Il governo italiano e il ruolo geopolitico della Russia (1917). L’auspicio italiano di preservare l’unità russa di fronte all’inaspettata rivoluzione di ottobre

Until 1917 the Great War was substantially a traditional war and it changed only after the collapse of the Russian Empire and the USA’s entry into the conflict. The two main themes of this paper are, on one hand, the sudden change of the war framework and, with it, the outbreak of a phase of transformation of the future European map; on the other, the inability of the main players to immediately understand the consequences of that change. Among the protagonists who were unable to read the ongoing change in Russia we find the Italian government. Italy had struggled very hard to be accepted by Russia as a member of the Entente, not only in terms of war relations, but also in terms of war aims, particularly in the Balkan-Danube area and the Mediterranean sector. It was unprepared to accept even the idea of the collapse of Russia. However, a certain Russian military weakness was not unknown to the Italian Government, nor the fact that Italy itself would have been in economic and military difficulties in the case of a long and articulated war. This paper, thanks to the documents of the Archivio dell’Ufficio dello stato maggiore della marina and the Archivio centrale dello stato, underlines differences and similarities between Italy and Russia; in particular, it tries to underline the Italian growing worries about a European future without the Russian Empire, that would have had, as first consequence, the loss of the Italian war’s objective