Palmiro Togliatti | |
|---|---|
.jpg) | |
| General Secretary of the Italian Communist Party | |
| In office May 1938 – August 1964 | |
| Preceded by | Ruggero Grieco |
| Succeeded by | Luigi Longo |
| In office November 1926 – January 1934 | |
| Preceded by | Antonio Gramsci |
| Succeeded by | Ruggero Grieco |
| Minister of Grace and Justice | |
| In office 21 June 1945 – 1 July 1946 | |
| Prime Minister | Alcide De Gasperi |
| Preceded by | Umberto Tupini |
| Succeeded by | Fausto Gullo |
| Deputy Prime Minister of Italy | |
| In office 12 December 1944 – 21 June 1945 | |
| Prime Minister | Ivanoe Bonomi |
| Preceded by | Himself (June 1944) |
| Succeeded by | Manlio Brosio Pietro Nenni |
| In office 24 April 1944 – 18 June 1944 | |
| Prime Minister | Pietro Badoglio |
| Preceded by | Office established |
| Succeeded by | Himself Giulio Rodinò (December 1944) |
| Minister without portfolio | |
| In office 24 April 1944 – 12 June 1945 | |
| Prime Minister | Pietro Badoglio Ivanoe Bonomi |
| Member of theChamber of Deputies | |
| In office 8 May 1948 – 21 August 1964 | |
| Constituency | Rome (1948–1953; 1958–1964) Italy at-large (1953–1958) |
| Member of theConstituent Assembly | |
| In office 25 June 1946 – 31 January 1948 | |
| Constituency | Italy at-large |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Palmiro Michele Nicola Togliatti (1893-03-26)26 March 1893 |
| Died | 21 August 1964(1964-08-21) (aged 71) |
| Political party | PSI (1914–1921) PCd'I (1921–1943) PCI (1943–1964) |
| Spouse | |
| Domestic partner | Nilde Iotti (1948–1964; his death) |
| Children | 2 |
| Residence(s) | Modena,Emilia-Romagna |
| Alma mater | University of Turin |
| Profession |
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| Signature |  |
Palmiro Michele Nicola Togliatti (Italian:[palˈmiːrotoʎˈʎatti]ⓘ; 26 March 1893 – 21 August 1964) was an Italian politician and statesman, who led Italy'sCommunist party for nearly forty years,[1] from 1927 until his death.[2] Born into a middle-class family, Togliatti received an education in law at theUniversity of Turin, later served as an officer and was wounded in World War I, and became a tutor.[1] Described as "severe in approach but extremely popular among the Communist base" and "a hero of his time, capable of courageous personal feats",[1][3] his supporters gave him the nicknameil Migliore ("the Best").[4][5][6] In 1930, Togliatti renounced Italian citizenship, and he became a citizen of theSoviet Union.[7] Upon his death,a Soviet city was named after him.[2] Considered one of thefounding fathers of theItalian Republic,[8] he led Italy's Communist party from a few thousand members in 1943 to two million members in 1946.[3]
Born inGenoa but culturally formed inTurin during the first decades of the 1900s, when the firstFiat workshops were built and the Italianlabour movement began its battles, Togliatti's history is linked to that ofLingotto.[2] He helped launch the left-wing weeklyL'Ordine Nuovo in 1919, and he was the editor ofIl Comunista starting in 1922. He was a founding member of theCommunist Party of Italy (Partito Comunista d'Italia, PCd'I), which was founded as the result of a split from theItalian Socialist Party (Partito Socialista Italiano, PSI) in 1921.[1] In 1926, the PCd'I was made illegal, alongside the other parties, byBenito Mussolini's government. Togliatti was able to avoid the destiny of many of his fellow party members who were arrested only because he was inMoscow at the time.[1]
From 1927 until his death, Togliatti was thesecretary and leader of theItalian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI), except for the period from 1934 to 1938, during which he served as Italian representative to theCommunist International, earning theil giurista del Comintern ("The Jurist of Comintern") nickname fromLeon Trotsky.[2] After the dissolution of the Comintern in 1943 and the formation of theCominform in 1947, Togliatti turned down the post ofsecretary-general, offered to him byJoseph Stalin in 1951, preferring to remain at the head of the PCI,[2] by then the largest communist party in western Europe.[1] His relations to Moscow were a continuing subject of scholarly and political debate after his death.[1][9]
From 1944 to 1945, Togliatti held the post ofDeputy Prime Minister of Italy,[1] and he was appointedMinister of Justice from 1945 to 1946 in the provisional governments that ruled Italy after thefall of Fascism.[2] He was also a member of theConstituent Assembly of Italy.[2] Togliatti inaugurated the PCI's peaceful and national road tosocialism, or the "Italian Road to Socialism",[10] the realisation of thecommunist project through democracy,[11] repudiating the use of violence and applying theItalian Constitution in all its parts (that is, that a Communist government would operate underparliamentary democracy),[2] a strategy that some date back toAntonio Gramsci,[12][13] and that would since be the leitmotiv of the party's history;[14] after his death, it helped to further the trend ofEurocommunism in Western Communist parties.[1] He was the first Italian Communist to appear in television debates.[1] Togliatti survived an assassination attempt in 1948,[1] a car accident in 1950, and he died in 1964 during a holiday inCrimea on theBlack Sea.[1][2]
Togliatti was born inGenoa into a middle-class family,[1] the third son of two elementary school teachers.[15] His father Antonio was also an accountant in thepublic administration, while his mother Teresa Vitale was a teacher.[16] His father's job forced the Togliattis to move frequently to different cities. Before his birth, they moved fromTurin to Genoa. He was named Palmiro because he was born onPalm Sunday; Togliatti's parents were observantRoman Catholics. Togliatti had one sister, Maria Cristina, and two brothers, Enrico and Eugenio Giuseppe.Eugenio Giuseppe Togliatti became a mathematician and discoveredTogliatti surfaces.[17]
In 1908, Togliatti studied at the Azuni classics high school (classical lyceum) inSassari, where he was recognised as the best student in the school.[18][19][20] After a series of studies concluded with an average of 30, the highest vote, Togliatti graduated in November 1915 with the thesisIl regime doganale delle colonie ("The colonial customs regime"), which was discussed withLuigi Einaudi. He also enrolled in the faculty of letters and philosophy. When his father died on 21 January 1911 of cancer, his family ended up in poverty; it was only thanks to a scholarship that Togliatti was able to graduate from theUniversity of Turin with a degree in law in 1917. In 1914, Togliatti had entered politics by joining theItalian Socialist Party (PSI) prior to theFirst World War, but focused on his studies rather than activism. The war and his political activity prevented him from obtaining a second degree: he dedicated himself to politics in 1923.[15]
