Teetering on a one-vote majority in the Chamber of Deputies, Italy's Christian Democratic Premier Amintore Fanfani has often cast longing eyes toward the 84 left-wing Socialist seats controlled by wily, 67-year-old Pietro Nenni.
Ever since Khrushchev's sweeping denunciation of Stalin, Nenni, a 1952 Stalin Peace prizewinner, has been making noises about breaking his 14-year-old alliance with Italy's 2,000,000-strong Communist Party. Nenni condemned the Russian smashing of the Hungarian revolt, and privately he calls the Reds "black beasts." With this in mind, Fanfani designed his semi-Socialist program partly to tempt the Nenni...