Word: togliatti
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...days, Italy's Palmiro Togliatti amazed everyone by his cocksure confidence about Moscow's ways. For more than three decades the unquestioned leader of Italian Communism, he built the party into the largest outside the Iron Curtain, formed a leftist front that captured the votes of one of every three Italians. He had spent long years in Moscow, was a big wheel in Stalin's Comintern, won such confidence from the Kremlin that he was allowed to pursue his own "Italian line" of Communism. And he knew them all personally-Stalin, Beria, Molotov, Malenkov, Bulganin, Zhukov...
...after Stalin's death, when "somebody named Khrushchev" beckoned Togliatti and other Red leaders to a secret meeting of the Cominform in Prague, Togliatti refused to go, sent a deputy instead. How much further this disdain went was described last week in the magazine Azione Comunista, by Giulio Seniga, once a key man in Togliatti's Communist Party. Togliatti did not even meet Khrushchev until the famous 20th Party Congress in Moscow, wrote Seniga. On his return to Italy, Togliatti said of Khrushchev's famed outburst against Stalin: "He was like an elephant walking on eggs...
...Togliatti "never bet a cent on Khrushchev," continued Seniga. "He thought he was worth very little." Togliatti's newspaper L'Unita called the turn wrong on Zhukov, thinking the marshal was about to be promoted instead of sacked. Each morning for three years, Togliatti reportedly walked into Communist Party headquarters in Rome with the same question: "What news from the peasant?" Whenever the reply was "Nothing new." Togliatti would sigh, "Then today we can work in peace." After Hungary brought a flood of desertions from the Italian Red Party, Togliatti told an intimate: "See where Khrushchev has brought...
...Turin and Genoa, announced that its sole surviving regional edition in Milan will now serve all three cities-a feat comparable to making over a Pittsburgh daily for readers in Philadelphia and Baltimore. Beyond that, the paper was reduced to running a Page One jeremiad by Party Boss Palmiro Togliatti, imploring the faithful to dig deep in their pockets to save L'Unità from "extermination...
Last week Togliatti summoned Giolitti to Rome for disciplining. But. his starry eyes opened at last. Antonio Giolitti stuck to his grandfather's mansion and chose liberty. Unable to change the party, he left...