The works of Nicola Turchi and Giuseppe Salvatori, witnesses of independent Lithuania in the interwar period

• In Event: Historical Perpectives in Politics

Abstract

Nicola Turchi (1882-1958) and Giuseppe Salvatori (1888-1944) were direct Italian witnesses to the life and reality of independent Lithuania during the interwar period (1918-1940). They wrote books of great interest, about the life and political, economic and social reality of independent Lithuania. They preserved for us, as in a "time capsule," a testimony that indirectly contradicted the distorted image, constructed by Soviet and Russian historiography, of Lithuania's Independence. In their most important books (In Independent Lithuania 1921, The Lithuanians of Yesterday and Today 1932, Lithuania in the Past and Present 1933), the product of their extensive studies and frequent journeys to Lithuania, Turchi and Salvatori provided us with a clear picture of Lithuania's development between 1918 and 1939. Indeed, their testimony (supported by statistics) reveals a country undergoing rapid economic, political and cultural revival, with an extraordinary civil society. What emerges is a country capable of lowering infant mortality and illiteracy, with a standard of living higher than that of Finland and growing economic development, integrated into the European and world economies. The paper highlights, from an interdisciplinary perspective, aspects and implications of those works, hitherto little considered but of considerable interest to Economic and Political Geography, political theory and economic theory. These include the contrast with the previous period of Russian imperial rule, the difference with what was happening in neighbouring lands under Bolshevik occupation, the comparison between interwar Lithuania and that later re-occupied by the Soviet Union (1940-1991), and the long-term consequences of interwar Lithuanian Independence. Above all, the crucial importance of political Independence emerges from those books, contrary to what historians, politicians and diplomats with no knowledge of Lithuania's history, unaware of a theory of the vast implications of Independence, had claimed until 1991.

Short Bio

Alessandro VITALE PhD, is Associate Professor of Economic Geography and History at the Faculty of Law of the University of Milan in the Master's Degree Course in Law and Sustainable Development. At the Faculty of Political Science of the same University he teaches Economic and Political Geography. Here he has also taught Foreign Policy Analysis, International Relations, Strategic Studies. He was a free-lance correspondent for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (Prague) and coordinated the Observatory on Central and Eastern Europe at ISPI (Institute for International Policy Studies, Milan) (1992-2001) and has taught and lectured at numerous Universities abroad. He has been a member of the Teaching Council of the Doctoral Program in Political Studies and of the AISSECO Executive (Italian Association for the Study of Central and Eastern European History). He was vice-President of the Italijos Lietuvių Bendruomenė of Lombardy. Currently he is a member of the General Council of ISEC (Institute for the History of the Contemporary Age - Lombardy Region). He is the author of more than three hundred studies and publications, which have appeared in twelve countries and seven languages. In 2010 he was awarded the International Research Prize Liber@mente.

Author

• Alessandro Vitale, University of Milan