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¶ In 1929 Moscow ordered Palmiro Togliatti, who was then outside the country, to step up agitation in Italy. Togliatti knew that nothing much could be done under the careful watch of the Fascist police. But he seized the occasion to order four of his rivals in the Italian party to go in and get to work. Three refused, knowing that the mission was hopeless, and were expelled from the party. The fourth, a woman, obeyed and was caught by the OVRA. These maneuvers not only kept Togliatti in good standing with Moscow but made him—by a process of elimination—the No. 1 Italian Communist.
¶ One piquant item dealt with sex among Communist bigwigs—particularly buxom Nilde Jotti, who is currently Togliatti's mistress, but had a long career in Red-style amore before that. The article made instructive reading at a time when the Communists, exploiting the Montesi scandal, have been rending the air with their own pretensions to morality.
Begun on a shoestring, Pace e Libertà got off to a slow start, but now is growing by leaps and bounds. Its paid circulation is 70,000, and an almost equal number of copies are distributed free, many of them to the Communists themselves. Recently Sogno got enough funds to buy up the entire poster space in Rome for five days, and put up 6,000 posters devoted to the past of Italy's top Communists. At first, the Reds said disdainfully that they would not reply to such "drivel," but lately they have felt driven to long and unconvincing refutations. Palmiro Togliatti, once quick to sue defamers, has so far not sued Edgardo Sogno—a fact which convinces innumerable Italians that Sogno's statements are essentially correct.
Demand for the Facts. By itself, Sogno's campaign is probably not enough to inflict mortal wounds on Italian Communism. But it may be a sign of a belatedly turning tide. Dozens of Communists in the Chamber and Senate, accused of various crimes (including the murder of rivals and wholesale robbery during the upheavals of the liberation), are unmolested because the Parliament as a whole has been reluctant to lift their parliamentary immunity: since the war hundreds of judicial requests for action against Communist M.P.s have been blocked. Said an editorial in Il Borghese: "This is the first time since the war that public attention has been focused on Communist scandals. Hundreds of Red mayors have been caught stealing. Organizations for espionage for Russia have been uncovered. There have been changes of wives among Communist leaders. And for some reason the public has not been interested." If Italian newspapers and Italian politicians were to show some of Sogno's spunk, the problem of interesting the public might turn out to be not nearly so difficult.