Il grande dibattito sul realismo socialista nel 1956: una lettera di Vittorio Strada a Viktor Nekrasov

Abstract

The early writings of Vittorio Strada and Viktor Nekrasov, together with their correspondance, allow us to consider from a different point of view the literary and ideological process in Soviet Russia during the 1950s and the inevitable effects on Italian culture, when literature and art were deeply involved in the debate over the Thaw and the de-Stalinization. The events that marked the turning point in 1956, such as the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with Nikita Krushchev’s “Secret Speech”, and Alexander Fadeev’s suicide, were impressed by Strada on a long letter to Nekrasov, dated 18th of June 1956. In the full text of the letter, here published for the first time, Strada wanted to draw the attention of the Kievian author to the main Italian debate over post-Stalin literary ferment, Marxism and Realism. Putting in evidence the connection between dogmatism and bureaucratism, from an intertextual point of view, here is possible to detect the same danger highlighted by Nekrasov in his novel “In My Own Town”. The novel was translated by Strada only a few months earlier, for Einaudi.