Stalin's wooing of Togliatti

Workers Press no. 161, 13 May 1970 · scan page 5

Topics: Communist Party and Stalinism, Soviet Union, Italy and Germany

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THE ITALIAN Communist Party has recently 'opened the books' on an episode in the career of Palmiro Togliatti, who returned to Italy as Stalin's nominee during the liberation from fascism and remained Party chief until his death in 1964, when he was replaced by the present leader, Luigi Longo.

In August 1951 Togliatti was seriously injured in a road accident.

convalesce.' His widow, Nilde Jotti (who accompanied him to Moscow) has now related that the reasons for his visit were mainly political - in particular to discuss with Stalin the role of the Communist Information Bureau ('Cominform') set up by Stalin in 1947.

Stalin paid Togliatti a personal visit in hospital and requested him to remain in Russia as head of the Cominform, strengthening it and making it a more important political instrument.

Persuasion

According to her account Stalin laid great stress on adverse international situation (the Cold War was already well under way) and spent some time in trying to persuade Togliatti to accept.

The Italian Party leadership sided with Stalin, but Togliatti refused to accept. He_left Moscow for Italy in February without a farewell from any of the Soviet leaders.

Though there has been some dispute between Nilde Jotti and Pietro Secchia, who also went with Togliatti to Moscow, over the details, all are agreed that Stalin was eager to entrust Togliatti with what was at least presented as being a key role in the international policies of the Soviet bureaucracy.

Plausible

The account given is certainly plausible.

Having disbanded the Third International to oblige his 'Allies' against fascism in 1943, Stalin would certainly, reacting to the pressures the American nuclear threat and the Cold War, have felt the need for a prestigious figure such as Togliatti to swing Stalinist parties western Europe behind Soviet diplomacy.

Why have the Italian Stalinists now made the episode public?

Part of the reason is certainly their desire to give a respectable lineage to the "independence' the Communist Parte Italian from the Soviet leadership.

Like their condemnation of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, this represents no communist opposition to Stalinism, but a capitulation to "liberal', ruling-class pressure in western Europe.

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