'Il Migliore': the strategist who led Western Europe's largest communist party for forty years
In the 'Yalta memorandum' written on his deathbed, he argued for polycentrism — autonomy from Moscow (1964)
Founder and secretary of the Italian Communist Party. He steered the Comintern Popular Front and, with the 1944 Salerno turn, brought the PCI into the anti-fascist coalition government. On his deathbed, his Yalta memorandum argued for polycentrism, anticipating Eurocommunism.
Career Timeline
- 1921Among the founders of the Italian Communist Party
- 1927–1964Party secretary; builds the PCI into Western Europe's largest communist party
- 1935–1939Comintern executive; guides the Popular Front in the Spanish Civil War
- 1944The Salerno turn: into the anti-fascist coalition government
- 1946–1948Constituent Assembly 'father of the constitution'; survives a 1948 assassination attempt
- 1964Dies at Yalta; his memorandum argues for polycentrism
Related historical events
- 1934.01–07The Fascist Riot of 6 February 1934Reporter on the war question at the Seventh CongressHis report on the preparation of imperialist war was the companion to Dimitrov's and gave the new line its second theoretical pillar.
- 1936–1939The Spanish Civil WarComintern representative in Spain, ErcoliEnforced the Popular Front line on the ground, mediating between the government and the PCE
- 1947–1948The Marshall Plan and the Cold WarPCI opposition to the Marshall Plan and May 1947 expulsion from coalitionTogliatti's PCI opposed the Marshall Plan, and as the Cold War intensified, Prime Minister De Gasperi expelled all PCI ministers from the government in May 1947, the same month Thorez's PCF ministers were removed in France for the same reasons.
The Salerno turn (1944) — a communist party joins an anti-fascist cabinet
In March 1944 Italy was split in three. The south under Allied occupation. The north under the Nazi puppet Salò Republic. And the mountain zones of the north, where communist-led partisans were fighting a grinding guerre.
Palmiro Togliatti, twenty years in Soviet exile, landed in Naples and stunned everyone with his strategic proposal: the PCI would join Marshal Badoglio's anti-fascist cabinet. The monarchy question would be postponed until after the war. The immediate task was to destroy fascism.
This was the Salerno turn (Svolta di Salerno).
Party hardliners were furious: it meant sitting in cabinet with former collaborators. But Togliatti's calculation was cold: (1) avoid an immediate civil war and concentrate all forces against fascism, (2) build the PCI's mass base inside the legal political space, (3) prevent the left from being excluded from the postwar settlement that the monarchy was preparing.
It worked. The PCI grew into Western Europe's largest communist party and Togliatti became one of the 'fathers' of the republican constitution. The clauses the communists won in the Constituent Assembly still form the frame of Italian democracy today.
The Salerno turn has been read both as the forerunner of 1970s Eurocommunism and as the moment the revolution was abandoned. Togliatti's own answer came in his final text, the Yalta memorandum: 'Every country must reach socialism by its own path.'