At the outbreak of the First World War, Togliatti declared himself in favour Italy's intervention on the side of theEntente powers, a minority view amongsocialists who distinguished, in the words of Battista Santhià, "between the imperialist war and the just national claims against the old imperialisms; they did not consider it right that some Italian provinces should remain under the dominion of aforeign state, moreover a reactionary one."[21] According to Togliatti's brother Eugenio Giuseppe, Togliatti andAntonio Gramsci were "both hypercritical of the government's neutralist attitude and harshly anti-Giolittians".[22]
The precise intellectual path of the young Togliatti is not clear. In the cultural climate of those years, the neo-idealistic andHegelian currents were prevailing, and they ranged from the teaching ofBenedetto Croce to the most exasperated expressions ofnationalism andspiritualism. Togliatti would always declare that he remained a stranger to the latter; it is certain that Croce in particular, thenLa Voce ofGiuseppe Prezzolini andGiovanni Papini, andGaetano Salvemini andRomain Rolland had no small part in his youthful formation. The first approach toMarxism would have occurred all through the writings ofAntonio Labriola; the decisive elements that led Togliatti to Marxist socialism were his friendship with Gramsci and the concrete social reality of Turin, which saw the development of a strong and organised workers' movement.[23]
Initially permanently discharged from military service due to physical incapacity (a severeshort-sightedness), Togliatti served as a volunteer army officer during the war,[6] and he was later wounded in action and sent home to recuperate. In 1915, he had volunteered for theRed Cross, serving in various hospitals, including at the front. Meanwhile, wartime needs led the military commands to review the enlistment criteria, so he was declared able and enlisted in 1916; he was assigned to the 54th Infantry Regiment and then moved, at his request, to the2nd Alpini Regiment. In 1917, Togliatti was admitted to the official cadet course inCaserta; he passed it but did not obtain the appointment as an officer due to a seriouspleurisy that had occurred in the meantime. He gained the rank ofcaporale maggiore (major corporal) in health care, and he was discharged in December 1918 at the end of a long leave.[24]
Returning at the end of the conflict, Togliatti was a part of the group around Gramsci'sL'Ordine Nuovo paper in Turin, while working as atutor. Like the other founders ofL'Ordine Nuovo, Togliatti was an admirer of theRussian Revolution of 1917 and strongly supported the immediate creation ofsoviets in Italy. He believed that existing factory councils of workers could be strengthened so that they could become the basis of acommunist revolution.[25] Initially, the newspaper, which was founded with union backing, focused on cultural politics. In June 1919, the month following its founding, Gramsci and Togliatti pushed outAngelo Tasca and re-focused as a revolutionary voice.[26] The newspaper reached a circulation of 6,000 by the end of the year and its reputation was heightened by its support of the April 1920 general strike, while the PSI and the affiliatedGeneral Confederation of Labour did not support it.[27] On 1 January 1921, the paper began to be published daily.[28]
Like Gramsci, Togliatti took an interest inassociation football, which was becoming a sport with massive following,[29] and was said to have been a supporter ofJuventus, as were other notablecommunist andleft-wing leaders.[30][31][32] Allegedly, Togliatti used to askPietro Secchia every Monday morning (according to others, the interlocutor wasLuigi Longo) what Juventus had done the day before; if the interlocutor did not have an answer, Togliatti was said to reply: "And you, do you expect to make the revolution without knowing the results of Juventus?" Some alleged that "What did Juventus do?" was the first question Togliatti had asked upon awakening after his assassination attempt on 14 July 1948.[33] That same year, he had been pictured at the stadium withGianni Agnelli.[34][35]
Togliatti was a member of the communist faction within the PSI, which was part of the Communist International, commonly known as theComintern. On 21 January 1921, following a split in the PSI on their 17th Congress inLivorno, he was one of the founders of theCommunist Party of Italy (PCd'I). The PCd'I was formed byL'Ordine Nuovo group led by Gramsci and the culturalist faction led byAngelo Tasca.[36]
In the1921 Italian general election held on 15 May, the PSI suffered losses but remained the largest party, while the PCd'I achieved 4.6% of the votes and 15 seats. In 1923, some members of the party were arrested and put on trial for alleged conspiracy against the state. This allowed the intense activity of the Comintern to deprive the party's left-wing of authority and give control to the minority centre, which had aligned with Moscow. In 1924 and 1925, the Comintern began a campaign ofBolshevisation that forced each party to conform to the discipline and orders of Moscow.[37]
The policy of Bolshevisation moved Gramsci to write a letter in 1926 to theComintern in which he deplored the opposition led byLeon Trotsky but also underlined some presumed faults ofJoseph Stalin. Togliatti, who was in Moscow as a representative of the party, received the letter, opened it, read it, and decided not to deliver it. This caused a difficult conflict between Gramsci and Togliatti,[38][39][40] one that they never completely resolved.[41] According to the journalists Mario Pendinelli and Marcello Sorgi, Togliatti did this because he was aware that Gramsci's hegemony and war of maneuver theories contrasted with Stalin'sMarxist–Leninist orthodoxy; he kept the letter along with Gramsci'sPrison Notebooks and gave them to a journalist.[42]
In October 1922,Benito Mussolini, leader of theNational Fascist Party (PNF), took advantage of ageneral strike by workers and announced his demands to the government to give the PNF political power or face acoup d'état. With no immediate response, a small number ofItalian fascists began a long trek across Italy to Rome that was called theMarch on Rome, and told Italians that they were intending to restore law and order. Mussolini himself did not participate until the very end of the march, withGabriele d'Annunzio being hailed as leader of the march, until it was revealed that he had beenpushed out of a window and severely wounded in a failed assassination attempt. This deprived d'Annunzio of the possibility of leading the coup orchestrated by an organisation he himself had founded. Under the leadership of Mussolini, the Fascists demandedLuigi Facta's resignation asprime minister of Italy and that Mussolini be named prime minister. Although the Italian army was far better armed than the Fascist paramilitaries, the Italian government underVictor Emmanuel III faced a political crisis. The King was forced to choose which of the two rival movements in Italy would form the government: Mussolini's Fascists, or the anti-monarchist PSI. He selected the Fascists and appointed Mussolini as the new prime minister.[43][44]
