Stalin and Togliatti : Italy and the origins of the Cold War /

The first major biography of Palmiro Togliatti (1893-1964), for nearly four decades the leader of the Italian Communist Party, appeared in Italian in 1996 and in English translation in 2008 (Palmiro Togliatti: A Biography, by Aldo Agosti; CH, Oct'09, 47-1072). Agosti's access to Soviet archives persuaded him that Togliatti resisted Soviet (and especially Stalin's) leadership and that Togliatti was a convinced guarantor of the Italian republican order. Agarossi and the late Zaslavsky (d. 2009), professors of history and political sociology, respectively, in Rome, also accessed archives for the Stalin era. Their conclusions, originally published in Italian in 1997, favor the argument that the Cold War was inevitable and that Stalin merely held in abeyance his conviction that war between the rival systems was also inevitable. In the meantime, they argue, Stalin privileged reinforcement of Soviet power in Central and Eastern Europe, sacrificing whatever opportunity may have existed for the success of communism in Italy. Hence Togliatti was, in their view, a most faithful representative of Stalin and dependent upon Soviet instructions. Based not upon republican conviction, Togliatti's goal was "installation of a Soviet-type regime" in Italy. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. N. Greene Wesleyan University