Alessandro Barbero – Moscow 1941. Operation Barbarossa

Alessandro Barbero, in his lecture at the Auditorium Parco della Musica, transports us back in time to Russia in November 1941, when Hitler had unleashed Operation Barbarossa, and the Wehrmacht was on the outskirts of Moscow. In this regard we remember that in The Master and Margarita, a famous novel written by Mikhail Bulgakov in those years, the Russian writer, almost prefiguring what was to come, imagines the devil visiting Moscow, curious to see how Muscovites had changed after the Revolution of 1917. A few days later anyway, the coldest winter of the 20th century, along with reinforcements coming from Siberia, allowed the Germans to be repelled and the capital to be saved.

Thus, Moscow's sacredness was strengthened in the memory of the Russian people, making it a symbolic city for the entire vast continent stretching from Ukraine to the Sea of ​​Japan.

Alessandro Barbero taught Medieval History at the University of Eastern Piedmont.

Photo: Clarissa Lapolla