Having changed its name in 1943, the PCI became the second largest political party of Italy after World War II,[11] attracting the support of about a third of the vote share during the 1970s. At the time, it was the largest communist party in the Western world, with peak support reaching 2.3million members in 1947,[12] and peak share being 34.4% of the vote (12.6million votes) in the 1976 Italian general election.[3] The PCI was part of the Constituent Assembly of Italy and the Italian government from 1944 to 1947, when the United States ordered the removal of the PCI and PSI from government.[13][14] The PCI–PSI alliance lasted until 1956, when the latter critised the former's support for the Soviet intervention in Hungary;[15] the two parties continued to govern together in several local and regional contexts until the 1990s. Apart from the 1944–1947 years and occasional external support to the organic centre-left (1960s–1970s), which included the PSI, the PCI always remained in the opposition in the Italian Parliament, with more accommodation as part of the Historic Compromise of the 1970s, which ended in 1980, until its dissolution in 1991, not without controversy and much debate among its members.[3]
The party was officially founded as the Communist Party of Italy – Section of the Communist International (Partito Comunista d'Italia – Sezione dell'Internazionale Comunista), since the Comintern was structured as a single world party according to Vladimir Lenin's vision. In the 1921 Italian general election, the party obtained 4.6% of the vote and 15 seats in the country's Chamber of Deputies. At the time, it was an active yet small faction within the Italian political left, which was strongly led by the PSI, while at the international level it was Soviet-led.
During its 2nd Congress in 1922, the new party registered 43,000 members. This was in part due to the entrance of almost the whole Socialist Youth Federation (Federazione Giovanile Socialista). The party adopted a slim structure headed by a Central Committee of 15 members, five of whom were also in the Executive Committee (EC), namely Ambrogio Belloni, Nicola Bombacci, Amadeo Bordiga (EC), Bruno Fortichiari (EC), Egidio Gennari, Antonio Gramsci, Ruggero Grieco (EC), Anselmo Marabini, Francesco Misiano, Giovanni Parodi, Luigi Polano, Luigi Repossi (EC), Cesare Sessa, Ludovico Tarsia, and Umberto Terracini (EC).
Since its formation, the party strived to organise itself on some bases that were not a mere reproduction of the traditional parties' bases. It then took again some arguments that distinguished the battle within the PSI, namely the idea that it is necessary to form an environment fiercely hostile to bourgeois society and that is an anticipation of the future socialist society. The purpose of this was not considered utopian because already in this society, especially in production, some structures are born on future results. In the first years of the PCd'I, there was no official leader; the accepted leader, first of the faction/tendency and then of the party, was Bordiga (Left) of the communist left current. Leaders of the minority currents were Angelo Tasca (Right) and Gramsci (Centre).
Conflict between factions
As a territorial section of Comintern, the PCd'I adopted the same program, the same conception of the party and the same tactics adopted by the II Congress in Moscow of 1920. The official program, drawn up in ten points, began with the intrinsically catastrophic nature of the capitalist system and terminated with the extinction of the state. It follows in a synthetic way the model outlined by Lenin for the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). For a while, this identity resisted, but the fast progress of the reaction in Europe produced a change of tactics in a democratic direction within the Bolshevik party and consequently within the Comintern. This happened in particular regarding the possibility, previously opposed, of an alliance with the social democratic and bourgeois parties. This provoked a tension in the party between the majority (Left) and the minority factions (the Right and the Centre) supported by the Comintern. The proposals of the Left were no longer accepted and the conflict between the factions became irremediable.
In 1923, some members of the party were arrested and put on trial for "conspiracy against the State". This allowed the intense activity of the Communist International to deprive the party's left-wing of authority and give control to the minority centre which had aligned with Moscow. In 1924–1925, the Comintern began a campaign of Bolshevisation, which forced each party to conform to the discipline and orders of Moscow. During the clandestine conference held in Como to ratify the party leadership in May 1924, 35 of the 45 federation secretaries, plus the secretary of the youth federation, voted for Bordiga's Left, four for Gramsci's Centre, and five for Tasca's Right.
