Word: italianisms
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Spanish Influence. Rome's Daily American describes Berlinguer as "a movie type caster's idea of an Italian radical." He is slight, wiry, crewcut, courteous but cool in manner. He has dark, piercing eyes and the swarthy color of a Sardinian (Catalan influence in his native Sardinia accounts for his Spanish-sounding name). He is served well at interminably long party meetings by another physical attribute: he can sit for hours without getting sore or restless. For this, comrades at national headquarters on Rome's Via delle Botteghe Oscure call him culo di ferro, which roughly translates...
Central Casting would have to type Berlinguer as a white-collar Communist rather than a peasant. His lawyer grandfather was a Sardinian republican in the days of the Italian monarchy; his lawyer father was a socialist anti-Fascist during the Mussolini era. Berlinguer studied law before he decided "to fight for the profound transformation of all social assets" and at 21 joined the Communist Party. Jailed by the Fascists for activities in Sardinia, Berlinguer came to the attention of the party's leader, Palmiro Togliatti...
Foreign Minister. The boss summoned him to Rome, where Berlinguer has remained since. He was active in party youth movements until he was 34, after that served as an organizer and administrator. As a Central Committee member, Berlinguer has become the Italian party's "foreign minister." He speaks fluent French and reads English, understands a little Russian and usually represents Italy at international Communist meetings...
...Berlinguer who last November led an Italian delegation to Moscow to inquire about the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia. For two days. Iron Bottom resisted pleas and pressures by Soviet leaders to give Italian approval of their action. In an eloquent two-hour speech at the Bologna congress, Berlinguer once again called for "the principle of the absolute respect for the independence and sovereignty of each and every Communist Party." He added: "What we need is a new way of coming to terms with the reality of the U.S.S.R. and the socialist countries...
...this seems unhappily reminiscent not only of the Dark Ages but of what Sir Harold Nicolson called the "wolflike habits" of the Italian Renaissance, when Niccolo Machiavelli lectured Medici princes on the judicious use of power and perfidy. In those days, diplomats were regarded as no better than spies. An envoy's status abroad, in fact, was hardly assured until the Congress of Vienna established a European balance of power in 1815. The relative stability that followed, as Henry Kissinger pointed out in his 1957 book, A World Restored, "resulted not from a quest for peace but from...