Kontinent (Italian version)

Cover of KONTINENT 1. La rivista del dissenso – gli intellettuali e il potere sovietico (1st January 1975).

Title:
“Kontinent” [Continente]

Dates: 1975-1981

Place of publication: Milan

Editor: Vladimir Maksimov

Total number of issues: 4

Main collaborators: Andrei Siniavskii, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Andrei Sakharov, Iosif Brodskii, Gustaw Herling-Grudziński, Ignazio Silone, Milovan Đilas, Ota Filip and many others

Description:
The Italian version of Vladimir Maksimov’s magazine “Kontinent” was published by Garzanti, who, however, printed only two issues in 1975 and 1981. In 1981 Jaca Book published two large issues entitled Continente – Rivista letteraria, sociopolitica e religiosa dell’Est europeo (Continent – Journal of Eastern European Literature, Socio-politics and religion).
In Italy, “Kontinent” was also linked to various public events in which members of the editorial board participated such as the conference organised by Maksimov in 1984 in Milan, on the 10th anniversary of the magazine’s foundation with speakers from the United States, Israel and various parts of Europe. Iurii Mal’tsev, one few of the few Russian emigrants to settle in Italy was saddened by the almost total absence of an audience and the scant attention paid to the event by the newspapers (cf. Mal’tsev 2015: 156). Sergio Rapetti, a Russian scholar and an important intermediary between Italy and the ‘Second Culture’, recalls, on the contrary, that the magazine was read in Italy more widely than suggested by a first glance (cf. Ciottoli 2016: 92).
The official presentation of the Italian version of the magazine was held in Milan on 5 May 1981, at the Centro culturale San Fedele, during the conference Cultura, arte e libertà (Culture, Art and Liberty) attended by, among others, Iosif Brodskii, Aleksandr Zinov’ev and the sculptor Ėrnst Neizvestnyi (cf. ibid.). Additional events connected to the magazine included Un continente per la cultura (A Continent for Culture) in Milan, in May 1983, which was dedicated to Andrei Sakharov, who was imprisoned at Gor’kii at the time, and the conference of October 1990, Una sindrome del post-totalitarismo. Il problema nazionale in URSS: rinnovamento o guerra civile? (A syndrome of post-totalitarianism. The National Problem in the USSR: Renewal or Civil War?.
This latter took place in the Chamber of Deputies in Rome (cf. ibid.: 93-94) during the perestroika period and was attended by a several editors of Soviet magazines and newspapers as well as Aleksandr Iakovlev, Gorbachev’s advisor and a leading figure behind the perestroika reforms. Among the speakers, was the literary critic Igor’ Vinogradov, who would soon become director of “Kontinent” in its new Moscow headquarters.

Federico Iocca
[30th June 2021]

Translation by Marta Capossela

Bibliography

• Ciottoli M., Intervista a Sergio Rapetti, in M. Ciottoli, Il dissenso sovietico: uno studio sulla ricezione in Italia tramite il caso della rivista russa “Kontinent”, Master’s Degree Thesis, Università degli Studi di Firenze, a.a. 2015/2016.
• Mal’tsev Iu., I dissidenti sovietici in Italia, trad. di M. Moretti, “Enthymema”, 12 (2015): 155-159.