Togliatti, Palmiro (pälmē`rō tōlyät`tē), 1893–1964, Italian Communist leader. A lawyer, he helped found the Italian Communist party in 1921. He lived in Moscow for many years after the Fascist takeover. Under the pseudonym Ercole Ercoli he wrote and worked for the Comintern. He was chief of the Comintern in Spain during the civil war there. Returning from Moscow to Italy in 1944, he became the leader of the Italian Communist party. As a leading anti-Fascist, Togliatti held cabinet posts in coalition governments in 1944–45, but later led the Communist opposition. A liberal Communist, he advocated greater independence of national Communist parties from Russian control, a doctrine he called "polycentrism." Although he followed a moderate line, he never openly broke with Moscow or disagreed radically on basic policy issues.

Togliatti, Palmiro

(born March 26, 1893, Genoa—died Aug. 21, 1964, Yalta, Ukraine, U.S.S.R.) Italian communist leader. After serving in World War I, in 1919 he helped found the left-wing weekly L'Ordine Nuovo (“New Order”), which became a rallying point for the breakaway communist wing of the Socialist Party (1921). He edited the Communist Party newspaper and was a member of the party's central committee from 1924. He was in Moscow when the party was banned in Italy (1926); he remained in exile and became a member of the Comintern secretariat (1935). He returned to Italy in 1944 and served in a coalition government as vice premier (1945). He advocated a national, democratically oriented form of communism and made the Italian Communist Party the largest in western Europe. See also Democratic Party of the Left.