Mazzini and the Russian Democrats: The Risorgimento and the Reforms in the Tsarist Empire [Mazzini e i democratici russi: Il Risorgimento e le riforme nell’Impero zarista]

The theme of this report concerns Mazzini’s relations with the Russian democrats and, in particular, with Aleksander Herzen. This is a topic that has been little investigated by historiography, which until now has paid particular attention to Mazzini’s activity in Eastern Europe and in the Balkan countries. The author, investigating the writings of Mazzini and Herzen, reconstructs in the first part the sensitivity of the genovese patriot towards the Russian democratic and liberal movements, starting from the decembrists. In the second part emerges the relationship between Mazzini and Herzen, the well-known Russian westernist, who on the eve of the 1848 revolution went to the West to catch economic and political differences with Russia. The Russian emigrant appreciates the revolutionary movements for the affirmation of new democratic institutions and for Italian unification. After the failure of these experiences, he began to reflect on the limits of Mazzini’s strategy, considered incapable of involving the poorest social classes such as peasants in the struggle. Through these considerations the Herzen’s strategy emerges on the need to achieve a gradual reform process in Russia with the involvement of the autocracy and with the priority objective of the abolition of the serfdom. The author dedicates the last part of the report to the influences exerted by Mazzini’s methods of organization and struggle on the Russian democratic and populist movement. In this context, the reconstruction of the activity of the Young Russia, which since the sixties operates among university students, is of particular interest. Of course, there are differences among the objectives pursued. The Russian youth, after the liberation of the servants, took on decidedly revolutionary tones, calling for a profound transformation of the Russian countryside