Tatiana and the Soviet Trade Commission in Milan

Abstract

The relationship between Gramsci and Tatiana Schucht sheds light on the conditions in which Gramsci wrote and worked in prison. She cared immensely for her brother-in-law; hers were not feelings of love, of course, but of human solidarity and sincere affection. Furthermore, Tatiana was extremely worried about the relationship between Gramsci and his partner, Julka. The prison correspondence brings into clear view Tatiana’s effort to protect the two’s relationship from interference by a third sister, Eugenia (not to mention Apollon, the father of the Schucht sisters), the illnesses that hindered Julka’s ability to write to Gramsci, and the doubts about the relationship that increasingly overtook the prisoner. However, Tatiana’s was by no means an ingenuous altruism, completely without concerns for her own economic and personal wellbeing (despite her many statements to the contrary, she did not want to return to Russia, but remain in Italy, the country she loved).