It is 31 August 1963. Claudio Pavone, an Italian partisan, historian and author of one of the most important essays on the Resistance written in the twentieth century, is departing from Rome to attend the third international conference on the history of the European Resistance in Karlovy Vary. Czechoslovakia will be just the first leg of a long journey stretching from Prague to Warsaw, and on to Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev. This book is an intimate diary of his days in the USSR: a highly valuable document which, written by an exceptional observer, brings to life places, atmospheres, people and the daily life of an incredibly distant world.
‘I must confess that I am unconsciously drawn to look outside as if socialism ought to appear unequivocally on trees and lawns.’
‘We set off walking along the valley floor, soon leaving all signs of inhabitation behind. Avenues and immaculately kept gardens are gradually transformed into lawns and woods. It is a silent desert, cool and green. No cars. No people. With Giampi we abandon ourselves to the feeling of relaxation that such a landscape inspires and rejoice in the recovery of this human and natural dimension. But the question gnaws nonetheless: could it be that socialism consists in the poverty that today prevents the population from enjoying these goods that the rich once had to themselves, thus preserving them for the solitary meditation of the jaded intellectuals of the Western left? For us, certainly, this peace, this solitude, is beautiful; it is like the rediscovery of situations and values mired beneath neo-capitalist affluence; but what will happen on the day in which the Czechoslovakians are rich enough to invade these avenues with cars and motorcycles? In short, what we are appreciating in this moment is more the legacy of a past than the prefiguration of the future. As an ideological consolation we tell ourselves that the lack of speculation, of consumption dictated by advertising, could exempt the much hoped for socialist boom from the vulgarity and bad taste that have instead characterized the success of neo-capitalism.’