"Russian Rome": Russian Subculture in Italy in the First Half of the 20th Century

Over the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century the deep research of the Russian emigration in Europe has been made. Usually such countries as France, Germany and the USA were in focus of the analysis. However, the life and experience of the Russian emigration in Italy has been studied less and primarily fragmentary. In consideration of that fact, the main point of this paper was to give a deep analysis of the “Russian world” in Italy in the beginning of the 20th century. The research was made on the basis of the comparison of lives of two considerable Russian authors Maxim Gorky and Vyacheslav Ivanov. As a result, this work allowed to understand the different ways of the development of Russian subculture in Italy and showed what these authors did to create the Russian literature and “voice” in this country. The main research methods were the source analysis and the comparative analysis.