This subject piques my curiosity. I wonder about the number of Italians 
involved, whether they constituted a greater or lesser number than other 
groups, and what constituted their most prevalent alleged effrontery 
(offense).

It is strange to me that the greater number of the Stalin's Communist regime 
victims were communists, socialists, anarchists, and anti fascists!  
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ITALIANS IN STALIN'S GULAG: NEW WEB SITE GATHERS DOCUMENTS

In the 1930s, Stalin's terror struck hard at the various foreign communities 
living in the Soviet Union. Among these, the Italian community was not spared 
persecution and deportation to the gulags. 

Suspected, in most cases, of anti-Soviet activities, hundreds of Italians 
were executed in the wake of mock trials or deported to gulags where they 
were subject to years of hard labor. Most of them had been political refugees 
who arrived in the Soviet Union in the 1920s. 

This story has been largely untold, and at times ignored. Now, the 
Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Foundation in Milan, with the collaboration of the 
Memorial Studies Center in Moscow, has gathered documentation and launched a 
web site, www.gulag-italia.it
(Unfortunately, it is mostly in Italian).  

The site is the result of ten years' worth of research among numerous Russian 
archives. It gathers together thousands of unpublished documents on the fate 
of Italian political prisoners, who were largely militant anti-Fascists, 
communists, socialists, and anarchists before falling victim to Stalin's 
purges. 

See:  www.gulag-italia.it