K istorii ital'janskoj literatury v SSSR: podgotovka izdanija «Novoj nauki» Džambattista Vico [Ancora sulla storia della letteratura italiana nell'URSS: l'edizione [sovietica] de "La Scienza Nuova" di Giambattista Vico]

Drawing on original archival research, the present article examines a number of problematic issues that arose during the preparation of a Russian translation of "Principj di una Scienza Nuova Intorno alla Natura delle Nazioni" (Principles of the New Science Concerning the Common Nature of Nations) by the Neapolitan Enlightenment philosopher Giambattista Vico. On the one hand, the decision to translate and publish "Scienza nuova" in Stalin’s USSR fits well with the mission of the elite publishing house Academia, which was bold enough to include in its publishing programme Francis of Assisi’s "Fioretti" (Little Flowers) and Machivaelli’s "Prince"; on the other hand, this decision has to be carefully justified to appease the anti-religious censorship. It is not the translation itself but its metatexts that are called upon to fulfil this task. The article shows how, while adopting and maintaining throughout an atheistic tone, which stands in contrast to Italian scholarship that offered idealistic and Catholic interpretations of Vico, during the 1937–1938 purges the metatexts begin to use ever more cautious formulations, and the importance of Vico’s theory for Soviet linguistics is no longer written about after the arrest of the book’s first editor.