Palmiro's Prophecy

As leader of Italy's 7,700,000 Communist voters, Palmiro Togliatti's allegiance was nominally and often vociferously to Moscow. But Togliatti was also the most supple of politicians, and as such he increasingly sought respectability among the voters at home. When he died last month in the Crimea following a stroke, it seemed that Togliatti's dilemma had gone to the grave with him unresolved. Not so.

Last week both Italy and the Communist world reverberated to Togliatti's last words: a wide-ranging, 4,500-word memorandum prepared shortly before he was stricken. It covered not only his relations with Moscow but also his prophecies for the future of Communism in Italy. He took Nikita Khrushchev sternly to task for his heavy-handed tactics in the ideological dispute with Red China, decried the slowness with which the Soviet Union has moved in eradicating the "regime of restrictions and suppression of democratic and personal freedom introduced by Stalin." He vigorously defended the independence of national Communist parties while rejecting any return to the monolithic control desired by Khrushchev.

In order to win over the Catholic peasantry and workers of Italy, said Togliatti, a new approach must be devised. "For this purpose," said Togliatti with heretical frankness, "the old atheist propaganda is of no use." Another fat target for Communist penetration is the realm of literature, art and science, where "the doors are wide open. In the capitalist world, in fact, such conditions are being created as to destroy the liberty of intellectual life. We must become the champions of intellectual liberty, of free artistic creation and of scientific progress."

In Italy at least, Togliatti's aims were quickly taken up. Last week his successor, tough ex-Partisan Luigi Longo, 64, went on television to appeal to the Catholics of Italy. Said he: "We hold it unjust to consider religion merely as an instrument of the conservative classes." If Togliatti's will is properly probated, the Italian Communist Party could very well find a place in some future government.

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