COMMUNISTS IN ITALY

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26353, 22 February 1951, Page 7

COMMUNISTS IN ITALY

Wide Split Seen In Party

(Rec. 9 p.m.) LONDON, Feb. 21. Further evidence of a widespread split in the Italian Communist Party following the recent resignations” of the Communist deputies, Messrs Valdo Magptuni and Aldo Cucchi, comes from many centres in Italy. Correspondents in Rome say that more than 200 Cominunlsts and fellow travellers have resigned in the town of Gravina, near Bari, nine Communists in Calabria have handed in their patty cards, saying that they “did not want to belong to organisations sponsoring an invasion of Italy oy Soviet troops,” and 31) former partisans in Eastern Emilia walked out of the Communist-controlled National Association of Italian Partisans "lor its abuse against Magnani and ( Cucchi, two heroes of the resistance." Six other association leaders with headquarters in Communist strongholds In the north of Italy have offered to support Messrs Magnani and Cucchi in their stand against the Communist Party’s refusal to oppos? the invasion of Italian soil by Russia. Twenty Communist Party members in Asti, in Piedmont, refused to renew their membership, and similar revolts are reported from farming provinces, where Communists have been making special efforts to' win over the peasants. The Rome correspondent of the "Daily Telegraph” says it is stated in Turin that many workers in factories there are ready to break away trom the party as soon as the revolt consolidates and grows. "Communists are reacting with terrorist methods against; sympathisers with a deviationist trend. Since the resignations of Messrs Magnani and Cucchi the police have found an increasing number of caches of hidden arms in factories in Genoa, Turin. Milan, and Rome. It is thought that information has been given to the police by those who have defected.’ The "Daily Telegraph" in a leading article says: "The wider significance of these defections lies in the challenge they make to every professing Communist outside Russia, None can escape choice between obedience to the Kremlin and loyalty to his own country. To have precipitated this salutary conflict is the first important achievement of the free world’s resolve to arm itself against Soviet expansionism. For in giving teeth to this resolve it has forced the Kremlin agents in every threatened country to declare themselves."

The “Glasgow Herald" says that if events in Italy are added to the indications of dissension in Communist parties behind the Iron Curtain “there is some moderate comfort in the knowledge that all is not well with the Kremlin and its friends.”