Argentine Pilgrim-Travelers in the Land of the Soviets: Discovering a New World in the Old One

The interest of Latin American public opinion in the Russian Revolution and the Land of the Soviets gave rise to a substantial body of travel writing about the USSR, both translated and created by Latin American authors themselves, —writers, journalists and public figures who undertook journeys to a distant country, which was always fraught with considerable difficulties. This literature on the USSR formed an important part of the political and humanitarian influence exerted by «new Russia» on Latin American societies. Argentina, one of the most developed countries of the continent and a major cultural center, produced the largest number of «travelers» to the Soviet Union during the interwar period. The article examines the works of Argentine authors who visited Russia and analyzes the extent to which their view of Soviet reality in the 1920s and 1930s was original, unbiased and frank; it also considers whether their perspective reflected reality itself or rather their expectations and preconceived ideas about what they hoped to see. The central issue is not so much the observer’s degree of objectivity as the way Soviet reality was refracted through images and representations shaped by a different national and cultural environment, and the extent to which political bias could affect the credibility of these travel accounts. For the first time in Russian historiography, this study offers such an analysis and introduces into scholarly circulation documents from Russian archives related to the subject.

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