Italian memory and celebrations of the 1812 Russian Campaign

di Laura Fournier Finocchiaro
in Memoria e Ricerca n.s. 44 (2013), p. 73

The author examines the evolution of 1812 Russian Campaign memory in Italy, asking how this event, initially removed from the nineteenth-century historiographical tradition, has been progressively integrated into the national history, to the point of looking like a heroic episode, that finds a place in the Pantheon of the Risorgimento battles. She recalls the main points of public and private memory of the Russian Campaign, the celebrations and removals during the Risorgimento, the construction of “sites of memory” in the Kingdom of Italy and the first centenary’s initiatives, to show the different aspects of the War of 1812. Keywords: Russia, Italians, 1812, historiography, culture, memory