... alliance with others at all levels, loyal to the yet-unwritten democratic constitution) and explained why the most persuasive evidence points the finger at Moscow itself. The Soviets, we saw, had excellent reasons for commanding and supporting the Switch.

The last remaining question before we tie all this today’s politics is an earthy political question: How did Togliatti pull it off?
The Switch worked. The party became a central player in Italy’s post-War democracy, governing important regions and cities, participating with robust appetite in the spoils system, coming close to governing the country with the Christian Democrats in the 1970s and eventually transforming itself into a party that was welcomed in both the Socialist International and post-Mani pulite governing coalitions. How did Togliatti achieve his stunning success in the face of the daunting odds against him in 1944?
Part of the answer lies with some distinguished non-revolutionary militants who were ready to take leadership roles. (We will soon meet two great emblematic figures of the two main branches of this current, Giorgio Amendola and Giorgio Napolitano.) But in 1944, Togliatti still faced an imposing body of militants, almost all in the North, who felt that the moment of revolution had come. A ruined Italy was the perfect arena (forget Marx here) for the move they had been awaiting. Only the Communists among the Italian forces on the ground were well-organized, with cadre trained in both warfare and the organization of civilian rule. They were in de facto control of many cities and towns in the North. (For the flavor of these days in Ferrara, read Giorgio Bassanio’s short stories.) They were armed and the arms could point in any direction they chose.
But they backed down and Togliatti imposed his new order. The crucial factor in this political victory could never be openly acknowledged by Togliatti, but it is clear that he allowed thousands of militants to believe that the Salerno Switch was only a tactic, a temporary measure to fool the Allies and to prepare the propitious moment. They were instructed, or thought they were instructed, to bury their arms, well oiled and wrapped, in the hills. So the reason for the Switch we rejected earlier (that it truly was mere tactics) was transformed into an instrument for gaining rank and file compliance. Decades later, Italian authorities were still finding some of these arms caches. (Most assertions of an important role played by Americans in Italy in the last 50 years have been exaggerated or imagined. In this case, however, U.S. security agencies actually did deliver useful and usually correct information to Italy about these caches.) As the revolutionaries aged, the challenges to Togliatti and his successors waned, but the occasional use of Togliatti’s war-time code name, Ercole and Gian Carlo Pajetta’s insistence on wearing his partisan beret on the stand at party congresses were reminders of what some saw as a revolution betrayed, the missed opportunity to translate the armed partisans into armed revolutionaries.
In his 1997 book, “Lavoro riservato,” Corriere della Sera journalist Maurizio Caprara showed that the party was still operating security services, messenger services, and protecting its leaders as though it were an armed clandestine movement…in the 1970s. Despite these vestiges, the path to today had been cleared. Next week we’ll meet an entirely different breed of Communist, one who is, for starters, non-Marxist.