Il Grande Orso Bianco: Viaggiatori Italiani in Russia by Giorgio Maria s> Nicolai (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 525 Nicolai, Giorgio Maria. II GrandeOrsoBianco. Viaggiatori Italianiin Russia. Biblioteca di Cultura, 582. Bulzoni, Rome, I999. 577 pp. Notes. Glossary.Illustrations.Index. L 6o,ooo. THIS is a somewhat unusual book. Its core is a collection of summaries of thirty-oneaccounts of Russiaor areaswhich laterbecame partsof the Russian Empire by Italian writers. These range in time from the friar Giovanni di Pian-Carpo, who journeyed to the Mongol court of the Great Khan at Karakorumin the I240s to thejournalist Concetto Pettinatowhose book was published in 19I4. The writersconcerned are thereforea very heterogeneous collection, and not merelyin the datesatwhich theywrote. Some of the earlier ones never set foot in Russia at all: the 'viaggatori' of the title is therefore something of a misnomer.Two of the best-knownsixteenth-centuryaccounts, those of Paulo Giovio (I525) and AlessandroGuagnini (I578) are examplesof this. Moreover, until well into the seventeenth century a good deal of this Italian interesthad a rathernarrowgeographicalfocus. Genoa's long trading connection with the Crimea meant that the area north of the Black Sea still attracteda good deal of attention,while the existence of Christiancommunities in parts of the Caucasus, coupled with the fact that many of the writers were churchmen,ensuredthatit was describedin relativedetail.Nevertheless, Nicolai is quitejustified in stressingthe importance of these Italian accounts in the firststages of the European discovery of Russia and the relativelyhigh level of Italian interestin this stilllargelyunknown country.As he points out, the fundamental account by Herberstein appeared in an Italian translation fromthe Latinseveralyearsbefore itspublication in German. He attemptsno comparisonbetween the earlyItaliandescriptionsof Russiaandthose in other languages. Nor does he elaborate on the efforts of popes and sometimes Catholic secularrulers,often using Italian emissaries,to engineer some form of wide-ranginganti-Turkishallianceof which Russiawould be partand even to bringabout a union of the Catholic and Orthodox churches. During the seventeenth century descriptionsof Russia by Italian travellers were losing much of their earlier significance; and by the age of Peter the Great, German, French and English books were clearly more important channels of informationabout this new great power. Some of the eighteenthcentury accounts summarizedhere are interestingas personal testimonies those of FrancescoLocatelli Lanzi, of the singerFilippo Balatri,of Casanova, who spent nine months in Russia in I764. But these are the reminiscencesof individualsratherthan descriptionsor evaluationsof the country as a whole. The nineteenth century sees, as in other West European countries, the emergence in Italy of the tourist travelling in Russia merely for pleasure or amusement. To this the improvement of communications and greaterease of travelwere fundamental.When in I839 Giuseppe Filippo Beruffi,who spent only a month in the country,reached it by steamshipfromLe Havre and used his visitto produce an account aimed at potential touristsand givingdetailsof the prices of rooms and meals as well as of the sights of St Petersburgand Moscow, we are clearly entering a new and different world. Moreover the view of Russia now being presented was wider and usually more favourable than ever before. As well as St Petersburg(almost always much admired by 526 SEER, 79, 3, 2001 eighteenth-century travellers)and Moscow (often seen as interesting rather than beautiful), it now became much more common for Italians to visit the Volga valley, Kiev, the new cosmopolitan successstoryof Odessa and, by the end of the century, even Siberia.Also it was now becoming as clear to many Italian as to other West Europeantravellersthat Russia had developed into a great culturalforce in her own right. The composer Giovanni di Dominicis, for example, who spent more than two decades (i809-30) in the country, provideda substantialdiscussionof the developmentofpoetryin Russiawhich included a very earlywesternevaluationof Pushkin. The picture of Russia and its people painted by these eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Italians was not fundamentally different from that provided by other West European travellers. However, the book is useful in bringing to the attention of the non-Italian reader a wide range of accounts many of which will almost certainly be unfamiliar to him. The volume includes fourteen pages of illustrations and, perhaps rather surprisingly,a sixty-pageglossaryof Russiantermswhich includes a good deal of interesting informationabout theirhistoryand usage. London M. S. ANDERSON Dixon, Simon. TheModernisationof Russia I676-I825. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, I999. xvii + 267 pp...