Word: nenni
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When Italy's Left-Wing Socialist Leader Pietro Nenni visited Moscow last July, he was granted a rare privilege: a personal interview with Stalin. Back home, Nenni became the first salesman to peddle the Kremlin's bright new line of peace goods. He offered it first to shrewd, 71-year-old Premier Alcide de Gasperi. When DeGasperi refused even to finger the wares from Moscow, Nenni last week took them to the floor of Italy's Chamber of Deputies...
Like any good huckster, Nenni began by disclaiming any gross material interest in the sale. He was not there "by order of Stalin," he said, but merely to report "conversations that have the advantage of being genuine." Then, smoothly, he began to play upon the fears of his audience: "The Kennan policy of containment . . . has failed." The alternative is "understanding or a third world war ... or maybe 30 years of cold war, which would be just as fatal." Echoing Malenkov, Nenni said that Russia "has no designs of conquest, since she considers her own security guaranteed." Then...
...carpet bag, Nenni now produced his samples: "Italian socialists ask for Italian initiative in order to improve relations with Russia by means of a bilateral non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union...
Various accounts of what else the great man had told Nenni began appearing in the press. Last week, in London's New Statesman and Nation, leftist Labor M.P. Richard Grossman-himself something of a minor oracle-announced that Nenni had found the reports regrettably inaccurate; Grossman, who had recently met his fellow leftist Nenni in Italy, then undertook to give the definitive, real McCoy version...
...sooner had word of the Grossman article reached Italy than Nenni announced that Grossman had not got it right, either. Grossman, said Nenni, directly attributed to Stalin some statements which Nenni had only inferred...