The Woodrow Wilson Center Press
Stalin and Togliatti: Italy and the Origins of the Cold War
Elena Agarossi and Victor Zaslavsky
Related Topics: Cold War, Europe
Stalin and Togliatti reveals the dependence of the Italian Communist Party on Soviet decisionmaking in the early Cold War and the willingness of Stalin to sacrifice the interests of the Italian Communist Party to Soviet foreign interests. It explores the connection between the domestic Italian politics and the international affairs during the final phases of the Second World War and in the first years of the Cold War.
The authors employ previously classified documents in Russian and Italian archives, including reports to Stalin on the virtually daily meetings of Palmiro Togliatti, head of the Italian Communist Party, with Soviet diplomats. This recent, post-revisionist scholarship underscores the role of Stalin's ambitions and their incompatibility with liberal-democratic systems in the development of the Cold War. Stalin and Togliatti come out as shrewd politicians, implacable enemies of the capitalist West, yet acutely aware of the limits of their power.
Stalin and Togliatti is a translation and expansion of a prizewinning book published in Italian in 1997 and updated in 2007.
What People are Saying
"The book has a sense of history in the making: it combines at times gripping narrative with sober synopses of complicated and controversial policies."—Carl Levy, Department of Politics, University of London
"The scholarship that went into this work is analytically excellent and rigorous, and superior to anything that exists on the connections between Italian communists and Moscow in the English-language historiography."—Vladislav Zubok, Temple University
Chapter List
Series Preface
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
1. The Soviet Union under Stalin and the International Communist Movement
2. Soviet Plans for the Postwar European Order
3. The Italian Communist Party: A Party of Government and of Opposition
4. The Italian Communist Party, Italian Foreign Policy, and the Problem of Trieste
5. The Italian Communist Party and Italian Prisoners of War in the USSR
6. The Roots of Communist Autarchy and the Rejection of the Marshall Plan
7. From Collaboration to Confrontation
8. Armed Insurrection and the 1948 elections
9. The Italian Communist Party and Stalin's Last Years Conclusions Index
