Still Stalin

>The Radio Warsaw disk jockey obviously did not know the score. Thoughtlessly he played a cantata by Soviet Composer Aram Khachaturian written in praise of Joseph Stalin. Last week the square deejay lost his job. > In Russia, a soccer match between Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad) and Tiflis, capital of Stalin's native Georgia, was called off by officials who feared that pro-Stalin Tiflis fans would riot at the sight of Volgograd jerseys.

From East Berlin's Stalinallee to a Paris suburb's Rue Staline,* street signs and statues last week were torn down as Khrushchev's destalinization drive continued. The campaign proceeded without much opposition. An exception was Italy, where Stalin's second death was the center of debate and confusion within the largest Communist party in the West.

Reporting blandly to the party's Central Committee, Red Chief Palmiro Togliatti backed Khrushchev, denounced Stalin's tyranny as "a terrible tragedy," but confessed himself puzzled that the name of Stalingrad had been changed, "because millions of people associate that name with the famous battle that was the turning point of World War II." Moscow, Togliatti added plaintively, "should take into account popular sentiment in capitalist countries and should not insist on what is not absolutely necessary."

Most serious problem for Togliatti: a revolt by a powerful faction of young "renovators," who demand greater freedom from Moscow, more democracy inside the Italian party, a special party congress to debate Togliatti's tarnished policies. It remained for crusty Communist Senator Umberto Terracini to raise the question that was in the minds of Communists and anti-Communists the world over. Noting that Khrushchev himself was long a member of Stalin's clique, Terracini asked whether new denunciations in the future "might not sweep away Comrade Khrushchev himself."

*In Ivry-sur-Seine (constituency of French Communist Chief Maurice Thorez), where the suburb's Red mayor changed the street to Rue Lenine.

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