Russia appears less as a geographic setting than as a political horizon: the country whose revolution inspires Italian socialists and whose Soviet government Nicola Bombacci hopes to engage. The encounters expose a divide between revolutionary expectation in Italy and the priorities of Soviet diplomacy.

Revolutionary Example

At the Italian Socialist Party’s congress in Bologna in early October, the maximalist majority adopted a platform inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution, which it hailed as a historic event for the proletariat. The party rewrote its program and appointed Bombacci secretary. The hammer and sickle, adopted as a symbol of the Russian proletarian committees, made the connection visible: Russia supplied an emblem and a model for a projected Italian transformation. Yet the congress’s commitment to revolution did not settle when or how it should happen; its leaders continued to disagree over whether revolutionary violence was necessary and whether conditions were ready.

Bombacci’s Mission

From December 1919, Bombacci worked to persuade Italy to reopen diplomatic relations with Lenin’s Russia. Trade was not his principal aim. He regarded negotiations as a possible opening to official recognition of Soviet Russia and, above all, wanted to discuss an Italian revolution with people who had already made one. His position joined international diplomacy to domestic socialist strategy: recognition would matter not only as a state-to-state relationship, but as a sign that the Russian experience might speak to Italy.

The delegation that traveled to Copenhagen had an official cooperative mission, arranged through the National League of Cooperatives, and political backing from the Italian government of Francesco Saverio Nitti. This created a sharp paradox: the government supported a mission involving socialists who sought to overthrow it. At the Socialist Party’s national council in Florence, Bombacci had also pressed for councils modeled on Russian soviets. His proposal received 401 of 440 votes, but support for the idea did not eliminate divisions within the party; Palmiro Togliatti regarded the plan as premature and theoretically incomplete.

Soviet Priorities and Disappointment

On April 7, Bombacci and his delegation met Leonid Krasin in the rooms of a socialist port cooperative in Copenhagen. Krasin made clear that his mandate was to obtain official recognition of Moscow by the Italian state, not to advance the Italian proletarian revolution. The distinction checked Bombacci’s hope that Soviet representatives would treat revolutionary coordination as the mission’s central purpose.

Bombacci placed greater expectations on his meeting with Maksim Litvinov, the Soviet foreign-affairs commissar. He spoke fervently about an imminent Italian revolution, but Litvinov judged the revolutionary faction in Italy weak and suggested that socialists would not remain in power for long. He also made the Soviet government’s immediate priority plain: Russia’s revolution had already succeeded, and its urgent concern was restoring political and commercial relations with capitalist countries. The response revealed a gap between Bombacci’s desire for revolutionary counsel and Soviet Russia’s pursuit of diplomatic recognition and practical relations.

Return to Italian Politics

After returning from Denmark, Bombacci reported to the Socialist Party’s national council in Milan, meeting from April 18 to 22. On April 20, he spoke bitterly about social-democratic caution and argued for revolution outside and against parliament. His encounters had not displaced his commitment to the Russian model, but they had shown that Soviet officials would not necessarily validate the Italian timetable or strategy. In the narrative, Russia therefore functions both as the source of an influential revolutionary example and as a state whose own diplomatic interests complicate the hopes attached to that example.