Renato Crotti: Riflessioni per Riflettere

Opinione

THE NEW YORK TIMES SUNDAY - October 27, 1963 ITALIAN COMBATING COMMUNISM BY SENDING REDS TO SEE SOVIETIndustrialist Then publishes Reactions of Tourists-One Tore Up his party card
An Italian industrialst is conducting an anti-Communist campaign with his own version of sending coals to Newcastle: He sends Communists to the Soviet Union. On a business trip here last week, the businessman, Renato Crotte, explained his system. He sends Communists and others on all-expense-paid trips to the Soviet Union with one condition: On their return, they must make brief statements of their impressions. Mr. Crotte said he was most pleased by one incident: After the first trip, he received a torn half of one Communist’s party card. So far, Mr Crotte has sent 39 Italians through Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and East Germany. Next summer he plans to send more than 100 . The industrialist, a soft-spoken textile manufacturer, traces his unfavorable impressions of Communist life to two recent trips to Russia. He lives in Carpi, in the heart of Italy’s Red Belt. Residents of Carpi, which is 35 miles north of Bologna, voted 56 per cent Communist last April, 4 per cent more than in the previous election, in 1958. *Publishes Two Magazines* To insure that the travelers’ statements get sufficient pubblicity in his town, where the local administration and the newspapers are Communist controlled, Mr. Crotte publishes two monthly magazines. He estimates that the publications and the tours have cost him $100,000. Mr. Crotte said he became concerned with local Communist propaganda after World War II, when his town, with a population of 50,000 swung left. He traveled to the Soviet Union in 1959 and then in 1961. "On my return to Carpi," he said, "I tried to tell my 700 workers and my friends about conditions under the Soviet system. They just wouldn’t believe me so I said, ‘Go see for yourself and I’ll pay the bill." Ten went on the first trip in 1962, and 29 went last August. Some were winners of contests held by his magazines. The others, including the secretary of the local Communist party, were specially invited. After the first trip, the local Communist party prohibited its members from accepting any invitations, But Mr. Crotte said some of them also made the second trip. Mr Crotte was asked if he had made any "converts". With one or two exceptions, he said, his guests lived up to their promise to make honest statements of their impressions. Most, he added, had their Communist faith badly shaken when they saw Soviet conditions. Statements in his magazines expressed the travelers’ observations – generally, detailed accounts of shoddy goods and poor service. Several expressed shock at rudimentary sanitary conditions and crowded or expensive housing. Low wages and high prices were also cited by Italians, who compared them with Italian conditions.