58 Facts About Palmiro Togliatti

In 1930, Palmiro Togliatti renounced Italian citizenship, and he became a citizen of the Soviet Union.

Palmiro Togliatti helped launch the left-wing weekly L'Ordine Nuovo in 1919, and he was the editor of Il Comunista starting in 1922.

Palmiro Togliatti was a founding member of the Communist Party of Italy, which was founded as the result of a split from the Italian Socialist Party in 1921.

Palmiro Togliatti was able to avoid the destiny of many of his fellow party members who were arrested only because he was in Moscow at the time.

From 1927 until his death, Palmiro Togliatti was the secretary and leader of the Italian Communist Party, except for the period from 1934 to 1938, during which he served as Italian representative to the Communist International, earning the il giurista del Comintern nickname from Leon Trotsky.

From 1944 to 1945, Palmiro Togliatti held the post of Deputy Prime Minister of Italy, and he was appointed Minister of Justice from 1945 to 1946 in the provisional governments that ruled Italy after the fall of Fascism.

Palmiro Togliatti was a member of the Constituent Assembly of Italy.

Palmiro Togliatti was the first Italian Communist to appear in television debates.

Palmiro Togliatti survived an assassination attempt in 1948, a car accident in 1950, and he died in 1964 during a holiday in Crimea on the Black Sea.

Palmiro Togliatti was born in Genoa into a middle-class family, the third son of two elementary school teachers.

Palmiro Togliatti's father Antonio was an accountant in the public administration, while his mother Teresa Vitale was a teacher.

Palmiro Togliatti was named Palmiro because he was born on Palm Sunday; Togliatti's parents were observant Roman Catholics.

Palmiro Togliatti had one sister, Maria Cristina, and two brothers, Enrico and Eugenio Giuseppe.

Eugenio Giuseppe Palmiro Togliatti became a mathematician and discovered Palmiro Togliatti surfaces.

In 1908, Palmiro Togliatti studied at the Azuni classics high school in Sassari, where he was recognised as the best student in the school.

Palmiro Togliatti enrolled in the faculty of letters and philosophy.

When his father died on 21 January 1911 of cancer, his family ended up in poverty; it was only thanks to a scholarship that Palmiro Togliatti was able to graduate from the University of Turin with a degree in law in 1917.

In 1914, Palmiro Togliatti had entered politics by joining the Italian Socialist Party prior to the First World War, but focused on his studies rather than activism.

The precise intellectual path of the young Palmiro Togliatti is not clear.

In 1917, Palmiro Togliatti was admitted to the official cadet course in Caserta; he passed it but did not obtain the appointment as an officer due to a serious pleurisy that had occurred in the meantime.

Palmiro Togliatti gained the rank of caporale maggiore in health care, and he was discharged in December 1918 at the end of a long leave.

Palmiro Togliatti believed that existing factory councils of workers could be strengthened so that they could become the basis of a communist revolution.

In June 1919, the month following its founding, Gramsci and Palmiro Togliatti pushed out Angelo Tasca and re-focused as a revolutionary voice.

Palmiro Togliatti was a member of the communist faction within the PSI, which was part of the Communist International, commonly known as the Comintern.

Palmiro Togliatti, who was in Moscow as a representative of the party, received the letter, opened it, read it, and decided not to deliver it.

Palmiro Togliatti selected the Fascists and appointed Mussolini as the new prime minister.

In January 1926, Palmiro Togliatti co-authored with Gramsci the thesis of the third congress of the PCd'I.

Palmiro Togliatti was one of few leaders not to be arrested, as he was attending a meeting of the Comintern in Moscow.

In 1927, Palmiro Togliatti was elected as the party's general-secretary in place of Gramsci.

Palmiro Togliatti was aware that the party's clandestine organisation and resistance to fascism would not have been possible without Soviet support, and it was for this reason that he flattened to Stalinist positions.

In later years, Palmiro Togliatti described the manifesto as "a coglioneria".

The party and communist partisans, among others, then went on to play a major role in the Italian resistance movement that led to the fall of the Fascist regime in Italy, and Palmiro Togliatti became a revolutionary constituent and constitutionalist of the Italian Republic, of which he is considered a founding father.

