Between two totalitarian regimes: Umberto Nobile and the Soviet Union (1931-36)
This article reconstructs the story of the Italian general Umberto Nobile's long stay in the Soviet Union, from 1931 to 1936. Umberto Nobile was a well-known airship designer and pilot who was the key protagonist in Italy's mission during the 1920s to establish itself as a dominant player...
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| Type de support: | Électronique Article |
| Langue: | Anglais |
| Vérifier la disponibilité: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | En cours de chargement...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Publié: |
Taylor & Francis
2003
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| Dans: |
Totalitarian movements and political religions
Année: 2003, Volume: 4, Numéro: 2, Pages: 63-112 |
| Accès en ligne: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Résumé: | This article reconstructs the story of the Italian general Umberto Nobile's long stay in the Soviet Union, from 1931 to 1936. Umberto Nobile was a well-known airship designer and pilot who was the key protagonist in Italy's mission during the 1920s to establish itself as a dominant player in the airship industry. He became a popular hero of Italian Fascism after his spectacular flight over the North Pole in the airship Norge in 1926. Two years later, in 1928, his reputation was destroyed by the tragedy of the airship Italia, which crashed on the ice pack in an attempt to replicate the Norge's successful flight. Having been denigrated, humiliated and rejected by the regime that had exalted him, Nobile resigned from the air force and accepted the invitation of Soviet authorities to build the Soviet airship industry from the ground up, but his experience in the Soviet Union ended up following the same parabola from exaltation to failure as his experience in Italy. Nobile's personal vicissitudes are placed against the backdrop of the epic battle for the domination of the sky between the aeroplane and the airship, as well as within the context of the competition/confrontation between two totalitarian reigmes which frequently displayed contradictory characteristics of collaboration and rivalry, affinity and animosity. While Nobile, who was a devoted admirer of Mussolini, decided to work for Stalin for personal reasons - his desire to obtain moral and professional retaliation, his passion for Arctic exploration, the mythic attraction of the ice pack, his hope to find traces of his comrades who had died in 1928 - his own motives were supported and strengthened by the allure of totalitarian ideals. In fact, the totalitarian pedagogy of both Fascism and Bolshevism created a climate of permanent mobilisation and instilled the aspiration to perform individual heroic deeds as expressions of a higher collective entity. |
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| ISSN: | 1743-9647 |
| Contient: | Enthalten in: Totalitarian movements and political religions
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1080/14690760412331326128 |