Everything about Palmiro Togliatti totally explained
Palmiro Togliatti (
march 26 1893 -
august 21 1964) was an
Italian politician, the leader of the
Italian Communist Party from
1927 until his death in
1964.
Biography
Early life
Born in
Genoa to a middle class family, Togliatti began his political life in the
Italian Socialist Party prior to the
First World War. He served as a volunteer officer during the war, and was wounded in action and sent home for illness. Returning at the end of the conflict, he was a part of the group around
Antonio Gramsci's
L'Ordine Nuovo paper in
Turin, while working as a
tutor.
He was a founding member of the
Communist Party of Italy (PCd'I, later
PCI) and, after Gramsci was jailed by
Benito Mussolini's
Fascist regime, he became the senior leader of the PCd'I until his death, for which he also directed
Il Comunista.
Exile
When the party was banned by the Italian Fascist government in 1926, Togliatti was one of few leaders not to be arrested, as he was attending a meeting of the
Comintern in
Moscow. In exile during the late 1920s and the 1930s, he organized clandestine meetings of the PCd'I at
Lyon (1926) and
Cologne (1931). In 1927 he took the position of
Secretary of the party.
In 1935, under the
nom de guerre Ercole Ercoli, he was named member of the secretariat of the Comintern. In
Spain in 1937, during the
Civil War, he willingly contributed to the elimination of
anarchists by the
Catalan Communist leaders (carried out on the orders of
Joseph Stalin). In 1939 he was arrested in France: released, he moved to the
Soviet Union and, remained there during
World War II, broadcasting radio messages to Italy, in which he called for resistance to
Nazi Germany and the
Italian Social Republic.
"Salerno turn" and shooting
He returned to his native country in
1944 and it was under his direction that the PCI carried out the
svolta di Salerno, the "
Salerno Turn" — this change in policy was the turn of the party to support of
democratic measures of reform in Italy (the
birth of the Italian Republic), and the refusal to engage in
armed struggle for the cause of Socialism. In effect, the turn 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 organized by the PCI. Togliatti briefly served as
Justice Minister.
After having been
minister without portfolio in the
Pietro Badoglio government, he acted as vice-premier under
Alcide De Gasperi in
1945. In opposition with the dominant line in his own party, he voted for the including of the
Lateran Pacts in the
Italian Constitution. At the
1946 general election, the PCI obtained 19% of the votes and 104 seats.
Communist ministers were evicted during the
May 1947 crisis. The same month,
Maurice Thorez, head of the
French Communist Party (PCF), was forced to quit
Paul Ramadier's government along with the four others communist ministers. As in Italy, the PCF was very strong, taking part in the
Three parties alliance (
Tripartisme) and scoring 28.6% at the November 1946 elections.
In
1948, Togliatti led the PCI in the
first democratic election after
World War II. He lost to the
Christian Democrat party (DC –
Democrazia Cristiana) after a violent campaign in which the United States, viewing him as a
Cold War enemy, played a large part. The
CIA, which had just been created, allegedly massively interfered in the elections. Allied with the
PSI in the
Popular Democratic Front, the left-wing achieved 31% of the votes. Until 1996, the left-wing coalition was unable to prevail in the national political elections, while scoring many successes in local administrative elections. The only tentative to include the PCI in government, under
Enrico Berlinguer's leadership, through the
historic compromise, ended up with
Aldo Moro's 1978 assassination. In 2000, the
Olive Tree left-of-center coalition released a report explicitly accusing Washington of having followed a
strategy of tension in Italy "to prevent the PCI, and in a lesser measure the PSI, of acceding to power."
On
July 14 1948, Togliatti was shot three times, being severely wounded — his life hung in the balance for days and news about his condition was uncertain, causing an acute political crisis in Italy (which included a
general strike called by the
Italian General Confederation of Labour).
1950s and 1960s
Under his leadership, the PCI became the second largest party in Italy, and the largest non-ruling
communist party in
Europe. Although permanently in the opposition at the national level during Togliatti's lifetime, the party ran many municipalities and held great power at the local and regional level in certain areas.
In 1953, he fought against the so-called "
cheat or swindle law", an electoral one voted by the Christian Democracy-led majority of the time, which aimed at using
first past the post to augment the center-right's power. Ultimately, the law was to prove of no use for the government in the elections of that year, which won Togliatti's PCI 22.6% of the vote; it was repealed in November of 1953.
Despite his allegedly tight relationship with
Soviet Union, Togliatti's leadership remained unscathed after the
1956 Hungarian Revolution (which was everywhere else a cause for major conflicts within the
left). He coined the development of the
polycentrism theory (unity in diversity within the communist parties in all countries). In the
1958 elections, the number of Communist votes was still on the rise. In the
1963 elections, the PCI gained 25.2% of the votes, but again failed to reach a relative majority.
Death and legacy
Togliatti died as a result of
cerebral haemorrhage while vacationing with his companion
Nilde Iotti in
Yalta, then in the Soviet Union. According to some of his collaborators, Togliatti was travelling to the Soviet Union in order to give his support to
Leonid Brezhnev's election as
Nikita Khrushchev's successor at the lead of
Communist Party of the Soviet Union. His favourite pupil,
Enrico Berlinguer, was later elected as his successor to the National Secretary of the PCI position, though Berlinguer's time in office saw the rejection of some policies advocated by Togliatti.
The
Russian city of Stavropol-on-Volga, where Togliatti had been instrumental in establishing the
AutoVAZ (
Lada) automobile manufacturing plant in collaboration with
Fiat, was renamed
Tolyatti in his honor in 1964, after his death.
Overview
Togliatti has been heavily criticised by many Italian historians for not having condemned the Soviet suppression of the democratic uprising in
Hungary. His politics have been defined as
Machiavellian and cynical in purpose, aimed mainly at securing the growth of the PCI (and that of Communism in general).
He has been also criticized for his alternate relations with the maverick
Yugoslav leader
Josip Broz Tito, which were considered to be closely following the
party line dictated from the
Kremlin.
The same has been said of Togliatti's judgement of Stalin's policies: after the communist leader's death in 1953, he'd stated that "
Joseph Stalin is a titan of thought. His name is to be given to an entire century...". Later on, in 1956, after the
de-Stalinization process, he'd declared that: "
Stalin has disseminated false and exaggerated theses, and was victim of an almost desperate perspective of endless persecution". In the following year, Togliatti repeatedly stated that he'd been unaware of Stalin's crimes. The "Italian road to Socialism" he propounded from that moment moved the Italian Communist Party to more democratic and independent positions, which would lead to events such as the PCI's condemnation of the
Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in a famous speech given by Enrico Berlinguer in Moscow.
Despite such contradictions, Togliatti is widely ranked among the creators of Republican Italy and of its Constitution. He always strove for a certain collaboration with the other main party of Italy, Christian Democracy, and, while still recovering from his wounds in 1948, he'd invited the rioting workers to respect the democratic institutions of the country.
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