Okudzhava and Galich in Italy Between Dissent and Official Discourse

This article focuses on the Italian reception of the so-called singing poets or ‘bards’ Bulat Okudzhava and Aleksandr Galich. The two artists, together with Vladimir Vysotskii, are undoubtedly the most prominent representatives of the bardovskaia pesnia. Their recordings had a second life outside the boundaries of the Soviet Union, where Russian emigrant circles helped their popularity grow very quickly. In Italy, their song production received some attention in the second half of the twentieth century. Through an analysis of different articles, interviews and other peritextual and paratextual material, I trace back the history of the reception of Okudzhava and Galich, shedding light on how this genre was perceived in Italy. In particular, I show how newspapers put the two bards in the context of the Soviet Union, which was marked by the dichotomy conformism/nonconformism and official art/underground circulation and which image of the two artists predominates in the Italian press of that time.