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    "localId": "225248306",
    "label": "Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Reports and Estimates Report, Number 6-48, Consequences of Communist Accession to Power in Italy by Legal Means",
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    "id": "225248306",
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    "title": "Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Reports and Estimates Report, Number 6-48, Consequences of Communist Accession to Power in Italy by Legal Means",
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    "productionDates": [
        {
            "day": 5,
            "logicalDate": "1948-03-05",
            "month": 3,
            "year": 1948
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    "seq": 6,
    "pageIndex": 0,
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    "ocrText": "The anti-Communist insurgents would not only fail to overthrow the Communist-\ndominated government: they could not hold the area under their initial control without\nimmediate and substantial foreign aid. As the probability of a Communist victory\nin the civil war became apparent, however, secession movements would develop in\nSicily and Sardinia. If the Communists in the Sicilian cities had meanwhile been\nsubdued, it is possible that the anti-Communists could succeed in holding the two\nislands.\n5.\nPOLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS IN THE ABSENCE OF CIVIL WAR.\nHaving won an electoral victory, the People's Bloc would wish to exploit its advan-\ntage by political means and would be particularly anxious to avoid provoking a civil war\nin which it would have little to gain and much to lose. Its Communist leadership would\nseek to be all things to all men: more Catholic than the Vatican, more solicitous of\nmiddle-class interests than the bourgeois parties, more jealous of national sovereignty\nthan the neo-Fascists. Palmiro Togliatti has already proved himself adept and per-\nsuasive in this sort of duplicity. The People's Bloc would not take office as a Commu-\nnist government, but as a coalition of popular parties devoted to democracy, national\nsovereignty, and peace. The prime minister would probable be a non-Communist,\npossibly Pietro Nenni.\nBehind the scenes, however, the Communists would exercise effective control. As\nin the original coalition governments of Eastern Europe, they would demand and receive\nthe ministries of control such as those of the Interior, Justice, Communications, and\nDefense. There would follow a discreet, but rapid, Communist infiltration of the\narmed forces, the police, and the national administration. The time required to com-\nplete the transition might be a matter of months or of years, but the end would be a\nfully developed police state under open and exclusive Communist control.\n6.\nCOMMUNIST CONTROL OF THE ITALIAN ECONOMY.\nThe Communists, in power, would seek to integrate the Italian economy with that\nof the USSR. They could not afford, however, to forego commercial relations with the\nWest or to alienate dollar credits in excess of those earned by exports.\nThe economies of Italy and the USSR are in many respects complementary. Italy\npossesses facilities and skills required to produce goods needed by the USSR and the\nSatellite States, such as motor transport, electrical equipment, other machinery, and\ntextiles. The USSR and the Satellite States, in turn, are relatively well supplied with\nproducts needed by Italy, such as cereal grains, coal, lumber, cotton, petroleum, man-\nganese, and chromium. For the time being, however, the area presently under Soviet\ncontrol could not deliver as much as half the coal, petroleum, and cotton required to\nmaintain the current level of Italian industrial production. Moreover, Italy would\nremain almost entirely dependent on the West for essential imports of scrap iron, steel,\nand steel products, and for the tungsten, vanadium, and molybdenum required for fine\nsteel and armaments production. Italy must also depend on the West for fertilizers\nrequired to maintain domestic production of foodstuffs.\n4"
}