russia's political
situation and betrayed Serbia, Russia's ally and causus belli. After the
war, Italy generally refrained from supporting the anti-Bolshevik White armies
during Russia's civil war, although Rome did provide small contingents to the
Allied intervention in Vladivostok and briefly planned to intervene in Georgia.
Thereafter, Italo-Soviet relations fell into the old grooves of
realpolitik. Even Benito Mussolini's rise to power (1922) had little effect on
diplomatic directions. Despite the presumed ideological antipathies dividing
Communist Russia and Fascist Italy, the Duce exploited Italy's position between
the Allies and the Soviets to reintroduce Russia into Europe and to arbitrate
among the great powers. Although commercial aspirations motivated Italy's
recognition of the Soviets (1924), the Fascists and Soviets also drew together
in common hostility to responsible parliamentary systems of government. By
1930, the Soviet Union, Italy, and Germany were tending to ally against France
and its allies.
With Hitler's rise to power (1933), Moscow and Rome sought ways to
contain the threat of a resurgent Germany. Through extensive cooperation, both
began to support the status quo to block German expansion, especially in the
Balkans. Soviet Russia's nonaggression pact with Italy (1933) marked a
significant step in its Collective Security policy directed against Germany.
Italy's successful defense of Austria (1934)-the one successful example of
Collective Security before World War II-seemed to vindicate Soviet policy.
Good relations, despite Moscow's extraordinary efforts at
appeasement, collapsed during the Italo-Ethiopian War (1935-36) and the Spanish
Civil War (1936-39). Afterward, the Italo-Soviet economic agreements (February
1939) began a rapprochement and presaged the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August. Even
after World War II began, Moscow continued to hope to split the Italo-German
alliance and to use Italy to block German penetration into the Balkans: for
example, by encouraging Italy's plan for a bloc of Balkan neutrals in the Fall
and Winter of 1939. These plans came to naught when Germany and then Italy
attacked Russia in June 1941. The Italian expeditionary army on the Eastern
Front met horrific disaster in 1943.
The Allies signed an armistice with Italy in 1943, and the
following year the USSR recognized the new Italy. In 1947, the two signed a
peace treaty. Italo-Russian relations were again subsumed in the struggles
between larger alliance systems, this time with Italy playing a crucial role in
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which stood against the Soviet-led
Warsaw Pact. Particularly interesting was the rise of the Italian Communist
Party (PCI). After the brutal crushing of the Hungarian Revolt (1956), however,
the PCI began to distance itself from the USSR and to promote an "Italian
Road to Socialism." In March 1978, the PCI entered a governmental majority
for the first time. Stung by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the PCI
increasingly promoted "Eurocommunism," which ultimately played a
large role in delegitimizing Soviet Russia's imperial satellite system in Eastern
Europe. After the collapse of Communism in Russia in the early 1990s, the main
point of cooperation and conflict between Russia and Italy remained focused in
the Balkans and Danubian regions.