Stalin and Togliatti

Elena Agarossi is Professor of Contemporary History at the Scuola Superiore di Pubblica Amministrazione in Rome and member of the Wilson Center European Alumni Association. Victor Zaslavsky, who died late in 2009, was Professor of Political Sociology at the Free International University for Social Sciences in Rome.

"The book's merits include putting the Italian story fully within the context of the Cold War, describing in detail the behind-the-scenes maneuvering to mask Palmiro Togliatti's true intentions, clarifying questions of Italian communist policy that have been debated in the past, and illustrating Antonio Gramsci's cultural 'hegemony' in action."—Spencer Scala, Slavic Review "The revision and translation of a much-debated study that was published in two Italian editions in 1997 and 2007, this volume represents the life achievement of two influential historians of Cold War Italy . . . [M]eticulous research."—Dario Gaggio, Journal of Modern History "Agarossi and Zaslavsky fill in details on Togliatti's relations with Stalin during the early years of the Cold War . . . The authors convincingly show how subservient Togliatti was to the USSR in the late 1940s and early 1950s."—Alexander De Grand, The Historian "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