Split

After months of crisis, Socialist delegates from all over Italy gathered last week at their 28th National Socialist Congress in Rome to choose between 1) Communism, which is Socialism's most extreme form, and 2) moderate Socialism, which is democracy's most extreme compromise. Communism won.

For nearly two years, Socialist Boss Pietro Nenni had carried on his policy of collaboration with the Communists. Eventually it must lead to complete fusion, but Nenni first needed a showdown with the anti-Communist elements in his party. As the Congress opened last week, Communist observer Umberto Terracini put it this way: "We have come here as to the house of a brother in need who is entering the crisis of a most grave sickness and who must make an irrevocable decision."

TIME Correspondent Emmet Hughes reported how that decision was reached:

In Rome University's august Aula Magna (Great Hall), eleven spotlights probed the platform where Socialist leaders fretfully shuffled back & forth under a huge wooden banner of a hammer and sickle and book (the Italian Socialist emblem). Delegates, observers and guests, filling the unheated auditorium to capacity, shivered in their overcoats. Pietro Nenni sat snugly at the rear of the platform, carefully concealed from view by a bowl of bright red carnations.

Fear & Terrorism. The first dramatic moment of the dramatic session came when Matteo Matteotti, 25, son of Italy's famous anti-Fascist martyr (TIME, Aug. 7, 1944), moved to the speaker's microphone. His wide mouth and slightly jutting jaw firmly set, his deep-set eyes solemn and stern, young Matteotti charged Nenni's party leadership with spreading "fear and terrorism," and denounced the Congress as illegal. The delegates rose and screamed: "Degenerate son!" But Matteotti doggedly finished his job, handed the presiding officer what he called documentation proving Nenni's terroristic methods, and calmly walked off the platform and out of the Congress. With him, the whole Iniziativa Socialista bloc of ardent young Trotskyites bolted the party.

A few minutes later, greeted by a standing ovation, Nenni's round, smiling face emerged from behind the carnations. In a grey chalk-stripe suit with a tan shirt and a red silk tie, carefully disarranged to avoid any appearance of bourgeois neatness, he spent two hours and twelve minutes in passionate exhortation. As Nenni's voice rose & fell in practiced intonation, while he raised a warning finger, clenched his right fist, grandly embraced Congress in widespread arms, or modestly spread his long, strong fingers against his chest in a self-effacing gesture, men & women stared seriously and intensely, many with mouths agape as if to suck in the meaning of the precious words.

The words were eloquent, but studded with cliches about unity of the proletariat, relentless class struggle, economic as well as political liberty. Nenni carefully balanced a tribute to British Socialism with a salute to the Russian Revolution. The audience greeted the first silently and the second with wild applause.

Figure from the Past. Into the second day's fray shuffled a bizarre figure out of Socialism's pre-Fascist past. She was tiny (5 ft.), pale Angelica Balabanov, leftist Socialist refugee from the Soviet Union, who in Italy had once been the friend and close associate of Benito Mussolini in his Socialist days. She has remained one of Italian Socialism's most legendary heroines. Said Balabanov: "I left Russia when I realized that the Revolution had been converted into a matter of political exploitation."* The delegates reacted as if they had been lashed, and for 30 minutes shouts of "Viva la Russia!" rose to the roof. Then Balabanov continued: "You are wasting time trying to interrupt me. Communists and reactionaries have been trying to do that for 45 years, and haven't succeeded yet." Amidst a crescendo of cries of "Viva la Russia!" she concluded: "Viva il Socialismo Internazionale, viva il Socialismo Italiano!"

Then it was time for Giuseppe Saragat, sometimes called the Leon Blum of Italy, and Nenni's bitterest enemy. He had come to secede. In a strong, clear voice he deplored "this moment of grief." He said: "Our party has fallen into the hands of men who no longer believe in its historical function as an independent party. If we had one hope in a thousand that we could redirect the present Socialist Party towards its true role, we would remain. This hope we do not have. We must give the laboring masses a true Socialist Party which can be their faithful instrument. We are now prepared to create that instrument in a new party."

Later, Saragat's and Matteotti's rebels joined forces in an "Anti-Congress," held in the magnificent, 17th Century Palazzo Barberini (former residence of U.S. Ambassador Alexander C. Kirk). The most important catch of the Nenni Socialists was Novelist Ignazio Silone (Bread and Wine), who has long opposed fusion with the Communists, but apparently could not bring him,self to split with his old party. Saragat succinctly summed up his own reasons for splitting: "I would infinitely prefer to side with our Socialist Comrade Attlee than with Comrade Tito." Said Nenni: "What has happened is an episode in the war of the classes, which is approaching a vaster battle, which will not only be Socialist, but of all laborers for the conquest of the earth."

* A typical incident leading to that realization occurred in the early '205 in Kiev (where Comrade Balabanov, then a Secretary in the Communist International, was living). A mysterious Count Pirro appeared as "Brazilian Ambassador," let it be known that he would hire only non-Bolsheviks for his consular staff, that he would grant Brazilian passports to anyone wanting to leave Russia for political reasons. Anti-Communists flocked to his office, and were promptly arrested by the Cheka. Pirro himself was a Cheka agent. Outraged by such police methods, Balabanov went straight to Lenin to protest. She reports in her memoirs (My Life as a Rebel). "Lenin looked at me with an expression which was more sad than sardonic. 'Comrade Angelica,' he said, 'what use can life make of you?' "

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