Dissidents in Red

Khrushchev's new python policy--embrace, constrict and devour--was such a change in Communist tactics that it forced the rest of the world to find new responses. But if it thus posed difficulty for everybody else, it also raised a few heartburns among the Communists themselves. The trouble was most apparent in Italy, which has the largest Communist Party outside Communist territory. In Rome last week 500 Reds, wearing red scarves and calling themselves Democratic Communists, marched through the streets shouting protests against the "soft" leadership of Palmiro Togliatti.

In Rome's swank Parioli district they gathered in a movie theater in response to a call from 39 Communist leaders, mostly onetime partisan fighters in World War II (including five expelled from the party by Togliatti and 14 with expulsions pending). These were the militants: they had read their Marx and Lenin; they believe in the inevitability of violence. They issued a manifesto accusing the party directorate of abandoning the Marxist-Leninist line, of giving up the fight against capitalism and of behaving not like revolutionaries, but like reformed Socialists who believe that Socialism may be attained by parliamentary means. Recalled the 39: "During that period after the war, when some of our comrades tried to collaborate with other parties, they . . . were unable to modify in any way the social structure of Italy."

Disavowing the idea of forming a breakaway group, the dissidents said their immediate aim was to force the party to convoke an all-Italy congress at which Togliatti's leadership would be tested by vote. But Togliatti, due back from Moscow where he had enthusiastically endorsed the Khrushchev line (a confirmation of his longtime policy in Italy), was more firmly entrenched in the leadership than ever before. The old militants were naive indeed if they thought Communist policy could change from the bottom, not the top.

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