ITALIAN COMMUNISM IN PERMANENT OPPOSITION
Palmiro Togliatti, the exiled general secretary of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), who had been living mostly in the USSR since the late 1920s, was preparing to return home in March 1944, when he was called to the Kremlin. Stalin’s instructions were that he should cooperate with all anti-Fascists and get the Italian people behind the still-raging war against Germany. The Soviet dictator’s preference was for a strong Italy. The British did not share his view, he said, because it would interfere with their Mediterranean plans.21
Shortly after his arrival in Italy, Togliatti reported that there was a groundswell of support for Communism and that Moscow’s image was far more positive than Washington’s or London’s. The PCI, with a membership that would swell to over 1.7 million by the end of 1945, was taking an active part in the gruesome acts of revenge against the Fascists. In early 1945 alone, between 5,000 and 8,000 were killed in “wild” retributions. Special courts tried up to 30,000 people; perhaps 1,000 were sentenced to death, although with few executed.22
The Allies had not formulated postwar plans because the “focus had always been to force Italy out of the war, then force the Germans out of Italy—and worry about peace afterwards.”23 The peninsula had been partly liberated back in 1943 when it switched sides and overthrew Mussolini. At war’s end the country was in a shambles, and people tried to cope in any way possible. Food shortages grew worse than under the Germans, shady dealings were rampant, and black-marketeering common. According to a survey for 1945–46, widespread malnutrition led to the spread of diseases like tuberculosis and malaria.24 Even after the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA, created in 1943) later stepped in, frequent food riots continued.
Italy was overwhelmingly Catholic, and the religious factor represented a major obstacle that the Communists never entirely overcame. In November 1945, Christian Democratic leader Alcide De Gasperi formed a government and, in the elections to a constituent assembly in June 1946, won 35 percent of the vote. Like the French Left, the Italian Left was divided. The PCI did well to obtain 18.9 percent, while the rival Socialists (PSI) gained slightly more. In a plebiscite held at the same time, the nation voted in favor of a republic. The politics of the PCI would be marred by coalition governments that formed and dissolved sometimes in a matter of months. De Gasperi offered the Communists several key posts, including the ministry of justice (which went to Togliatti) and the ministry of finance.
The desperate times favored the PCI in local elections, and it did well at the expense of De Gasperi’s Christian Democrats. In January 1947 the prime minister traveled to Washington, where he was received in an atmosphere of concern about the Italian Communists.25
The PCI, by 1947 with over two million members, pursued the same strategies as did the Communists in France. It would participate in government to appear a viable alternative to the Christian Democrats, but it would use obstructionist tactics to make the country’s leaders look unsteady. Indeed, Communists’ support of strikers slowed economic recovery and eroded the legitimacy of the government. De Gasperi hesitated to call new national elections because he worried that he might not win without solid promises of substantial American aid. He received such assurances, resigned, formed a new cabinet without Communists, and called for new elections, to take place in the autumn.
Although some Italian and American historians have long claimed that President Truman and Secretary Marshall pressured De Gasperi into eliminating Communists from his new cabinet, the evidence is thin. In a letter of May 14, 1947, Italian ambassador Alberto Tarchiani in Washington informed his prime minister about a frank discussion that he had had with Truman. The American president left it to the Italians to make the decision about their own best interests and said that, while the preferred option would be a government without Communists, he appreciated “the difficulties” of attaining such a goal. There would not be a problem as long as “the Communist presence was sufficiently diluted.”26
On May 16, Ambassador Tarchiani met Secretary Marshall and painted a dark picture of his country’s poverty, the massive funding behind the PCI, and the gloomy outlook for the coming elections. It was Tarchiani who stated that it was “highly important that Italy should not fall under Communism.” He also suggested that, if the Communists did not win the election, they might try a coup. If that were to happen, he said, the Italian government would not be able to cope and might want to call on U.S. troops for help. The problem was that those forces were due to be withdrawn. Marshall agreed to look into the matter and promised to see what he could do.27 By that time a Special Procedures Group in the CIA “spread money to various Italian centrist parties” to redress some of the imbalance, and such operations were no doubt used elsewhere as well.28
To add spice to the mix, former U.S. undersecretary of state Sumner Welles, who was visiting Italy, suggested in a radio interview (correctly) that the PCI was supported by the Soviet Union and (also true) that it had a large cache of arms. The implication was that the Communists were intent on revolution. Communist boss Togliatti, responding with a vitriolic attack, seemed to confirm such suspicions. At any rate, De Gasperi decided that he would point to “American demands” as a pretext to exclude the Communists from the new government announced on May 31. Stalin was infuriated, all the more so since only weeks before the Communists in France had also been dropped from the cabinet.29
For the 1948 elections, the Italian Communists joined a united Left, which obtained 31 percent of the vote. The Christian Democrats did far better and took 48.5 percent. For the next generation, the PCI was stuck at just over 20 percent of popular support and was more or less permanently excluded from government.30 When the Marshall Plan finally came along, Togliatti denounced it heartily, but it was the American support that helped to turn things around in Italy.
The Soviet Union could not compete on the aid front, though it generously funded the PCI. In late 1947, when visiting Italian Communists had asked Stalin for $600,000 to cover propaganda costs, the Boss was ready to hand it over, then and there, in two large sacks. It was eventually delivered in a more seemly fashion.31 From 1948 onward, Moscow organized systematic contributions and pressed Communists who were in power in Europe, and eventually also China, to pitch in. On January 17, 1950, the Soviet Politburo created a special fund. It donated 40 to 50 percent, and the other Communist countries gave 8 to 10 percent each. In 1950 just over $2 million went to Communists in Austria, France, Finland, and Italy. As the amounts went up, contributors complained, so the USSR gradually assumed a larger share. The flow of money continued into the 1970s, a part of the Stalin legacy rarely acknowledged.32