As a former Axis state Italy was an object of suspicion to West and East alike. Until Tito’s split with Stalin, Italy’s unresolved border with Yugoslavia was the most unstable and potentially explosive frontier of the Cold War, and the country’s uneasy relationship to its Communist neighbor was complicated by the presence in Italy of the largest Communist Party outside the Soviet bloc: 4,350,000 votes (19 percent of the total) in 1946, rising to 6,122,000 (23 percent of the total) in 1953. In that same year the Partito Communista Italiano (PCI) boasted a paid-up membership of
