Word: valdo
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...there are more Communists in Reggio Emilia than in the whole of England, it is all due to Valdo Magnani." That was how the comrades of the Red Belt felt about the up & coming secretary of their best-organized provincial federation...
Slight, sallow Valdo Magnani, 38, college-trained in economics and philosophy, had joined the party in 1936, fought in Fascist Italy's army (as an artillery captain) until Mussolini's downfall, then switched to the partisan anti-Fascist forces. In 1946 he emerged as Reggio Emilia's ace Communist organizer. Militant, tireless, persuasive, he gained 10,000 new party members for his province in the past two years, a time of dwindling ranks for Italian Communism in general. In 1948 he was handily elected to the national Chamber of Deputies...
...Valdo Magnani's closest friend was his fellow deputy from Bologna, Aldo Cucchi, in private life a surgeon who also specialized in studies of hemp workers' diseases. Cucchi had led an Italian partisan unit against the Nazis and Fascists, won his country's highest gold medal for bravery. In the Chamber of Deputies, he acted as a bodyguard for Communist Boss Palmiro Togliatti...
...different times in the past year or so, Friends Valdo and Aldo paid visits to Russia and to satellite Soviet East Europe. Both were disturbed by what they saw. Confided Cucchi: "That country doesn't interest me half as much as it used to." Agreed Magnani: "My honesty has been too much exploited. Between what I saw in Poland and what I have been told in the Communist propaganda sheets, there is an abyss...
Yawns swiftly changed to gaping shock. Magnani had blatantly voiced the heresy known as national deviation, or Titoism. Party bigwigs huddled in an emergency meeting, summoned Magnani, demanded his retraction. The dean of Italy's Communist Senators, Umberto Terracini, who himself had once been suspected of deviation, gave Valdo Magnani a confidential caution: "A few years ago, I too wanted to hit against the steel wall, but I broke my fist and it still hurts...