Word: togliatti
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Threading his way through the thorns of Communist dialectic last week, Italian Communist Leader Palmiro Togliatti gave the measure of how deeply the Khrushchev revelations had shaken party foundations in Italy. Stalin "committed many errors," purred red-eyed Palmiro, "but he also did many good things . . . This was the strange mistake made at the 20th Party Congress: to be silent about the merits of Stalin...
Strange indeed were Togliatti's answers to nine questions conveniently framed by Rome's highbrow Nuovi Argomenti. According to Togliatti, Khrushchev went too far: "Criticisms of Stalin at the 20th Congress, which were largely unexpected, hit hard at the cadres of the international movement; there was not only surprise, there was also sorrow and bewilderment; there were doubts about the past." He explained that the criticism was needed because "leading cadres of the Soviet society had become insensitive and had lost personal capacity owing to the Stalin cult...
What of the future? "It seems to me," says Togliatti, "that the errors of Stalin will have to be corrected through vast development of re-education and a new course of life in the U.S.S.R. Methods will have to be fundamentally different from the one Stalin followed in [the later] period of his life." Outside the Soviet Union "the internal political structure of the world Communist movement has changed," and now there comes out clearly "the necessity and desire for a steadily growing autonomy of judgment...
...Togliatti's apologia for Stalin lacked the sweeping boldness of Khrushchev's attack, but then Togliatti lacked Khrushchev's claim to a previously terrorized silence. In free Italy, Togliatti had exhibited a slavish adulation for the dictator, had cried tearfully on news of Stalin's death, "He was a giant of thought and action." Last week his feeble effort to explain away this attitude, however unsatisfactory and irrational, accurately reflected the confusion of mind which had overtaken the Italian Communist Party...
...first time in the history of the Italian Communist Party, Leader Palmiro Togliatti was caustically critical of the Moscow leadership, described Khrushchev's attack as "brutal and dangerous." Said another veteran Italian Red: "Khrushchev's speech was not Marxism ... it was a personal tirade intended to relieve his feelings after years of bullying." As criticism grew, Togliatti announced an extraordinary series of regional conferences for reorientation of his huge party (2,130,000 members). He told the extraordinary meeting of the 110-man Central Committee that the word must be spread gently: Italian Reds would resent having been...