Word: italian
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Palmiro Togliatti's Italian Communists last week decided to test their muscles. For the experiment they chose Rome itself. The action consisted of a taut parade of 30,000 Communist partisans, followed by a general strike-all painstakingly stage-set as a pageant of Communist power. But the action drifted away from the script; toward the end there were touches of Mardi gras and, finally, Italian Communism's worst humiliation...
Ostensibly, the Communists were honoring the Congress of the National Italian Partisans Association and a distinguished guest, General Sidor Kovpak, vice president of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. Six abreast in precise lines, the Reds swung along under their mingled banners: the green & white flag of Italy and the red hammer & sickle. "Viva Stalin. . . . Death to De Gasperi!" shouted the fur-capped Ligurian Brigade as it passed the garish white marble monument to the Unknown Soldier. Italian partisans cheered the words of their leader, Luigi Longo: "We do not consider ourselves museum pieces. ... In our hearts are intact the enthusiasm...
Also present were Orson Welles (currently in Rome filming Cagliostro and meeting Italian politicos in his spare time); three conservative Italian journalists who know Togliatti well; young Emmanuele Rocco, Communist Unita's brilliant political reporter...
...brilliantly led Italian Communist Party stumbled? Partly because they had picked a phony strike issue. But principally because the Roman people drew upon their centuries-mellowed store of humor. They refused to play an audience role before a show that insulted their intelligence. They clambered into the wings, pulled the switches, snipped the ropes and brought the curtain tumbling on the Communist week of experiment...
...week, a short, broad-shouldered man in a modest heavy black overcoat, a weather-worn grey hat, came in about 9 o'clock and gave a casual "buona sera" to the grinning waiters, who know him well. He likes to come here often, to talk casually with the Italian workers and hear what they have to say. He came over and shook hands and sat down at our table. I had seen him many times before, but had never met him. Few Americans have: never in his life had he sat down to dinner with an American newspaperman...