Everything about The Italian Communist Party totally explained
The
Italian Communist Party (Italian:
Partito Comunista Italiano, or PCI) emerged as the
Communist Party of Italy (
Partito Comunista d'Italia) by seceding from the
Italian Socialist Party (PSI) at their congress on
21 January 1921 at
Livorno.
Amadeo Bordiga and
Antonio Gramsci led the split. Outlawed during the
Fascist regime, the party reformed in Italy after
World War II and became the strongest force among the Italian left-wing parties, attracting the support of about a third of the voters during the
1970s. At the time, it was the biggest communist party in the West (1.7 million members and 34.4% votes in
1976).
In
1991 the PCI disbanded to form the Democratic Party of the Left (
Partito Democratico della Sinistra or PDS), with membership in the
Socialist International. More radical members of the party, led by
Armando Cossutta, left the party to form the Communist Refoundation Party (
Partito della Rifondazione Comunista, or PRC). In
1998 the PDS, with several smaller parties, (the Liberal Socialists or
Laburisti, the Christian Socialists or
Cristiano Sociali, the United Communists or
Comunisti Unitari (right-wing split of the PRC), the Left Republicans or
Sinistra Repubblicana, and the Social Democratic Trade Unionists or
Riformatori per l'Europa), co-founded the
Democrats of the Left party ("Democratici di Sinistra", or DS). Later in the same year the a faction led by
Armando Cossutta left the PRC to form the
Party of Italian Communists (
Partito dei Comunisti Italiani, or PdCI).
History
» For the history of the Communist Party before World War II see also: Communist Party of Italy
The PCI participated in the 1921 general election, the first one with PCI members on the ballot, obtaining 4.6% of the nationwide vote and fifteen seats in the parliament.
In
1926, the
Fascist government of
Benito Mussolini outlawed the PCI. Although forced underground, the PCI maintained a clandestine presence within Italy during the years of the Fascist regime. Many of its leaders were also active in exile. During its first year as a banned party,
Antonio Gramsci defeated the party's left wing, led by
Amadeo Bordiga. Gramsci replaced Bordiga's leadership at a conference in
Lyon, and issued a manifesto expressing the programmatic basis of the party. However, Gramsci soon found himself jailed by Mussolini's regime, and the leadership of the party passed to
Palmiro Togliatti. Togliatti would lead the party until it emerged from suppression in
1944 and relaunched itself as the Italian Communist Party.
The party played a major role during the national liberation (
Resistenza) and in the April of 1944 after the
Svolta di Salerno (Salerno's turn ), Togliatti agreed to cooperate with the
the king so the communists took part in every government during the national liberation and
constitutional period from June
1944 to May
1947. The communists' contribution to the new Italian democratic constitution was decisive. In the first general elections of
1948 the party joined the PSI in the
Popular Democratic Front but was defeated by the
Christian Democracy party. The party gained considerable electoral success during the following years and occasionally supplied external support to center-left governments, although it never directly joined a government. It successfully lobbied
Fiat to set up the
AvtoVAZ (Lada) car factory in the
Soviet Union. The party did best in
Central Italy, particularly in
Tuscany,
Emilia Romagna and
Umbria, where it regularly won the local administrative elections, and in some of the industrialized cities of
Northern Italy.
The Soviet Union's brutal suppression of the
Hungarian Revolution of 1956 created a split within the PCI. The party leadership, including
Palmiro Togliatti and
Giorgio Napolitano (who in 2006 became
President of the Italian Republic), regarded the Hungarian insurgents as counter-revolutionaries, as reported at the time in
l'Unità, the official PCI newspaper. However
Giuseppe Di Vittorio, chief of the communist trade union
CGIL, repudiated the leadership position, as did prominent party member
Antonio Giolitti and
Italian Socialist Party national secretary
Pietro Nenni, a close ally of the PCI. Napolitano later hinted at doubts over the propriety of his decision. He would eventually write in
From the Communist Party to European Socialism. A political autobiography (
Dal Pci al socialismo europeo. Un'autobiografia politica) that he regretted his justification of the Soviet intervention, but quieted his concerns at the time for the sake of party unity and the international leadership of Soviet communism. Giolitti and Nenni went on to split with the PCI over this issue. Napolitano became a leading member of the
miglioristi faction within the PCI, which promoted a social-democratic direction in party policy.
In the mid 1960s the
U.S. State Department estimated the party membership to be approximately 1 350 000 (4.2% of the working age population, the proportionally largest communist party in the capitalist world at the time, and the largest party at all in whole western Europe with the German SPD).
Declassified information from Soviet archives confirms that the PCI relied on Soviet financial assistance, more so than any other Communist party supported by Moscow. The party received perhaps as much as $60 million from the end of World War II until the PCI’s break with Moscow in the early 1980s. The party used these funds mainly for organizational purposes.
In
1969,
Enrico Berlinguer, PCI deputy national secretary and later secretary general, took part in the international conference of the Communist parties in Moscow, where his delegation disagreed with the "official" political line, and refused to support the final report. Unexpectedly to his hosts, his speech challenged the Communist leadership in Moscow. He refused to "excommunicate" the Chinese communists, and directly told Leonid Brezhnev that the
invasion of Czechoslovakia by the
Warsaw Pact countries (which he called the "tragedy in Prague") had made clear the considerable differences within the Communist movement on fundamental questions such as national sovereignty, socialist democracy, and the freedom of culture. At the time the PCI was the largest Communist Party in a capitalist state, garnering 34.4% of the vote in the
1976 general election.
Relationships between the PCI and the Soviet Union gradually fell apart as the party moved away from Soviet obedience and Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy in the 1970s and 1980s, as the PCI definitively embracing
eurocommunism and the
Socialist International. The PCI sought a collaboration with Socialist and
Christian Democracy parties (the
historic compromise). However, Christian Democratic party leader
Aldo Moro's kidnapping and murder by the
Red Brigades in May
1978 put an end to any hopes of such a compromise.
During the
"anni di piombo" the PCI strongly opposed the terrorism and the Red Brigades, who, in turn, murdered or wounded many PCI members or trade unionists close to the PCI. According to Mitrokhin, the party asked the Soviets to pressure the
Czechoslovakian State Security (StB) to withdraw their support to the group, which Moscow was unable or unwilling to do.
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