Initially, Togliatti minimised the dictatorial aspects of the new Fascist government. In the same year, he said: "The fascist government, which is thedictatorship of the bourgeoisie, will have no interest in getting rid of any of the traditional democratic prejudices."[45] Upon taking power, attacks by theBlackshirts on communist militants increased, as did their arrests.[5] In August 1923, Mussolini pushed through theItalian Parliament a new electoral law named after its drafterGiacomo Acerbo, theAcerbo Law, which assigned two-thirds of the seats to the list that had exceeded 25% of the votes. Togliatti wrote that "fascism gained power by dispersing the proletarians aggregates, preventing their unification on any terrain, and cause a unification around it in favour of the bourgeois political groups."[46]
In the1924 Italian general election, theNational List of Mussolini (an alliance with liberals and conservatives) used intimidation tactics,[47] resulting in a landslide victory and a subsequenttwo-thirds majority, while the PCd'I gained 3.7% of votes and 19 seats. In January 1926, Togliatti co-authored with Gramsci the thesis of the third congress of the PCd'I.[15] Later that same year, the party was banned by the Fascist government, andAmadeo Bordiga and Gramsci were arrested and imprisoned on the island ofUstica. Togliatti was one of few leaders not to be arrested, as he was attending a meeting of the Comintern in Moscow.[1] After Gramsci's arrest, Togliatti became the leader of the party, which moved to Paris.[5]
In the 1930s, Togliatti was able to survive in the Soviet Union, having renounced Italian citizenship for a Soviet one, despite theGreat Purge.[1] While in Moscow, he made an analysis on fascism, including its rise in Italy,[48] and he began to construct a strategy that was based on broad alliances of middle-class categories.[1] Hispartito nuovo (English: New Party), that would come into reality in 1943, had an interclassist dimension and was open to "the demands and mental structures of the middle classes".[49] DuringWorld War II, he broadcast messages of resistance to Italy, and he also tried to appeal to fascist rank and file in order for them to join forces with liberal and left-winganti-fascist elements.[1]
In 1927, Togliatti was elected as the party's general-secretary in place of Gramsci. In exile during the late 1920s and the 1930s, he organised clandestine meetings of the party atLyon (1926) andCologne (1931).[1] In 1927, he took the position of secretary of the party. In 1935, under thenom de guerre, he was named member of the secretariat of the Comintern, and he was later involved in theSpanish Civil War.[1] In 1939, he was arrested in France; upon being released, he moved to the Soviet Union and remained there during World War II, broadcasting radio messages onRadio Milano-Libertà to Italy,[1] in which he called for resistance toNazi Germany and theItalian Social Republic.[50] While in Moscow, he was accused by critics of not doing enough to help fellow communists and others inFascist Italy.[51] He was aware that the party's clandestine organisation and resistance to fascism would not have been possible without Soviet support, and it was for this reason that he flattened toStalinist positions.[49]
In August 1936, the Comintern published a manifesto, titled "For the Salvation of Italy and the Reconciliation of the Italian People", which was allegedly written by Togliatti.[52][53][54] It was addressed to "the blackshirt brothers" and appealed for unity between Communists and Fascists. It read: "We Communists have made ours theFascist programme of 1919, which is a programme of peace, liberty and defence of the interests of the workers. ... The Fascist programme of 1919 has not been realised! Let's struggle united for the realisation of this programme."[55] In March 1941, Togliatti told the Comintern that the strength of Fascism lay not only in violence. He said: "This dictatorship has done something – not just by means of violence. It has done something even for the workers and the young. We cannot deny that the introduction ofsocial security is a fact."[56] Those appeals to fascists were not limited to Togliatti.Giuseppe Di Vittorio wrote a letter to a Fascist union leader. He asked him: "Between communists and fascists in good faith, are there any possibilities of working together, for the well-being of the Italian people and for the progressive march of our country?" The context for those appeals dates back to an August 1936 party meeting in Paris, where Togliatti's brother-in-law Mario Montagnana said: "We must have the courage to say that we do not intend to overthrow fascism... we want to improve fascism today because we can't do more." The aforementioned appeal to the Blackshirts was written byRuggero Grieco, Togliatti's successor as party leader during his time at the Comintern, and was published inLo Stato Operaio in August 1936 with the apocryphal signature of Togliatti and all the main Communist leaders. In later years, Togliatti described the manifesto as "acoglioneria".[57]
At the same time, the party and its militants were actively involved in the resistance to Mussolini's regime through clandestine action. They were well prepared for clandestine activity because of the structure of their organisation, and the fact that they had been victims of systematic repression by the authorities; more than three quarters of the political prisoners between 1926 and 1943 were communists. Throughout the dictatorship, the party was able to maintain and feed a clandestine network, distribute propaganda leaflets and newspapers, and infiltrate fascist unions and youth organisations. In 1935, the party led a campaign against theSecond Italo-Ethiopian War.[58] The party and communistpartisans, among others, then went on to play a major role in theItalian resistance movement that led to thefall of the Fascist regime in Italy,[59] and Togliatti became a revolutionary constituent and constitutionalist of the Italian Republic,[5] of which he is considered a founding father.[8] In this role he helped shaping a constitutional anti-fascism which called for societal transformations.[60]
On 15 May 1943, the party changed its official name to the Italian Communist Party. This change was not surprising asPCI started being used as the party's acronym around 1924–1925. This name change also reflected a change in the Comintern's role, as it increasingly became a federation of national Communist parties. This trend accelerated afterVladimir Lenin's death and its new name emphasised the party's shift from an international focus to an Italian one. At the time, it was a hotly contested issue for the two major factions of the party. On one side, the Leninist preferred the single world party as it was internationalist and strongly centralised, while on the other side the Italians wanted a party more tailored to their nation's peculiarities and more autonomy. Togliatti returned to Italy in March 1944,[61] after 18 years of exile in Switzerland, France, Soviet Union, and Spain where, with the cover name of Alfredo, he represented the Comintern in theGaribaldi Brigades during the Spanish Civil War.[6]
