The PCI had a special quality that distinguished it from other Communist parties, East and West. From the outset, it had been led by intellectuals. Togliatti, like Antonio Gramsci and the Party’s other youthful founders of twenty years earlier, was markedly more intelligent—and respectful of intelligence—than the leaders of most of the other Communist parties of Europe. In the decade following World War Two, moreover, the Party openly welcomed intellectuals—as members and as allies—and took care to tone down those elements in Party rhetoric likely to put them off. Indeed, Togliatti consciously
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