Malaparte, l’Unione Sovietica e la tecnica (con un occhio agli States)

Since the end of the 20s, in Italy, France, Germany, and Spain, an impressive number of publications interprets Bolshevik Russia in the framework of macchinoteismo [worship of the machine] (as the engineer Gaetano Ciocca defined it). This macchinoteismo is seen as both the mirror and the counterpart of the Fordist production system of the United States. European right-wing culture, both the conservative one and the Nazi-fascist one, sees the two industrial giants as the supreme examples of a historical process of decadence. This decadence is manifested in the excess of technology, in the iper-production, in the passion for comfort, in massification, in consumerism, etc. From Drieu La Rochelle to Ramiro de Maetzu, from Heidegger to Evola, from Ortega y Gasset to Céline, right-wing culture closes the ranks, with few exceptions (Jünger, Niekisch), defending an idea of European civilization threatened from the East and the West. In my talk I will interpret Malaparte’s writings in this cultural framework, pointing out not only how Malaparte was one of the first intellectuals to read the Bolshevik phenomenon in relation to the topic of technology, but also clarifying how his ambivalent and everchanging interpretation of the USSR story (from Viva Caporetto! to Il Volga nasce in Europa) was strictly linked to his evolving ideas on the topic of technology.