On 2 April 1944, Togliatti returned from Moscow to Italy,[62] and led the renamedItalian Communist Party (PCI) and other political forces to theSvolta di Salerno, variously referred to in English as the Salerno Turn,[63] the Salerno Turning Point,[64] and the U-turn atSalerno, the city where this took place.[14] This was a compromise between anti-fascist parties, themonarchy of Italy, and the then prime ministerPietro Badoglio to set up agovernment of national unity and to postpone institutional questions. In doing so, he resolved the stall resulted from theBari's congress back in January 1944.[65] Togliatti also founded a political journal,Rinascita, following his return to Italy in 1944, which he edited until his death.[62]
With the Salerno Turn, the PCI committed to supporting democracy and to abandon thearmed struggle for the cause ofsocialism. In doing so, the U-turn had the effect to have moved the party to the right, in contrast with many demands from within; it also meant the disarmament of those members of the Italian resistance movement that had been organised by the PCI. During the resistance to fascism, the PCI became increasingly popular, as the majority of partisans were communists. TheGaribaldi Brigades, promoted by the PCI, were among the more numerous partisan forces.[66]
Starting with thesecond Badoglio government, the national unity government including the PCI, Togliatti held several positions in the Italian government. From April 1944 to June 1945, he was both aminister without portfolio andDeputy Prime Minister of Italy under Badoglio (April–December 1944) andIvanoe Bonomi (December 1944–June 1945).[1] From June 1945 to July 1946, he also served as theItalian Minister of Justice underFerruccio Parri andAlcide De Gasperi. Adversaries not only on an ideological level, Togliatti and De Gasperi proved skilled mediators in a difficult moment for Italy.[67] As the Italian Minister of Justice, Togliatti's pragmatism was put to the test when he approved, not without internal disapproval within the PCI, anamnesty.[68]
The amnesty bearing Togliatti's name was controversial because, in addition to partisans, who were in less numbers compared to the fascists and their collaborators in terms of crimes, pardoned and reduced sentences for Italian fascists, excluding the most grave crimes,[5] as well as those committed by high-ranking officials and crimes committed for material gain or carried out with excessive cruelty but did not include rape or sexual torture, which were still pardonable.[69] The amnesty was considered necessary both for the unity of the country and for the rebuilding of the Italian nation after the war.[69]
The result of the final draft for the amnesty law-decree was a compromise between the PCI, which wanted to keep the fascists imprisoned, and the DC, which wanted the fascists pardoned and accepted an amnesty for partisans as the compromise.[69] In practice, the amnesty, which was supported byAllied Force Headquarters in Italy, led to an increase in prosecution of partisan crimes, while fascist crimes were treated more leniently;[69] fascists and their collaborators benefited far more from the amnesty than imprisoned partisans, who were treated as common criminals.[70] Later less publicised pardons and releases on parole between 1947 and 1953, when Togliatti was no longer the Italian Minister of Justice, further reduced sentences for political crimes committed during the war and turned Italy's amnesty into an amnesia.[70]
At the1946 Italian general election, which was held at the same time (2 June) as the1946 Italian institutional referendum won by republican supporters,[5] the PCI was the third political force behind the DC and the PSI,[5] and obtained 19% of the votes and 104 seats in the newConstituent Assembly of Italy, where Togliatti was elected as a member.[6] In 2015, historian Giuseppe Vacca recounted the significant role that Togliatti played in the work of the Constituent Assembly. Togliatti was the only Communist leader to participate in the foundation of ademocratic republic according to the canons of a European constitutionalism. In the work of defining the republicanConstitution of Italy, Togliatti collaborated with the juristGiuseppe Dossetti.[5]
On 24 September 1946, Togliatti gave a speech at the municipal theater ofReggio Emilia. In this speech, he argued the historical-political reasons that required the construction of a solid relationship with the middle classes. In doing so, Togliatti placed himself in many respects in the tradition of the Italian socialist movement, whose legacy he openly claimed, while at the same time he defined the originality and modernity of the new party with respect to the old reformism in the capacity to go beyond that particularist and classist system that had pushed the PSI to privilege the reasons of the labourers to the detriment of those of the sharecroppers and small owners, which helped to determine a social fracture in which fascism would have entered. According to Togliatti, the relationship with the middle classes was essential, both for the rooting of the PCI and for the realisation of that pact between producers that was at the heart of the economic policy proposal he launched in August 1946 inl'Unità with an explicit reference toFranklin D. Roosevelt'sNew Deal. This new course and its realisation were considered necessary to permanently overcome the social tensions that had crossed the country and for the success of the Salerno turning point.[71]
In January 1947, Togliatti acknowledged De Gasperi as "the main exponent of the strongest among the popular and democratic parties on which the government will have to be based".[72] In March 1947, in opposition to the dominant line in his own party,[73][74] Togliatti voted for the inclusion of theLateran Pacts in theConstitution of Italy,[75][76][77] where it became its Article 7.[78] Togliatti said the vote in favour of his party was more due to political responsibility than personal conviction.[79][80] Communist ministers were evicted during theMay 1947 crisis in both Italy and France after United States involvement. The same month also saw thePortella della Ginestra massacre of communist Sicilian peasants on 1 May. As in Italy, theFrench Communist Party (PCF) was a major party, taking part in the three-parties alliance known asTripartisme, and became the largest party after scoring 28.3% at theNovember 1946 French legislative election. As was done by the United States in Italy,Maurice Thorez, head of the PCF, was forced to quitPaul Ramadier's government along with the four other party ministers. The crisis contributed to the start of theCold War in western Europe.[81][82] Under Togliatti, the PCI became the largestCommunist party in western Europe.[1]
