“The Russian train” and “Other memories of Moscow” by Anna Maria Ortese in the dynamics of Russian myth in Italian travelogues of the 1950s

The article studies travel notes “The Russian Train” and “Other Memories of Moscow” by Italian author Anna Maria Ortese, who visited the USSR in 1954. Ortese was the first Italian writer to visit the Soviet Union after the death of Stalin. Her travel notes differ greatly from many pro-Soviet Italian writings of the early 1950s and start a new page in the history of Italian travelogues on the USSR. One of important traits is the revival of the so called “Russian myth”, a complex of stereotyped Western beliefs about Russia dating back to the 18th - 19th century. Italian travelogues about the USSR of the early 1950s see the Russian myth replaced by the Soviet myth, which reached its apex under Stalin, and the return of the Russian myth in Ortese’s writings becomes a symptom of an oncoming change in the political and spiritual life of the Soviet society. However, all other specific traits of her travel notes (the lack of ideological cliches, paying special attention to the individual rather than to society, subjectivity and concentration on the author’s inner world) become characteristic to Italian travelogues about the USSR of the mid- and late 1950s (Carlo Levi, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Curzio Malaparte, Alberto Moravia), while the revival of the Russian myth in Ortese’s travel notes does not find any response. Even during Khrushchev’s Thaw the image of the USSR created by Italian writers is still influenced by the Soviet myth dating back to the epoch of Stalin.