Before the Lyon Congress in 1926, the Centre won almost all the votes in the absence of much of the Left, who were unable to attend as a result of fascist controls and lack of Comintern support. Recourse to the Comintern against this evident manoeuvre had little effect. The PCd'I as conceived by the Left terminated. The organisation continued with the support of the Comintern and a new structure and leadership. In 1922, the newspaper L'Ordine Nuovo was closed and in 1924 a new Centre newspaper, l'Unità, edited by Gramsci, was founded. The Left continued as a faction, principally functioning in exile. It published the newspaper Bilan, a monthly theoretical bulletin.
In 1926, Bordiga and Gramsci were arrested and imprisoned on the island of Ustica. In 1927, Palmiro Togliatti was elected secretary in place of Gramsci. In 1930, Bordiga was expelled from the Comintern and accused of Trotskyism. After Joseph Stalin dissolved the Communist International in 1943, the exiled members of the PCd'I in Moscow changed the party's name to the PCI on 15 May. Under this name, it reorganised in Italy and became a parliamentary party after the fall of Fascism.
Resistance to fascism
The party and its militants were actively involved in the resistance to Benito Mussolini's regime through clandestine action. They were well prepared for clandestine activity because of the structure of their organisation, and the fact that they had been victims of systematic repression by the authorities; more than three quarters of the political prisoners between 1926 and 1943 were communists. Throughout the dictatorship, the party was able to maintain and feed a clandestine network, distribute propaganda leaflets and newspapers, and infiltrate fascist unions and youth organisations. In 1935, the party led a campaign against the Second Italo-Ethiopian War.[27] The party and communist partisans, among others, then went on to play a major role in the resistance movement that led to the fall of the Fascist regime in Italy.[3]
The party's underground network played an organising role in the March 1943 strikes in Italy, the first mass strikes under the regime; the extent to which the movement was organised rather than spontaneous has been debated by historians.[28]
On 15 May 1943, the party changed its official name to the Italian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano), often shortened to PCI. This change was not surprising as PCI started being used as the party's acronym around 1924–1925. This name change also reflected a change in the Comintern's role—it increasingly became a federation of national communist parties. This trend accelerated after Lenin's death and its new name emphasised the party's shift from an international focus to an Italian one. At the time, it was a hotly contested issue for the two major factions of the party. On one side, the Leninists preferred the single world party as it was internationalist and strongly centralised, while on the other side the Italians wanted a party more tailored to their nation's peculiarities and more autonomy.
After the fall of Fascist Italy on 25 July 1943, the PCI returned to a formally legal status, playing a major role during the national liberation, known in Italy as Resistenza (Resistance) and forming many partisan groups. In April 1944, after the Svolta di Salerno (Salerno's turning point), Togliatti, who had returned to Italy the month prior after 18 years of exile,[29] agreed to cooperate with King Victor Emmanuel III and his prime minister of Italy, the Marshal Pietro Badoglio. After the turn, the PCI took part in every government during the national liberation and constitutional period from June 1944 to May 1947.[30] Their contribution to the new Italian democratic constitution was decisive. The Gullo decrees of 1944, named after Fausto Gullo, sought to improve social and economic conditions in the countryside.[31] During Badoglio and Ferruccio Parri's cabinets, Togliatti served as the Deputy Prime Minister of Italy. During the Resistance, the PCI became increasingly popular, as the majority of partisans were communists. The Garibaldi Brigades, promoted by the PCI, were among the more numerous partisan forces.[32]
The PCI took part in the 1946 Italian general election and the 1946 Italian institutional referendum, campaigning for a republic. In the election, the PCI was third, behind Christian Democracy (DC) and the PSI, gaining almost 19% of votes and electing 104 members of the Constituent Assembly of Italy.[43] The popular referendum resulted in the replacement of the monarchy with a republic,[44] after 54% of the votes were in favour and 46% against.[45][46]Luciano Canfora saw the Salerno Turn and 1944 as a rebirth of the PCI, and said "the PCI had gradually followed a path which required it, as a historical task, to occupy the space of social democracy in the Italian political panorama."[47]
