Se arriverà Lenin: Russian revolution in Italian social songs of the “Red Biennium”

Abstract

The article is focused on Italian protest songs, which reported the events of the 1917 revolution in Russia or expressed the hope for a similar revolutionary path for Italy. These phenomena developed during the so-called Biennio rosso (Two Red Years), when in Italy there was a growth of social unrest and workers’ movement, with the peak in September 1920, when workers occupied factories. The failure of this movement led to the takeover of power by Benito Mussolini’s fascists in 1922. The article analyzes the motives of the song-texts (the image of Lenin, the myth of the USSR, the link between the Revolution of 1917 and social protests in Italy), and the means of melodies usage in songwriting. In particular, it is shown that one of the most popular motives in these texts was the messianic one: Lenin was expected as the future savior of the oppressed Italians. There is also space for underlining how the Italian social song was studied in the second half of the 20th century and the meaning of its historiography and collection for the development of humanities and social sciences in Italy at that time, with a focus on the works of Cesare Bermani and Alessandro Portelli, leading researchers of protest and popular songs, and their contribution to the study of the topic. Thus, the Italian socio-humanitarian thought of the 1950-1970s considered the study of social song not only as an academic place of interest, but also as the expression of the left-wing political position, usual for many scholars of that generation.