Palmiro Togliatti returned to Italy in March 1944, after 18 years of exile in Switzerland, France, Soviet Union, and Spain where, with the cover name of Alfredo, he represented the Comintern in the Garibaldi Brigades during the Spanish Civil War.

On 2 April 1944, Palmiro Togliatti returned from Moscow to Italy, and led the renamed Italian Communist Party and other political forces to the Svolta di Salerno, variously referred to in English as the Salerno Turn, the Salerno Turning Point, and the U-turn at Salerno, the city where this took place.

Palmiro Togliatti founded a political journal, Rinascita, following his return to Italy in 1944, which he edited until his death.

Later less publicised pardons and releases on parole between 1947 and 1953, when Palmiro Togliatti was no longer the Italian Minister of Justice, further reduced sentences for political crimes committed during the war and turned Italy's amnesty into an amnesia.

In 2015, historian Giuseppe Vacca recounted the significant role that Palmiro Togliatti played in the work of the Constituent Assembly.

Palmiro Togliatti was the only Communist leader to participate in the foundation of a democratic republic according to the canons of a European constitutionalism.

On 24 September 1946, Palmiro Togliatti gave a speech at the municipal theater of Reggio Emilia.

In January 1947, Palmiro Togliatti acknowledged De Gasperi as "the main exponent of the strongest among the popular and democratic parties on which the government will have to be based".

In March 1947, in opposition to the dominant line in his own party, Palmiro Togliatti voted for the inclusion of the Lateran Pacts in the Constitution of Italy, where it became its Article 7.

Palmiro Togliatti said the vote in favour of his party was more due to political responsibility than personal conviction.

Palmiro Togliatti himself was elected to the country's Chamber of Deputies.

On 14 July 1948, at about 11:40 am, Palmiro Togliatti was shot three times, being severely wounded by Antonio Pallante, a neo-fascist student, who had strong anti-communist views and was a militant of the Common Man's Front.

Palmiro Togliatti's life hung in the balance for days and news about his condition was uncertain, causing an acute political crisis in Italy, with civil war and insurrection implications, which included a general strike called by the Italian General Confederation of Labour, as well as portraits of Palmiro Togliatti being brought in during the celebration of the storming of the Bastille and a telegram from Stalin.

Palmiro Togliatti preferred the "Italian Road to Socialism" over a violent revolution, and rejected the concept of an internationally directed movement in favour of one that was both democratically and nationally oriented.

On 22 August 1950, a car accident caused Palmiro Togliatti to crack the frontal bone and fracture a vertebra.

At the time, no one was aware that in October 1950 he had lost consciousness and went into a coma; his doctor suspected that Palmiro Togliatti had been poisoned.

In 1953, Palmiro Togliatti fought against the Scam Law, an electoral legislation passed by the DC-led majority of the time, which aimed at using first-past-the-post to augment its power.

Palmiro Togliatti was re-elected to the Chamber of Deputies, and he remained a member of Parliament until his death in 1964.

Palmiro Togliatti developed a theory of unity in diversity within the Communist parties in all countries, which he outlined in a Rinascita article in December 1961, and named polycentrism.

From 1924 to 1948, Palmiro Togliatti was married to fellow party member and politician Rita Montagnana.

Palmiro Togliatti was a supporter of women's rights, with the Noi donne feminist magazine describing him at his death as "a great supporter of women's emancipation".

Palmiro Togliatti died as a result of a cerebral haemorrhage, while vacationing with his companion Nilde Iotti in Yalta, then in the Soviet Union.

The news of Palmiro Togliatti's death was first given by the country's leading agency ANSA.

The Soviet Russian city of Stavropol-on-Volga, where Palmiro Togliatti had been instrumental in establishing the AutoVAZ automobile manufacturing plant in collaboration with Fiat, was renamed after him in his honor in 1964, after his death.

Palmiro Togliatti's funeral, held on 24 August 1964, was attended by a million and saw much popular participation, comparable to that of Berlinguer years later; about 500,000 people followed Palmiro Togliatti's coffin making its way in Rome.

From 1964 to 2019, Palmiro Togliatti's bibliography included 134 volumes in the most common bibliographic repertoires.