Miss Pravda, 1952

As Rome correspondent for Pravda, stout, blonde Olga Cecetkina, 50, was like no other foreign reporter in Italy. She traveled up & down the country making pro-Communist speeches, filed stores to Moscow that were often pure fiction. Even when she reported speeches by Italian Communist Leader Palmiro Togliatti, said the Italian government, she added declarations that Togliatti never made. According to Correspondent Cecetkina, Togliatti said: "The only leaders we obey are Stalin and his associates." Actually, even the government agreed that Togliatti is too smart a politician to say anything like that to an Italian audience. Last week the Italian government finally booted Correspondent Cecetkina out of the country. Said the Foreign Office: "[This isj no more than a legitimate measure by a government which rigorously respects the freedom of the press, but which can no longer tolerate the systematic discrediting by a journalist of a country in which she is a guest, and in which she had been living in democratic freedom."

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