Irina Mykhailova, The Italian Renaissance in the Early Soviet Era: Between Political Appropriation and Intellectual Connoisseurship

In the aftermath of the October Revolution of 1917, Russian historians found themselves in a radically transformed political and intellectual landscape. The devastating consequences of the First World War and the Russian Civil War caused widespread poverty and severe disruption to scholarly life. For historians of medieval and early modern Europe, whose research depended on access to manuscript collections held abroad, this was an especially unfavorable moment. At the same time, the “revolutionary” character attributed to the Renaissance by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels resonated within the imagination of the Bolsheviks and Soviet historians. As a result, during the 1920s and 1930s, new translations of Italian Renaissance authors began to appear in print, accompanied by introductions and commentaries that reframed these works for Soviet readers.

This talk examines the place the Italian Renaissance occupied in the emerging socialist culture of the early Soviet period. Drawing on early Soviet editions, translations, and editorial commentaries, it argues that in the 1920s and 1930s the study of the Italian Renaissance in the Soviet Union was shaped by a tension between the state’s effort to appropriate Western cultural heritage and the genuine scholarly commitment of historians working on the Italian Renaissance. While Marxist interpretations of the Renaissance served ideological aims by presenting socialism as the heir to Western humanism, the work of Soviet historians and translators involved in preparing these editions also shows wide erudition, philological rigor, and a determined effort to preserve scholarly standards despite political pressure.

Iryna Mykhailova is a historian of Renaissance philosophy currently based at the University of Göttingen. Her work focuses on the Italian Renaissance and its historiography, with particular attention to the reception of the Renaissance in Central and Eastern Europe. She is working on a monograph, The Italian Renaissance in the Soviet Union: Historiography and Cultural Reception, 1920s–1980s, as well as an edited volume, Historiographies Lost and Reclaimed: Scholarship on the Italian Renaissance in Central and Eastern Europe, both under contract with Brill. She has held several international fellowships, including a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship and a Fulbright Fellowship. Her current research is funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.