Piccola Russia

Lenin used to call it Little Russia, but its name is Hell’s Valley. In one of his public speeches, the Soviet leader refers to this place as a model for the master-workman relationship in capitalist society. That’s possibly the reason why the Fascist authorities in Rome decided that Hell’s Valley – with its brickyards emanating tongues of fire and the black smoke coming out from the chimneys – would be renamed Valle Aurelia. A name that “better reflects Imperial Rome and is more adequate to a merry suburb”.
It is a small, ‘red and working-class’ suburb, rising beyond the Vatican walls. From its inception, the Valley is marked by its cohesive and supportive community, born around the working spaces, like the clay quarries and yards where bricks were fired to allow the city to grow. In times of need, these places also served as sanctuaries to many anti-fascist intellectuals.
The Valley is still very self-protective of its own identity and the memory of its martyrs shot by the Nazi-
Fascist troops. It remains anchored to tradition. People gather around the church and the parish youth club, at the Democratic Party circle and the ‘Meeting Point’, at the sports field and the senior citizen’s nursing home. But they also meet on the streets, shadowed by the twelve-floor buildings that sheltered the old furnace men after the local authorities razed to the ground the old neighborhood.