In his 26 September 1947 speech at the Constituent Assembly calling for hisvote of no confidence in thefourth De Gasperi government, Togliatti said: "Our goal is the creation in our country of a free and equal society, in which there is no exploitation by men of other men."[83] In 1948, Togliatti led the PCI in the first democratic election afterWorld War II.[84] The1948 Italian general election resulted in a loss toChristian Democracy (Democrazia Cristiana, DC)[85] Allied with the PSI in thePopular Democratic Front,[86] the coalition achieved 31% of the votes,[87] and the PCI returned 131 deputies to Parliament.[1] Togliatti himself was elected to the country'sChamber of Deputies.[6]
On 14 July 1948, at about 11:40 am,[88] Togliatti was shot three times,[89] being severely wounded by Antonio Pallante,[90][91] aneo-fascist student,[1] who had stronganti-communist views and was a militant of theCommon Man's Front.[88][92] Togliatti's life hung in the balance for days and news about his condition was uncertain, causing an acute political crisis in Italy,[93][94][95] with civil war and insurrection implications,[88][96][97] which included a general strike called by theItalian General Confederation of Labour,[98][99] as well as portraits of Togliatti being brought in during the celebration of thestorming of the Bastille and a telegram from Stalin. Upon regaining consciousness, Togliatti himself was instrumental in calling for calm and a return to normalcy; from his hospital bed, he reassured his comrades and tried to pacify spirits, averting the danger of an armed insurrection.[5] He preferred the "Italian Road to Socialism" over a violent revolution, and rejected the concept of an internationally directed movement in favour of one that was both democratically and nationally oriented.[1] Historian Sergio Turone described it as "the most complete and most extensive general strike ever in the history of Italy".[100] In January 2023, it was publicly revealed that Pallante had died on 6 July 2022,[101] aged 98, and that he never regretted the shooting.[102]
On 22 August 1950, a car accident caused Togliatti to crack the frontal bone and fracture a vertebra. As with the 1948 assassination attempt, the event caused an international sensation, and was followed by an investigation, which blamed the accident on "the unacceptable levity of fellow driver Aldo Zaia". At the time, no one was aware that in October 1950 he had lost consciousness and went into a coma; his doctor suspected that Togliatti had been poisoned. Togliatti was saved by brain surgery.[103] During his period of convalescence in a Piedmontese clinic, it was reported that Togliatti had playedchess with the Italian senator and fellow party memberCino Moscatelli.[104] In December 1951, within the context of the birth of theGladio anti-communist organisation, spy microphones were set up in Togliatti's house by the head of the Supervisory Commission, and were intended to also monitor his partner,Nilde Iotti, who was suspected of being in contact with Vatican circles.[105]
Under Togliatti's leadership, the PCI became the second largest party in Italy and the largest non-rulingCommunist party in Europe. Although permanently in the opposition at the national level during his lifetime, the party ran many municipalities and held great power at the local and regional level in certain areas. In 1953, Togliatti fought against theScam Law, an electoral legislation passed by the DC-led majority of the time, which aimed at usingfirst-past-the-post to augment its power. Ultimately, the law was to prove of no use for the government in the elections of that year,[106] where the PCI won 22.6% of the vote and confirmed itself as the first party within theparliamentary opposition and the second biggest party after the DC. It was repealed in July 1954.[107]
Togliatti was re-elected to the Chamber of Deputies, and he remained amember of Parliament until his death in 1964.[6] Despite his close relationship with the Soviet Union, Togliatti's leadership remained unscathed after the1956 Hungarian Revolution, which was in most countries a cause for major conflicts within thepolitical left.[108][109][110] He developed a theory of unity in diversity within the Communist parties in all countries,[111][112] which he outlined in aRinascita article in December 1961,[113] and namedpolycentrism.[114][115]
After theKhrushchev Thaw in the Soviet Union, Togliatti was inspired by the new set of reforms and launched the party program of the "Italian Road to Socialism". He said: "We are democrats in that we are not only anti-fascists, but socialists and communists. There is no contradiction between democracy and socialism."[116] The new policy proposed by Togliatti was opposed to any revolutionary means of gaining power and aimed at accompanying institutional action with the extension of social and trade union struggles, and supported the concept ofpeaceful coexistence.[5] During this period, the PCI purged revolutionary and extremist factions opposed to the new openly reformist line.[117] On 15 February 1956,Il Nuovo Corriere della Sera published on the front page a correspondence by Piero Ottone on the five-hour speech with which Khrushchev the previous day explained to the 1,400 Soviet delegates and the leaders of international Communism, including Togliatti andMauro Scoccimarro, the new strategies of communism. The main points of Khrushchev's speech were thepeaceful coexistence between the blocs, the prevention of war, and the forms of transition of the various countries to socialism that, in the words of Ottone, means "the forces of socialism can assert themselves without revolutions, without civil wars, through parliamentary processes", akin to Togliatti's "Italian Way to Socialism" that was first inaugurated with the Salerno turning point and that he reiterated in his speech of response.[118]
In the1958 Italian general election, the number of votes for the PCI was still on the rise. In the1963 Italian general election, the PCI gained 25.2% of the votes but again failed to reach a relative majority. Nonetheless, the 1963 election ended theCentrism party system and resulted in the firstcentre-left government in thehistory of the Italian Republic, with the PSI giving its first external support, a system of government known as theOrganic centre-left.[59] In 1961, Togliatti said: "We are a party that is on the side of those who fight in defense of their freedom."[5] During the early 1960s, Togliatti appealed to the Catholic world. In a 1963 speech inBergamo, titled "The Destiny of Man", he called for a common front between the religious and communists againstconsumerism and the commodification of life, and that this opposition must act as a bridge between them.[5] In August 1964, Togliatti went to the Soviet Union and wrote the Yalta Memorandum.[5] Published after his death, Togliatti's memorandum that outlined his political doctrine strengthened the trend toward liberalisation within the international Communist movement and Communist governments.[1] Additionally, he made various criticisms of the Soviet leadership, including the perceived slowness with which it was leaving behind the Stalinist legacy.[5] The historian Giuseppe Vacca saw the memorandum as a generalised critique of the Soviet system.[119]
