Ideology & Practice

The last Russian chief of state to visit Italy arrived in danger of assassi nation, spent the entire time in a secluded castle near Turin and never even got to Rome. That was in 1909, and Czar Nicholas II had plenty to fear from the Italian left. Last week, as So viet President Nikolai Podgorny began a week-long tour of Italy, the climate was different. Italy, after all, has the West's largest Communist Party (1,541,000 members), and one Italian in four votes Communist in national elections. Podgorny's route was punctuated by a few bomb blasts--including one that wrecked Rome's Communist headquarters--but for the most part he was warmly received. The warmest welcome of all came from Italy's businessmen, who are looking ever more intently toward Russia for new markets. "Wherever We Can."Italian businessmen have a long tradition of separating their personal ideologies from their public practices. Thus, at a state dinner in Rome's tapestry-hung Quirinale Palace, Podgorny broke bread and chatted ami- ably with Fiat's Gianni Agnelli, whose company's struggle with Communist trade unions embittered the immediate postwar years; with Giorgio Valerio, the head of Montecatini-Edison, the electric giant, whose hatred for the left is so virulent that he considered the center-left coalition in Italy little short of treason; and with such other capitalist barons as Olivetti's Aurelio Peccei, E.N.I.'s Marcello Boldrini and Finsider's Ernesto Manuelli. All of them already deal with the Russians--and all want to do more. "We do business wherever we can," says Valerio. "Why not?"

Podgorny made a few ritualistic cracks about the U.S. in Viet Nam, and Italian President Giuseppe Saragat riposted gently that everyone should seek "mutual understanding." But there were few differences about trade, in which Italy is already heavily involved with the Soviet Union. The Italians did express some concern over their persistent trade deficit with Russia, which ran close to $100 million in 1966 as a result of large imports of Russian crude oil. Italy exported some $80 million (mainly in textiles and machinery) to Russia last year and intends to see that those figures rise as rapidly as possible. To keep the Russians happy, it has also extended them $500 million in credits, more than Italy has given any other country.

Moving Out. Last August, after seven years of negotiations and 50 visits by Soviet delegations, Fiat concluded a contract to build an $880 million auto factory in Togliatti, a Soviet city re-named in memory of Italy's late Communist Party boss. When it is completed in 1972, the plant will produce 600,000 cars a year, and quadruple Russia's auto production. Italy's giant, government-owned petrochemical complex, E.N.I., is negotiating with the Russians to build a natural-gas pipeline from Lvov in the western Ukraine to Trieste to replace the fuel from its nearly depleted natural-gas fields in the Po Valley. Olivetti is also nearing the signing of a major contract under which it will build one factory to produce 150,000 typewriters a year for the Russian market, another to produce 50,000 calculating machines annually.

Podgorny visited the huge industrial complex at Turin, was guest of honor at a gala performance of Rigoletto at La Scala in Milan, presided shortly thereafter at the signing of an official agreement for joint cinema production between the Soviet Union and Italy. He stayed at the Quirinale Palace during his visit to Saragat, but then moved out to take up residence at the Soviet embassy. Reason for the move: this week Podgorny was to become the first Soviet chief of state to visit the Pope, and he wanted to make clear his recognition that the Vatican and Italy are two separate countries. His only chance for material trade with Paul VI rests in the realm of ceremonial gifts. But, if both men are willing, there could be an exchange of significant ideas.

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