The same avant-garde movement can play opposite political roles in different countries

Evidence

Not only Gramsci but the whole Ordine Nuovo group of Communists in Turin had been influenced by the cultural ferment of the prewar years and it is a sign of the complexity and confusion of the Italian situation that a group such as the Futurists, for example, whose Russian equivalents, led by Mayakovsky, had played a leading role in the formation of the Soviet avant-garde , should in Italy have degenerated into the barrel-organs of fascism. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 55

Categorization

• DEFINE: ‘Barrel-organs of fascism’ is Gramsci’s striking image for an avant-garde reduced to propaganda accompaniment.
• QUESTION: What structural conditions made Italian Futurists fascist companions while Russian ones became Soviet avant-garde? Gramsci gestures at national complexity but does not fully unpack it.