A highly intelligent study of the PCI's objectives and strategies in the postwar years, necessarily focusing on the major role of Palmiro Togliatti. Sophisticated in his analysis of doctrinal positions and of political reality, Sassoon, a British historian, examines the evolution of a party that achieved great successes and in recent years faced new setbacks. An excellent, if difficult, introduction to an understanding of the present position of the PCI, with its still clearer break with Moscow.