Palmiro Togliatti

Palmiro Togliatti (26 March 1893 – 21 August 1964) was an Italian politician and leader of the Italian Communist Party from 1927 until his death. He was nicknamed by his supporters Il Migliore ("The Best"). In 1930 he became a citizen of the Soviet Union and later he had a city in the country named after him: Tolyatti.

Togliatti was a founding member of the Communist Party of Italy (Partito Comunista d’Italia, PCI), and from 1927 until his death, he was the Secretary and the undisputed leader of the Italian Communist Party, except for a period from 1934 to 1938 in which he had been the representative in the Comintern, the international organization of the communist parties. After the dissolution of the Comintern in 1943 and the formation of the Cominform in 1947, he refused the post of Secretary General, offered to him directly by Stalin in 1951, preferring to remain at the head of the PCI.

From 1944 to 1945 Togliatti held the post of Deputy Prime Minister and from 1945 to 1946 he was appointed Minister of Justice in the governments that ruled Italy after the fall of Fascism. He was also a member of the Constituent Assembly of Italy.

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