From 1924 to 1948, Togliatti was married to fellow party member and politicianRita Montagnana. Until his death, he was in a relationship withNilde Iotti, also a fellow party member and politician.[2] This relationship was controversial due to the fact that he was already married and the moralistic austerity that distinguished the PCI at the time.[3] Iotti would become the first woman in the history of the Italian Republic to hold by the end of the 1970s one of the three highest offices of the state, namely thepresidency of the Chamber of Deputies.[2] Togliatti was a supporter ofwomen's rights, with theNoi donne feminist magazine describing him at his death as "a great supporter of women's emancipation".[120][121]
Togliatti died as a result of acerebral haemorrhage,[122] while vacationing with his companionNilde Iotti inYalta, then in the Soviet Union. The day before, he had been urgently hospitalised as a result of a stroke, for which he underwent surgery;[123] he was 71.[124] According to some of his collaborators, Togliatti was traveling to the Soviet Union to give his support toLeonid Brezhnev's election asNikita Khrushchev's successor at the head ofCommunist Party of the Soviet Union.Enrico Berlinguer, his favourite pupil, was later elected as his successor to the National Secretary of the PCI position; Berlinguer's time in office saw theHistoric Compromise and the moral question.[125] The news of Togliatti's death was first given by the country's leading agencyANSA.[126] The party's newspaperl'Unità described him as "a great son of the Italian people, a brilliant leader of international communism, a fighter who spent his whole life in a hard and tireless struggle for socialism, for democracy, for peace."[127]
TheSoviet Russian city ofStavropol-on-Volga, where Togliatti had been instrumental in establishing theAutoVAZ (Russian:Lada) automobile manufacturing plant in collaboration withFiat, was renamed after him (in Russian:Tolyatti[a]) in his honor in 1964, after his death.[1][128] One of the main town squares in the Croatian city ofRijeka (Italian:Fiume) was named after Togliatti while Croatia was part ofSFR Yugoslavia, until it was renamed toJadranski trg (Adriatic Plaza) in 1994. There is still a street in Belgrade named after him (Serbian:ulica Palmira Toljatija[b]). Togliatti's funeral, held on 24 August 1964,[129] was attended by a million and saw much popular participation,[130] comparable to that of Berlinguer years later;[2] about 500,000 people followed Togliatti's coffin making its way in Rome.[131]
A 1972 painting byRenato Guttuso, titledI funerali di Togliatti,[132] was made to recreate the event.[133] The painting includes, in addition to Iotti, Brezhnev, and Berlinguer, notable global Communist movement figures and others whom Guttuso imagines being present at the funeral, such asVladimir Lenin,Joseph Stalin,Pablo Picasso,Pablo Neruda,Elio Vittorini,Angela Davis,Antonio Gramsci,Dolores Ibárruri,Anna Kuliscioff, andJean-Paul Sartre.[134]Curzio Malaparte described Togliatti as the thinking head of Italian Communism.[125]
The Salerno Turn anticipated the "Italian Way to Socialism" and theEurocommunist trend.[1][135][136] While its motives have been widely discussed and argued about by scholars,[137] the national peculiarity of the PCI is not limited to Togliatti and is well-founded by the fact that it was a co-founder of the Italian Republic and its constitution, as well as its significant contribution to the resistance against Nazi–fascism and its mass base.[138] The PCI under Togliatti and their attitude towards theMarshall Plan is placed within the context of theCold War andanti-communism. After orchestrating the fall of the PCI and PSI from government, amid a crisis within the DC and fears that a left-wing coalition would take power, the United States andGeorge Marshall had informed the Italian government that anti-communism was a pre-condition for receiving American aid,[139] andJames Clement Dunn had directly askedAlcide de Gasperi to dissolve the parliament and remove the PCI.[140][141] Additionally, the United States provided support to anti-PCI groups in 1948,[142] and reiterated that should the PCI win, the Marshall Plan and other aids could be terminated.[143] According to one estimate, the United States spent about $10–20 million on anti-communist propaganda and other covert operations, much of it through theEconomic Cooperation Administration of the Marshall Plan, and then laundered through individual banks.[144] Fearful of a possible electoral victory for a left-wing coalition, the British and American governments also undermined their campaign for legal justice by tolerating the efforts made by Italy's top authorities to prevent any of the allegedItalian war criminals from being extradited and taken to court.[145][146] For their part, the Soviets would fund the PCI until 1984, and the party relied on Soviet financial assistance more than any other Communist party supported by Moscow.[147] United States and Soviet interference and funding led to criticism of the other and accusing each other of going too far. United States government sources said that the PCI was receiving $40–50 million per year from the Soviets when their investment in Italy was stated to be $5–6 million;[148] declassified information showed this to be exaggerated.[147]
Liberal and left-wing critics saw Togliatti's policy of the Salerno Turn as an example of frontism, orcommon front, that was orchestrated by Stalin to conform to his deals withFranklin D. Roosevelt andWinston Churchill.[137] In contrast to the long-time held historiography of the PCI, Elena Agarossi andVictor Zaslavsky argue in a revisionist account that Togliatti and the other leaders of the PCI were fundamentally subservient to Stalin, and did their best to promote Soviet interests. They argue that Togliatti was above all a Stalinist, and that he remained one for years after Stalin died in 1953 and the Soviet Union had repudiated much of his legacy. They argue that it was Stalin who ordered Togliatti to play a moderating role in Italian politics because the time was not yet ripe for a showdown with capitalism. Agarossi and Zaslavsky rely not only on Togliatti's papers but those of the Kremlin, especially the highly detailed reports sent in by the Soviet ambassador in Rome.[149] Stalin forced the PCI to reject and work against the Marshall Plan, despite the loss of much support from Italian voters who wanted the American aid.[150][151][152] First published in 1997,[153] this view was criticised byLuciano Canfora.[154] Canfora saw the Salerno Turn and 1944 as a rebirth of Italy's Communist party, and said that "the PCI had gradually followed a path which required it, as a historical task, to occupy the space of social democracy in the Italian political panorama."[125] In the words of Franco Lo Piparo, Togliatti's "Italian Road to Socialism" entailed "social democracy using communist rhetoric".[41]
