Volga. (Canti degli esuli russi).

Bookseller Notes

A most interesting manuscript, in very good condition, with the music score and lyrics of an unrecorded, unpublished song called Volga. Canti degli esuli russi. Composed in Naples in September 1933, it is dedicated to 'His Highness, the Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich Romanov (1876-1938), pretender to the Russian throne'.In the Italian lyrics, the 'great Volga' bemoans 'in the deep silence of the night the glory of his Counts, swallowed by exile, and that of the Tsars'; they all 'hope to see [the Volga] again and wet their hand in its water and rest it on their heart'. The Volga's call from 'old Russia' to the exiles is heard as far as the Argonne, near Paris. We have traced no information on the composer, Giovanni Caputo. Emilio Gatti, from Naples, was active as lyricist in the 1930s. The words 'Omaggio' ('complimentary gift') and 'Inedita' ('unpublished') on the titlepage suggest this composition was commissioned for private entertainment most probably, given its clear political message, for a small circle of monarchist Russian exiles resident in Naples. Naples and Capri had been the seat of a major 'colony' of Russian exiles in the 1900s-10s, gathered around Maxim Gorky (Tamborra, pp.24-33); by the 1930s, after the 1917 Revolution, this community had lost its pre-eminence, with France and Germany becoming the main destinations of monarchist Russian exiles (as per reference to Argonne in the present composition). In the 1920s, '[t]he majority of the Russian diaspora [] supported the restoration of the Romanovs', which they saw as 'an attainable political goal, not merely a nostalgic desire'; this could be achieved through 'a lawful sovereign of the Romanov house', although 'the exiled monarchists were split into two rival factions loyal to different pretenders'. After the death of Grand Duke Nicholas in 1929, supported by most migr communities, his competitor Grand Duke Kirill became the 'undisputed leader' of the Russian monarchists (Shain, pp.64, 69). In 1923, a new organization, Mladorossy (Union of Young Russians), formed from former members of the White Army, settling in Paris. They supported a return of the Romanov Tsars i.e., Kirill within a non-absolutist government, including Soviets qua forms of local government.In 1934, 6 months after this composition was distributed, the leader of Mladorossy Kazem-Bek met Mussolini, who was PM at the time, in Rome. Whilst Mladorossy had become increasingly interested in Italian Fascism, Italian Fascists were highly suspicious of the organization, with the Italian King supporting a different pretender to the Russian throne, whilst Mussolini leaned towards Kirill (Lebourg, p.12). There is no evidence that Kirill was ever in Naples in 1933, and that he heard or was given this composition, although the Romanovs were known to have stayed there decades earlier.Considering this wider context, we suggest that the work was probably commissioned by supporters of Mladorossy resident in Italy; given the references to France and the French formulation of the place and date, we wonder if it was based on a French song circulating in the Russian migr community in France, though we have not traced any plausible source, or copied by a French speaker. A most interesting witness to post-Revolution Russian diaspora in Italy, for which little historical evidence is extant.