A “Product of a Certain Social Milieu”,
a “Genius”

The Reception of Dante in
pre- and Post-Revolutionary Russia

Alessia Benedetti
(University of Manchester)

In 1921 Russia celebrated the Dantean centenary with numerous initiatives. By that year, the country had faced revolutionary ferment (in 1905 and 1917), embarked upon and withdrawn from a world war (1914-1918), and undergone a civil war which had ended with the definitive victory of the Bolsheviks and left them and the country to deal with the destructive consequences of the conflict. Considering the enormous difficulties Russia was facing at the time, and the religious outlook of the Divine Comedy, it may seem surprising that the newly formed Bolshevik government had an interest in preserving the legacy of Dante in the country. This paper intends to investigate the causes of this phenomenon. To do so, it will reconstruct the history of the reception of Dante in Russia from the late eighteenth-century until the 1917 October Revolution. Finally, it will explore different opinions on Dante expressed within the Bolshevik party around the Dantean centenary.


Respondent Prof. Fabio Camilletti
(University of Warwick)

23 november 2021
18:00-19:00
MS teams