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The paper deals with the publishing history in the post-Soviet era of three very prominent works in Gulag literature in Italian translation – Life and Fate by Vasilij Grossman, Kolyma Tales by Varlam Šalamov and The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solženicyn – in order to reconstruct their Italian reception in the years 1991-2022. The controversies surrounding the publication of these works in Italy are also discussed, and it is noted how the Italian press has paid particular attention to them, with major Italian writers reviewing the editions and contributing to their Italian reception. Finally, the lack of critical reflection by Italian Russianists on Gulag literature is discussed.

In this article we suggest a reading of Everything flows, the celebrated short novel of Gulag Literature by Vasily Grossman, based on a project carried out in 2021-22 with students in their final year of high school. The analysis was conducted through a workshop that brought the students closer to the work on variants performed by the author. Our aim was to make students appreciate the linguistic and stylistic work of refinement accomplished by Grossman, and at the same time to make them reflect on the gradual transformation of the author, who was a reliable interpreter of Socialist realism when he wrote the first draft of the novel, and in the last variant became a dissident irreconcilable with the Soviet system.

Si presenta il volume dedicato a Serena Vitale