Benito Mussolini January 1945 by Madeleine Mollier, a few months before he was captured and executed by Italian anti-fascist partisans, he stated flatly: "Seven years ago, I was an interesting person. Now, I am little more than a corpse." He continued: On 25 April 1945, allied troops were advancing into northern Italy, and the collapse of the Salò Republic was imminent. Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci set out for Switzerland, intending to board a plane and escape to Spain. Two days later on 27 April, they were stopped near the village of Dongo (Lake Como) by communist partisans Valerio and Bellini
The Mistress of the Copper Mountain the house was a bad omen. The Mistress became a popular character in the Soviet Union. The folklorists of the Ural State University, who collected tales near Sysert after Pavel Bazhov's death, noted they "have not met a single person who did not hear about the Mistress", but they mostly knew about her from Bazhov's "skazy" and referred to them: "Read some Bazhov, he wrote it down". Few story-tellers heard of her from oral tradition. During Soviet times critics commonly described this character as the protector of the working class from the oppressors. Maya Nikulina argued that the Mistress is