ITALY: Comeback

Palmiro Togliatti was back. Three months after his attempted assassination (TIME, July 26), he still looked pale; his voice no longer seemed to carry the old, metallic ring. When Togliatti appeared at a Communist rally in Rome last week, a plump countrywoman wiped her eyes. "Poor dear," she said. "He must still be ill, he's not his old self yet."

People's Day. Politically, Togliatti was quite himself. In his absence, tough, spiteful Luigi Longo had run the Italian Communist Party without any of Togliatti's suave, serge-suited craftiness. Loudly, Longo had threatened insurrection, had ordered unpopular (and unsuccessful) nationwide strikes. At...

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