Palmiro Togliatti and Rita Montagnani’s son Aldo, suffering from schizophrenia with autistic traits, is born. He was born while Palmiro was in prison. After the death of his mother, Rita (1979), Aldo was confined to a psychiatric hospital (Villa Igea) in Modena, where he lived until his death on July 9, 2011. Between 1952 and 1957, Aldo traveled with his mother several times to the USSR, Bulgaria, and Hungary for specialist visits and treatment. Before being hospitalized in 1981, he lived in Turin with his mother until 1979, like a sort of ghost known only to a few classmates. His father had by then been in Rome with Nilde Iotti for several years. Aldo Togliatti was a genius and highly cultured, with a passion for science, numbers, and engineering. He played chess on his own and spoke several languages fluently. At Villa Igea, Aldo no longer has a last name, not even a fake one. Some of his belongings are written only “Aldo,” or “Aldo 227,” his room number. He is looked after by a party official, Onelio Pini, who visits him every week for years. He brings him cigarettes and a puzzle book. Sometimes they go out for coffee, but it’s not easy; Aldo doesn’t always like going out. The party has assigned him residence in the home of another militant in Modena, but he never goes. Aldo remains an avid reader in “his three languages.” In the clinic, he is always polite, kind, even elegant. They put him in the room with the most seriously ill patients, but he never complains. He is always alone. He even plays chess alone. Onelio Pini will later report that he never speaks of his father, except a few times when he calls him “the Old Man.” Aldo would not be mentioned again until 1993, when the Gazzetta di Modena published a scoop on the discovery of “Togliatti’s son” at Villa Igea. Some newspaper headlines ranged from “voluntary admission” to “forced hospitalization of Togliatti’s son.”
