"Revenge," Italy's late King Victor Emmanuel III once said, "is a dish that should be eaten cold." Palmiro Togliatti, kingpin of Italy's Communists, followed this royal precept last week when it came time to punish a rebel in his court.
The offender was Comrade Pietro Secchia, the party's deputy secretary general and one of Togliatti's two topmost lieutenants. As chief of the party's organizational apparatus, and the late Lavrenty Beria's representative in Italy, Moscow-trained Comrade Secchia had long possessed authority, secret dossiers and generous allocations of funds with which to build a...
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