When Mussolini was making his last desperate flit from Milan in April 1945, Nicola Bombacci, his old comrade - the two men had been revolutionary socialist schoolteachers together thirty years before - climbed into the Duce's car carrying only a small suitcase. 'What else would I need?' he said. 'I am an expert in such matters. I was in Lenin's office in Petersburg when the White troops of Yudenitch were advancing on the city and we were preparing to leave, as we are doing today.' In the space of a quarter-century Bombacci, an old Communist and Comintern hand, had progressed right across the ideological spectrum, beginning as an intimate of Lenin's and ending as an adviser to Mussolini: by fluke he stood next to both men in their supreme hour of crisis.

LRB 9 October 1986 | PDF Download