Mariia Olsuf’eva: The Italian Voice of Soviet Dissent or, the Translator as a Transnational Socio-Cultural Actor

The Iron Curtain was extremely permeable to cultural objects, as demonstrated by the birth and development in the late Fifties of a transnational publishing practice that managed to overcome these boundaries: the tamizdat. Since the publication of the first Italian tamizdat in 1957–Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago–a stream of uncensored Soviet literary texts began to flow unstoppably and clandestinely from the USSR into the catalogues of Italian publishing houses. This article aims to outline the translators’ role in the dissemination of unofficial Soviet literature in Italy and in the creation of a network of transnational cultural exchanges. As an illustration of the role of translators as cultural actors in the negotiation of these texts, it will discuss the contribution of Mariia Olsuf’eva to the diffusion of unofficial Soviet literature in Italy. Moreover, through an in-depth sociological analysis of the documents of her personal archives as well as those of selected Italian publishing houses (Mondadori, Il Saggiatore), the reconstruction of Olsuf’eva’s microhistory will allow us to assess the translator’s contribution to the transnational socialization of these texts thanks to the creation of a transnational community of cultural and social actors.