Il volo “totalitario”. Un ponte fra Italia fascista e Russia sovietica e il ruolo di Italo Balbo

Drawing from documents recently become available in the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation (AVP RF) and from other Russian Archives; based also on Russian historiography and the press of the time, the article aims at sug- gesting a first reconstruction of the relations and the collaboration between Fascist Italy and Communist Soviet Union in the Twenties and Thirties, in the field of Aeronautics. An aspect that the two regimes had in common was the propaganda use they were able to make of aviation, that became a constituent part of the re- gimes’ image within the country and abroad. The Eastern Mediterranean crossing, that brought Italo Balbo and his pilots to Odessa, sanctioned the unprecedented friendship between the two regimes. Furthermore, the Russian unpublished docu- ments give us an image of Balbo as he was perceived by the Soviet diplomacy, offering also the Soviet view of the struggles inside the Fascist regime. Moreover, the Russian sources confirm some inaccuracies and mistakes reported in Ciano’s Diary, as highlighted in recent studies.