In February 1992, during the electoral campaign for the imminent general election, the historian Franco Andreucci published an incomplete and manipulated version in the weekly news magazinePanorama, the excerpt of a holographic letter from Togliatti (then known as Ercoli, a Soviet citizen since 1930, member of the military commission of the executive committee of the Comintern) from the Moscow archives, in a correspondence sent fromUfa on 15 February 1943 and written in response to a letter from the PCI leader Vincenzo Bianco who asked Togliatti to intercede with the Soviet authorities to avoid death of prisoners of theItalian Army in Russia.[155][156][157] The manipulation of some words and phrases of the text in the letter reported in the weekly was discovered only ten days later. Andreucci had corrected a photocopy that came badly and in part incomplete given to him by the historian Friedrich Firsov, dictating it via telephone to the director ofPanorama from home of the journalist Francesco Bigazzi, correspondent in Moscow for the newspaperil Giorno, as a result of which he had to resign from the position of consultant held at the publishing house Il Ponte alle Grazie, which, due to the loss of credibility suffered, soon suffered a collapse in sales and was absorbed in 1993 by Edizioni Salani. The political result of the operation was partially achieved, as the attack on Togliatti, in addition to influencing the result of the1992 Italian general election, also served to put Iotti out of the running from a possible election to thepresidency of the Italian Republic.[158]
| Election | House | Constituency | Party | Votes | Result | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1946 | Constituent Assembly | Italy at-large | PCI | 75,146 |  YElected | |
| 1948 | Chamber of Deputies | Rome–Viterbo–Latina–Frosinone | FDP | 97,328 | YElected | |
| 1953 | Chamber of Deputies | Italy at-large | PCI | 155,372 | YElected | |
| 1958 | Chamber of Deputies | Rome–Viterbo–Latina–Frosinone | PCI | 166,952 | YElected | |
| 1963 | Chamber of Deputies | Rome–Viterbo–Latina–Frosinone | PCI | 168,923 | YElected | |
Togliatti's Italian-language eight-volume collection of works was published by the Rome-publishing houseEditori Riuniti. From 1964 to 2019, Togliatti's bibliography included 134 volumes in the most common bibliographic repertoires. Additionally, new biographies of Togliatti continues to be published.[49]
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link){{cite interview}}:Missing or empty|title= (help)'E tu pretendi di fare la rivoluzione senza conoscere i risultati della Juve?.' Come a dire, senza conoscere gli umori del popolo a cui chiedi di insorgere? Il capo del Partito comunista, tifoso della 'Vecchia Signora', rimproverava così al suo vice di misconoscere l'importanza di un fenomeno di massa come il calcio, eletto dal fascismo a sport nazionale, in grado di influenzare mentalità e costumi dei ceti popolari. Un punto, questo, che aveva catturato l'attenzione di Antonio Gramsci già all'alba Novecento. Lo testimonia 'Il foot-ball e lo scopone', un celebre articolo pubblicato il 16 agosto 1918 sull'Avanti!.["And you expect us to make the revolution without knowing the results of Juve?" As to say, without knowing the moods of the people, how do you ask [the people] to rise up? The head of the Communist Party, a fan of the "Old Lady", thus reproached his deputy for disregarding the importance of a mass phenomenon such as football, elected by fascism as a national sport, capable of influencing the mentality and customs of the working class. A point which had already captured the attention of Antonio Gramsci at the dawn of the twentieth century. Witness "Football and Scopone", a famous article published on 16 August 1918 on Avanti!]
Affermava in proposito l'avvocato Agnelli su 'La Stampa': 'Ho mandato al giornale una foto di una partita della Juventus del 1948, dove mi trovavo accanto a Togliatti. Lui, come tutti i leader comunisti di una certa generazione e di una certa classe, era juventino. Non ho mai avuto modo di verificare se Berlinguer amasse la Juventus; ma da alcune sue reazioni, che ho avuto occasione di vedere allo stadio, mi pare che anche il suo cuore fosse bianconero' (dalla lettera aperta a Luciano Lama Agnelli risponde a Lama sulla Juve, 'La Stampa', 6 marzo 1991, p. 33). Il 16 dicembre 1988 'l'Unità' pubblica in prima pagina un articolo dalla titolazione evocativa Gramsci tifava per la Juve (l'articolo è ufficialmente inserito nella 'Bibliografia gramsciana'). Il pezzo, firmato da Giorgio Fabre riportava alcune lettere in cui il fondatore del Partito comunista chiedeva al destinatario, Piero Sraffa, 'notizie della nostra Juventus'. Le lettere ben presto si rivelarono false ma scatenarono comunque numerose reazioni, ad iniziare da Giampiero Boniperti che a nome della società disse il giorno seguente su 'La Stampa': 'Ci fa piacere sapere che tra i nostri tifosi ci sono stati personaggi che hanno segnato un'epoca dal punto di vista politico, economico ed intellettuale. Questo dimostra che la Juventus ha davvero qualcosa di particolare, un fascino che con il passare degli anni non ha perso mai vigore'.[In this regard, [Gianni] Agnelli stated in "La Stampa": "I sent the newspaper a photo of a Juventus match in 1948, where I was next to Togliatti. He, like all communist leaders of a certain generation and a certain class, was a Juventus fan. I've never had the opportunity to verify if Berlinguer loved Juventus, but from some of his reactions, which I had the opportunity to see at the stadium, it seems to me that his heart was Black and White too" (from the open letter to Luciano Lama, Agnelli replies to Lama on Juve, "La Stampa", 6 March 1991, p. 33). On 16 December 1988, "l'Unità" published an article on the front page with the evocative title [that] Gramsci was rooting for Juve (the article is officially included in the "Gramscian Bibliography"). The piece, signed by Giorgio Fabre, contained some letters in which the founder of the Communist Party asked the recipient, Piero Sraffa, for "news from our Juventus". The letters soon turned out to be false but nonetheless triggered numerous reactions, starting with Giampiero Boniperti who, on behalf of the club, said the following day in "La Stampa": "We are pleased to know that among our fans there have been personalities who have marked an era from the political, economic, and intellectual point of view. This shows that Juventus truly have something special, a charm that has never lost strength over the years."]
