Italy: Doing What Is Possible

Palmiro Togliatti will be remembered as the Communist leader who came closer than any other to seizing power for the Reds in Western Europe — and failed.

His first chance came when he returned to Italy from Moscow after World War II and resumed leadership of the party he had helped found. Italy's Reds, who had played a big part in the resistance, were well armed, and To gliatti might have seized power if he had risked civil war. He did not, and Stalin later sneered, "Togliatti will never make a revolution. He's...

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