Moscow

Moscow matters in this account less as a visited place than as the distant center onto which Nicola Bombacci projects both a diplomatic objective and the promise of revolution. He wants Italy to recognize Soviet Russia and hopes to discuss an Italian revolution with the men who made the Russian one. His encounters in Copenhagen expose the gap between that hope and the Soviet representatives’ narrower priorities.

The destination of Bombacci’s hopes

By December 1919, Bombacci was working to persuade Italy to reopen diplomatic relations with Lenin’s Russia. Trade negotiations did not interest him as an end in themselves: he regarded them as a preliminary step toward recognition of the Soviet state by capitalist Italy. He framed that recognition as a matter of political kinship, invoking Italy as the “great proletarian,” a nation whose poor people, he believed, should recognize the legitimacy of a state founded by Russian workers.

His ambitions extended beyond diplomacy. Bombacci wanted to speak directly with the men who had brought about the Russian Revolution about the revolution he hoped to see in Italy. In this sense, Moscow represents both a government with which Italy might establish relations and a revolutionary example whose authority he hoped would validate his own political course.

A mission that stops in Copenhagen

Bombacci travelled as part of a delegation officially arranged by the National League of Cooperatives and Mutual Aid and promoted by the city of Milan. The mission also had the political endorsement of Francesco Saverio Nitti’s government, although socialists openly declared their desire to overthrow it. That contradiction made the journey an unusual crossing of interests: the Italian government backed a mission whose leading political advocate opposed its authority.

The delegation met Leonid Krasin on April 7 in the rooms of a socialist port cooperative in Copenhagen. Krasin’s mandate, as he stated it, was limited: he had come to obtain the Italian state’s official recognition of Moscow, and nothing more. The meeting thus gave Bombacci a concrete diplomatic contact while withholding the revolutionary conversation he most wanted. Moscow’s immediate concern, as represented by Krasin, was recognition by Italy rather than assistance to an Italian upheaval.

Litvinov’s answer and the limits of the example

Bombacci placed his remaining hopes in Maksim Litvinov, whom he regarded as close to Vladimir Lenin. At their meeting, he spoke fervently about an imminent revolution in Italy. Litvinov answered that, although the Italian Socialist Party was strong, its revolutionary faction was weak; he doubted that Italian socialists could hold power for more than two months. His judgment undercut Bombacci’s confidence that Soviet leaders would endorse the Italian revolutionary project.

Litvinov also made the Soviet government’s priorities explicit: the revolution had already succeeded in Russia, and the urgent task was to resume political and commercial relations with capitalist states. In Copenhagen, then, Moscow’s representatives treated the accomplished revolution as a state-building fact, not as a template for immediate export. Bombacci returned to Italy disappointed, while the distance between his expectations and Soviet policy had become unmistakable.

Moscow as political center and narrative contrast

The episode gives Moscow significance through absence as much as presence. Bombacci never reaches the city in this account; he encounters Soviet policy through representatives abroad, first Krasin and then Litvinov. The capital nevertheless remains the focus of his diplomatic campaign and the imagined source of revolutionary authority.

That focus also sharpens a contrast within Italian socialism. Bombacci had fought for the creation of councils modeled on the Russian soviets, winning a large majority at the Socialist Party’s national council, but his proposal faced skepticism from fellow Italian leaders. He hoped that Moscow would understand what Italian critics dismissed or qualified. Instead, its representatives were concerned with recognition and relations with capitalist governments. The city therefore stands at the intersection of Bombacci’s political ideal and the practical limits revealed by the mission: revolutionary prestige did not mean Soviet support for the revolution he wanted in Italy.