Word: togliatti
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Thereafter "II Migliore" (The Best), as his comrades called Togliatti, presided over a movement that gradually lost members, though it continued to win over a great many of Italy's intellectuals and artists, who make it a point of honor to be at least cafe Communists - and sometimes more than that. Without ever coming really close to power again, the Italian Communist Party exerted a continuing influence - sometimes merely a veto - in Italian politics...
...Shopkeepers. Writhing, maneuvering and often split, the party tried to adjust to the new Communist world that was born with Stalin's death. Though he had been an ardent follower of Stalin - and had even at Stalin's orders betrayed the Italian Socialists to the Fascist police - Togliatti now enthusiastically embraced "polycentrism" - that is, the right of each national Communist Party to follow its own course. When criticized from the outside, Togliatti would merely give a vastly expressive shrug: "Siamo italiani [We are Italians...
Freed from the damaging image of the Oriental despot in the Kremlin, Togliatti tried harder than ever to make Communism look as respectable as his own blue serge suits and as jovial as his sweaters. Long before Khrushchev invented goulash Communism, Togliatti invented spaghetti Communism. He no longer concentrated the Red appeal only on the masses, but turned to shopkeepers battling supermarket competition, housewives trying to balance the family budget, and small businessmen in need of tax relief...
After the Russians brutally crushed the Hungarian uprising, Togliatti was deserted by his longtime allies, Pietro Nenni's left-wing Socialists. When Nenni last year joined the ruling Christian Democrats in the unstable center-left coalition government, the move in effect isolated the Communists. But Togliatti kept predicting that the coalition would fail to solve Italy's economic problems, that the Communists would benefit...
...poor government clerk, Togliatti now was building himself a villa among the rich near fashionable Porto Santo Stefano, and-politically-continued his do-gooder tactics. If filling-station attendants were underpaid, if a bridge fell down, if water was cut off from Rome, it was the Communists who led the protest. Faced with a milk shortage, Togliatti could be heard to say earnestly: "For a whole week now, there has not been enough milk in the cafes to make a cappuccino. That is terrible." He kept insisting that he had no intention of imposing Communism on Italy, that he only...