... still-to-be-written constitution and the conversion of a hard, combative Fascist-era movement into a mass party open to collaboration, even coalition, with other parties. Togliatti’s success was breathtaking.

He even started by holding important ministerial portfolios in the interim government chosen by Marshal Badoglio, the first Parri government and under De Gasperi until 1947. He helped write the constitution. The party became the largest Communist party outside the Communist bloc. The acceptance into Italian democracy—short, of course, of including the PCI in any governing coalitions until after the Cold War—was so complete that Togliatti’s former mistress would one day be elected president of the Chamber of Deputies.
Why did it happen? Why did Togliatti impose this dramatic change-of-course on a party that was quite unprepared for it? Last week we considered two possibilities—that it was just a short-term tactical maneuver and that Togliatti over-estimated both his electoral strength and the ease of patching together a fresh alliance with the Socialists. There were, of course, many factors, both Italian and Soviet, that were part of the mix, including, undoubtedly, Togliatti’s own assessment of the possibilities in an Italy he no longer knew well after his long absence.
But one factor loomed over all others. The Soviets were clearly calling the shots at this moment. Togliatti was carrying orders from Stalin (probably delivered personally) that were the prerequisite for his making the trip. All subsequent documentation supports the idea that in 1944, Stalin was determined to avoid alarming the Western allies. He needed the kind of warm trust that Roosevelt gave him, not the deep suspicion that glowered beneath Churchill’s brow. Soviet ambitions focused on contiguous Eastern Europe, a much grander prize than the fomenting of a very uncertain uprising in Italy which, in the unlikely event that would succeed, would produce a new Red state that would be horrendously difficult to control. It would confirm the worst fears of the now-alarmed Western allies, who would see it as a deadly challenge in an area they were suffering to liberate. Stalin’s post-War territorial ambitions, which were almost effortlessly achieved, would have been wrecked on the shoals of the Italian peninsula. On the other hand, those same ambitions would be significantly furthered by an example of a democratic, “housebroken” party in the West. The world leader of revolutionary Communism had the strongest need to abort any revolution in Italy.

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We note with satisfaction the final passage into law, after having been sent back to Parliament by President Ciampi, of the legge Pecorella, restricting the power of magistrates to appeal acquittals. Such appeal is still permitted where “exceptional” (new?) proof is said to exist and one must worry about the use that will be made of this loophole. Nonetheless, the proof of the importance of the change is the lament it generated in some of the magistracy and some of the Left. But many years after any Berlusconi cronies who might benefit from the change have been gone and forgotten, citizens trapped in the still-hideous coils of Italian justice will benefit from this reduction in magistrates’ power to persecute, while the power to prosecute remains robust.