Таганрог и память о встрече Гарибальди с Кунео: как русский порт изменил судьбу Италии Her every great man's history has a starting point, a moment that turns his life upside down. For Giuseppe Garibaldi, the national hero of Italy, the unifier of a fragmented country, this point was not Rome, Genoa, or South America. This place was the distant Russian port city of Taganrog. It was here, in one of the port taverns, that the 26-year-old captain of a trading schooner met a man who opened his eyes to the fate of his homeland. This meeting became that turning point after which the sailor turned into a revolutionary, and his name entered history forever. Today Taganrog preserves the memory of this event — in stone, in street names, and in museum exhibits.Spring 1833: oranges, port, and a fateful encounterIn April 1833, a small Italian trading schooner named "Clorinda" (in some sources it is called "Larinda") entered the Taganrog port. It was carrying a cargo of oranges, and the ship was commanded by a young captain, Giuseppe Garibaldi, a hereditary sailor from Nice. He was 26 years old and had seen the world, but his soul still did not know his main passion — the struggle for freedom.In those years, Italy was divided into many small states, some of which were under Austrian rule. Patriots dreaming of a united and independent country had to flee abroad. Many of them settled in port cities, where they conducted propaganda work among sailors. One of such emigrants was Giovanni Battista Cuneo, who lived in Taganrog and actively propagated the ideas of the secret revolutionary organization "Young Italy," created by Giuseppe Mazzini in the early 1830s.The fate brought Garibaldi and Cuneo together in one of the port taverns at the intersection of Petrovskaya and Kommerchesky Pereulok. The passionate speeches of his fellow countryman literally turned the soul of the young captain upside down. Cuneo told him about the goals of "Young Italy": liberation from Austrian rule, the un ... Читать далее