Peace by Piece

When Italy's Left-Wing Socialist Leader Pietro Nenni visited Moscow last July, he was granted a rare privilege: a personal interview with Stalin. Back home, Nenni became the first salesman to peddle the Kremlin's bright new line of peace goods. He offered it first to shrewd, 71-year-old Premier Alcide de Gasperi. When DeGasperi refused even to finger the wares from Moscow, Nenni last week took them to the floor of Italy's Chamber of Deputies.

Like any good huckster, Nenni began by disclaiming any gross material interest in the sale. He was not there "by order of Stalin," he said, but merely to report "conversations that have the advantage of being genuine." Then, smoothly, he began to play upon the fears of his audience: "The Kennan policy of containment . . . has failed." The alternative is "understanding or a third world war ... or maybe 30 years of cold war, which would be just as fatal." Echoing Malenkov, Nenni said that Russia "has no designs of conquest, since she considers her own security guaranteed." Then he had a quote from Stalin: "Our Revolution is not for export." At that point, amidst genuine laughter, someone shouted: "Mussolini said that, too."

Out of his carpet bag, Nenni now produced his samples: "Italian socialists ask for Italian initiative in order to improve relations with Russia by means of a bilateral non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union."

Next day, in case anyone should think that Nenni's effort did not have full Kremlin backing, Communist Leader Palmiro Togliatti, in his best double-breasted blue suit, told the deputies that Europe must choose between "a strong and friendly Russia in a prodigious moral and material ascendancy, which offers peace and well being to the entire world, and a barbarous America which openly prepares for war . . . The Italian government, if it is not completely blind, should establish profitable contacts with the Soviet bloc."

Consumer resistance now raised itself. Premier DeGasperi took the floor to speak for two hours. He began with a Ciceronian dunque (Now then) and went on to point out what had happened to other nations with which Russia had signed non-aggression pacts. He listed them off--Finland, Poland, Rumania, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania--and then, while the Communist benches sat silently, he carefully gave dates and detail of how Russia had later invaded or occupied them all.

In other words, for Huckster Nenni: No Sale.

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