SOVIET ITALIANS: AN ETHNIC COMMUNITY RESHAPED BY THE REGIME, FROM THE 1930-IES TO 2010-S

Abstract

The paper considered an issue a mere blank that both the Soviet-time Russian history studies and further Russian studies ignored for a long time. Only the 1990-ies offered an opportunity to involve multiple archive records still un-covered that served for the basis for addressing an issue of national minorities of the former USSR, and Russian legacy, in order to explore evolution of ethnic minorities in the aspects of society and policy-making at different stag-es of Russian history, to avoid observing an issue in the scope of ethnography only. For this reason, the papers already published have covered history of Russian Kore-ans, Kurds, Meskhetian Turks, Gypsies, Poles, Germans. In this paper, the author referred to an issue being byways of learning, i.e. the Soviet Italians that found themselves in the Soviet Union from the 1930 -ies to 2010.It should be noted that the scholars from Italy have concurrently stud-ied the issue. The joint efforts made it possible to discover additional facts back to the past of the Italian residents of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics who arrived in the USSR at their own authority, once fascinated by overall attention to the USSR in the course of building socialism, people called up by their hearts and further having turned to be an organic part of the population. They have settled in Crimea at the outskirts of the Kerch town, and had expe-rienced all the changes the Soviet society had undergone. These days the Italians remained an advance party of the multicultural Russian State.