Peace, It's Temporary

In Rome's huge Adriano theater, where Mussolini once harangued his Fascist conventions, some 1,200 hand-picked delegates and 1,600 carefully screened guests gathered one day last week for a conference of the biggest Communist Party outside the Iron Curtain. Draped in the red, white and green of Italy's flag, a hammer and sickle hung dramatically from a wall. In a huge banner strung above the rostrum, the key word was pace--peace. But within Italy's Communist Party, there was no pace, only the profession of it. Over the smoke and babble of the meeting hall floated the scent of trouble.

Palmiro Togliatti, the glib, tough Moscow darling who bosses Italy's Reds, well knew that discontent with his rule was stirring the top of his hierarchy. A hardcore of "activists" murmur increasingly against Togliatti's blue-suit Communism --his policy of seeking respectability and talking popular front. Lately things have not been going Togliatti's way. The Communists, who prate of their superior morality, were stunned by the sex scandal of their noblest Roman politico, Giuseppe Sotgiu; they have been hurt by Premier Mario Scelba's increasing pressure on the sources of their economic wealth; they have been stung by the taunting, placard-plastering activity of Edgardo Sogno (TIME, Nov. 1). The party itself, claiming 2,500,000 members, admits to a fall-off of 12,000 Young Communists membership in the past year.

Cells Beside Towers. According to the party's constitution, it was time for a national party congress. Togliatti instead summoned only a party "conference," meaning that delegates were picked from above, not elected from below: he was obviously afraid of what "free democratic discussions" among the rank and file might produce. Leader Togliatti himself opened the meeting with a three-hour speech, artfully mixing sweet talk and arm-waving bombast. On the platform beside him sat the party's two deputy secretary generals, rivals in the hierarchy and totally unlike in manner and makeup: scholarly Party Dogmatist Pietro Secchia, 51, who coined the slogan, "A Communist cell beside every church tower in Italy"; and impetuous Luigi Longo, 54, the party's blustering, street-fighting "man of action." They listened to Togliatti's speech with a minimum of enthusiasm, but five days later Secchia joined conspicuously in the usual sycophantic tributes to Togliatti.

Plainly the word had come down, presumably from Moscow, that there must be no open signs of internal split. That word did not stop the circulation among delegates and guests of an anonymous pamphlet vigorously condemning Togliatti for "personal rule and political tyranny." It accused the party leadership of repudiating the revolutionary class struggle, and of collaborating with political bourgeois forces in creating "parliamentary illusions. Our party press has become deceitful and flattering. The cadres are dominated by opportunism, ambition, conformism and fear."

Suppressed Demands. The sentiments were those that Party Dogmatist Secchia is known to hold; the words were probably those of his male secretary and close confidant, Aldo Seniga. The letter itself was reportedly inspired by Bruno Fortichiari, one of the founders of Italian Communism, now 62 and out of favor with Togliatti's blue-suit Communists for his long insistence on militant tactics. Several days before the conference opened, Secretary Seniga suddenly disappeared. Apparently afraid that he might turn up somewhere with a damaging story, the Communists characteristically accused him of absconding with 8,000,000 lire and some classified party documents.

The spread of dissent, wide as it was, apparently was not strong enough to break Togliatti's hold. In the course of the conference, he summoned party brass into a private meeting to consider disciplinary measures against the rebels, Pietro Secchia among them. Some demanded expulsion from the party, but Togliatti talked Secchia into suppressing his demands for sterner policies in return for a promise of no reprisals against the rebels. Then, Palmiro Togliatti strutted back into public view to pretend, by sarcasm and ridicule, that such a thing as dissent had never existed. "Comic . . . ridiculous . . . grotesque," said Togliatti. "These reports only show how stupid our enemies are. We are glad of this because stupid enemies are easier to fight than intelligent enemies." The delegates roared their approval, and 1,200 hands voted their endorsement of the leadership of Palmiro Togliatti. Outwardly, at least, the comrades were all at pace--for now.

In Marcedusa (pop. 1,279) m the poverty-stricken central region of Calabria, the Communist mayor and the Communist council have switched in a body to the Christian Democrats.

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