Spiegherà Ugo Bertone su FirstOnLine come Togliatti avesse intuito, così come Mario Soldati, che la Juventus 'era sì 'la squadra dei gentlemen, dei pionieri dell'industria, dei gesuiti, dei benpensanti, di chi aveva fatto il liceo: dei borghesi ricchi', ma anche un mito per le masse del Mezzogiorno, un simbolo di efficienza ed un possibile terreno d'incontro tra capitale e lavoro, una maglia bianconera che accomunava Luciano Lama con l'Avvocato Agnelli più di mille trattative'. Per il poeta Giovanni Arpino, 'la Juventus è universale, il Torino è un dialetto. La Madama è un 'esperanto' anche calcistico, il Toro è gergo'. ... Achille Occhetto l'uomo della Bolognina. Tifoso del Torino ed ex segretario del Partito comunista, racconterà a SportivamenteMag che 'essere granata nella Torino degli anni Quaranta del Novecento significava opporsi, anche senza averne cognizione. Il conformismo era bianconero, ma non vincente. Qualcosa, non molto, cambiò dopo la guerra: il Torino incarnava ragionevolmente la classe operaia [...] In compenso, solo pochi anni dopo gli operai affluiti a Torino per lavorare alla Fiat o nell'indotto, tutti meridionali, capovolsero gli equilibri del tifo cittadino. Erano tutti invariabilmente juventini. E mi dovetti arrendere all'evidenza'.[Ugo Bertone will explain on FirstOnLine how Togliatti had the intuition, as well as Mario Soldati, that Juventus "was yes 'the team of gentlemen, pioneers of industry, Jesuits, right-thinking people, those who had gone to high school: the rich bourgeois', but also a myth for the masses of the South, a symbol of efficiency, and a possible meeting ground between capital and labour, a black and white shirt that united Luciano Lama with [Gianni] Agnelli more than a thousand negotiations." For the poet Giovanni Arpino, "Juventus is universal, Torino is a dialect. La Madama is also football 'Esperanto', Toro is slang." ... Achille Occhetto, the man from Bolognina. A Torino fan and former secretary of the Communist Party, he will tell SportivamenteMag that "being a Torino fan in Turin in the 1940s meant to oppose, even without knowing it. Conformism was Black and White, but not successful. Something, not much, changed after the war: Torino reasonably embodied the working class [...] On the other hand, only a few years later the workers who flocked to Turin to work at Fiat or related industries, all from the South, overturned the balance of city supporters. They were all invariably Juventus fans. And I had to surrender to the evidence."]
{{cite book}}:|work= ignored (help){{cite book}}:|work= ignored (help)... il settimanale 'Epoca', nel numero del 17 febbraio 1951, si occupava di uomini politici che giocavano a scacchi, ben contento di sottolineare che: 'nella buvette di Palazzo Madama, di fronte al gruppo capeggiato da Tonello, sotto la finestra, campeggia il tavolo degli scacchi. Vi si alternano impassibili campioni d'antico stampo, evocanti la sfida di Paggio Fernando a Jolanda, e rappresentanti un po' tumultuosi del settore dell'estrema sinistra. Dopo che nella scorsa estate i giornali riferirono come l'onorevole Palmiro Togliatti trascorresse, in una clinica piemontese, i suoi giorni di convalescenza, impegnato a battere agli scacchi il senatore Moscatelli, le file dei campioni di Palazzo Madama s'andarono arricchendo di numerosi neofiti. Si notarono rapidamente i progressi dei senatori Pastore, Farina e Molinella. Di quest'ultimo, anzi, c'è chi esalta un metodo tutto nuovo, basato su principi rigorosamente matematici'.[... the weekly [news magazine] "Epoca", in the issue of 17 February 1951, dealt with politicians who played chess, happy to underline that: "in the buvette of Palazzo Madama, in front of the group led by Tonello, under the window, stands the chess table. Impassive old-fashioned champions alternate, evoking Paggio Fernando's challenge to Jolanda, and somewhat tumultuous representatives of the extreme left sector. After last summer the newspapers reported how the honorable Palmiro Togliatti spent his days of convalescence in a Piedmontese clinic, [being] busy beating Senator Moscatelli at chess, the ranks of champions at Palazzo Madama were enriched with numerous neophytes. The progress of Senators Pastore, Farina, and Molinella was quickly noted. Of the latter, indeed, there are those who extol an entirely new method, based on rigorously mathematical principles."]
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)Un ritratto storiografico, quello sul PCI togliattiano, forgiato dai fattori più diversi, dalla cultura popolare, dal racconto fatto dagli ex militanti e dai nemici, dalla fedeltà assoluta al bastione rivoluzionario dell'Unione Sovietica, ma ancora poco propenso a valutare le spinte esterne, le contraddizioni interne e infine l'organicità rispetto al sistema democratico in cui il partito si vede ospitato, e che con un contributo di prim'ordine contribuisce a forgiare. Un mito più che un resoconto storico, nel quale la verità si fonde alla speranza del tempo o agli auspici di intere classi, da quella operaia a quella della borghesia intellettuale, dai sindacalisti alle casalinghe, dai braccianti agricoli ai portuali. Questo lavoro ha invece tra i suoi auspici il dimostrare quanto le successive svolte democratizzanti del PCI, fino alla sua completa accettazione del sistema liberaldemocratico, trovino nella gestione togliattiana non tanto un contraltare rispetto a modificazioni lontane e successive, quanto il cammino essenziale per una serie di trasformazioni che proprio nell'antifascismo, nella politica dei fronti popolari, nella ripresa del messaggio gramsciano e nell'idea stessa di democrazia progressiva implementata dal leader comunista vedono un iniziale percorso di fondamentale importanza.[A historiographical portrait, the one on Togliatti's PCI, forged by the most diverse factors, from popular culture, from the story told by former militants and enemies, from absolute loyalty to the revolutionary bastion of the Soviet Union, but still unwilling to evaluate external pressures, the internal contradictions and finally the coherence with respect to the democratic system in which the party sees itself hosted, and which it helps to forge with a first-rate contribution. A myth rather than a historical account, in which the truth merges with the hope of the time or with the wishes of entire classes, from the working class to that of the intellectual bourgeoisie, from trade unionists to housewives, from farm labourers to dock workers. On the other hand, this work has among its auspices the demonstration of how much the successive democratising turns of the PCI, up to its complete acceptance of the liberal-democratic system, find in Togliatti's management not so much a counterpart to distant and successive modifications, as the essential path for a series of transformations that see an initial path of fundamental importance precisely in anti-fascism, in the politics of the popular fronts, in the resumption of the Gramscian message and in the very idea of progressive democracy implemented by the communist leader.]
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)Edward Luttwak, interview: "[W]e estimated at the time they were getting $40–50 million a year at a time when we were putting $5–6 million into Italian politics.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)| Party political offices | ||
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| Preceded by | Secretary of the Italian Communist Party 1927–1964 | Succeeded by |
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| Preceded by | Deputy Prime Minister of Italy 1944–1945 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Minister of Grace and Justice 1945–1946 | Succeeded by |
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