Delayed Fusion

During a Roman heat wave, Italy's Socialists sweated out fusion in the imposing Aula Magna of the Collegio Romano. There hundreds of Socialists gathered for their first Congress since Mussolini suppressed their party (1926).

For fusion with the Communist Party was Italy's No. 1 Socialist, Vice Premier Pietro Nenni, elegant in dapper grey trousers and an ivory-toned monogrammed shirt. Cried he: "Any policy not based on unity of the working classes will gradually lead our country and our party to slip from a revolutionary position to that of mere reform. . . . We are today 700,000 Socialists. When we shall have united with the Communists and formed a new unified party, we must not, however, renounce our Socialism. . . . Perhaps two generations from now differences between Socialists and Communists will have disappeared."

Rift in the Ranks? Against fusion and Nenni were the highly respected right-wing Socialist delegates, Giuseppe Saragat (proletarian in suspenders and a cheap cotton shirt open at the neck) and Novelist Ignazio Silone (Fontamara). Cried Saragat: "It is not by chance that the slogan of 'fusion' is launched simultaneously from Norway to Italy. . . . Russia seeks guarantees for herself through territorial conquest and creation of buffer states. ... If socialism renounces its complete autonomy, the interests of the working class will be subordinated to the interest of one state. ... To speak of fusion ... is to cause a possible rift in the ranks of the Socialist Party."

When the vote was announced, 70% of the delegates were for fusion. But now that he had the profusion majority vote in his pocket, shrewd Pietro Nenni remarked that there was really no hurry about fusion, that Socialists must first make sure that the Communists would not swallow them up.

Uprising in the North? Meanwhile, in Milan, the ganglion of Italy's leftist political life, there were rumors of a Communist uprising after A.M.G. pulls out of Italy next month. One Allied officer reported that the Allied intelligence services had learned the date set by the Communists--Oct. 17.

Partisans had done an impressive job in preparing for the German collapse and organizing North Italy afterwards. But they had also carried on an unflagging terror campaign. In the streets of Milan, alleged Fascists or sympathizers were rubbed out at the rate of 30 or 40 a night. When Allied authorities ordered arms surrendered, thousands of pro-Communist Partisans left Milan and took to the countryside, where they still continue their unlawful activities (see cut).

As reprisal against Allied countermeasures, strikes had flared periodically in the north. In Trieste all work had stopped when local Communists were arrested. The Venice area had been tied up by a general strike in protest against an Allied-nominated committee to purge Fascists. The Partisans preferred to handle the job their own way.

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