As part of the May 1947 crises, the PCI was excluded from government. Alcide De Gasperi, the DC leader and prime minister of Italy, was losing popularity, and feared that the leftist coalition would take power. While the PCI was growing particularly fast due to its organising efforts supporting sharecroppers in Sicily, Tuscany, and Umbria, movements that were also bolstered by the reforms of Fausto Gullo, the Italian Minister of Agriculture.[48] On 1 May, the nation was thrown into crisis by the Portella della Ginestra massacre, in which eleven leftist peasants (including four children) were murdered at an International Workers' Day parade in Palermo by Salvatore Giuliano and his gang. In the political chaos that ensued, the United States government engineered the expulsion of all left-wing ministers from the cabinet on 31 May. The PCI would not have a national position in government again. De Gasperi did this under pressure from the United States Secretary of State, George Marshall, who had informed him that anti-communism was a pre-condition for receiving American aid,[48][49] and Ambassador James Clement Dunn, who had directly asked de Gasperi to dissolve the parliament and remove the PCI.[50][51]
In the 1948 Italian general election, the party joined the PSI in the Popular Democratic Front (FDP) but was defeated by the DC. The United States government provided support to anti-PCI groups in the election,[52] and argued that should the PCI win, the Marshall Plan and other aids could be terminated. It spent $10–20million on anti-communist propaganda and other covert operations, much of it through the Economic Cooperation Administration of the Marshall Plan, and then laundered through individual banks.[53] Fearful of the possible FDP's electoral victory, the British and American governments also undermined their campaign for legal justice by tolerating the efforts made by Italy's top authorities to prevent any of the alleged Italian war criminals from being extradited and taken to court.[54][55] The denial of Italian war crimes was backed up by the Italian state, academe, and media, re-inventing Italy as only a victim of Nazism and the post-war Foibe massacres.[54]
The party gained considerable electoral success during the following years and occasionally supplied external support to the Organic centre-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 (1966). The party did best in Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany, and Umbria, where it regularly won the local administrative elections, and in some of the industrialised cities of Northern Italy. At the city government level during the course of the post-war period, the PCI demonstrated in cities like Bologna and Florence their capacity for uncorrupt, efficient and clean government.[56] After the 1975 Italian local elections, the PCI was the strongest force in nearly all of the municipal councils of the great cities.[57]
The Soviet Union's brutal suppression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 created a split within the PCI.[58] The party leadership, including Palmiro Togliatti and Giorgio Napolitano (who in 2006 became President of Italy), regarded the Hungarian insurgents as counter-revolutionaries as reported at the time in l'Unità, the official PCI newspaper. Giuseppe Di Vittorio, chief of the communist trade union Italian General Confederation of Labour (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.[59] 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.[60] 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 that promoted a social-democratic direction in party policy.[61]
In the mid-1960s, the United States Department of State estimated the party membership to be approximately 1,350,000, or 4.2% of the working age population, making it the largest Communist party in per capita terms in the capitalist world at the time and the largest party at all in the whole of Western Europe with the Social Democratic Party of Germany.[62] United States government sources said that the party was receiving $40–50million per year from the Soviets when their investment in Italy was $5–6million.[63] Although the PCI relied on Soviet financial assistance more than any other Communist party supported by Moscow, declassified information shows this to be exaggerated.[64]
According to the former KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin, Longo and other PCI leaders became alarmed at the possibility of a coup in Italy after the Athens Colonel coup in April 1967 that led to the Greek junta. These fears were not completely unfounded as there had been two attempted coups in Italy, Piano Solo in 1964 and Golpe Borghese in 1970, by military and neo-fascist groups. The PCI's Giorgio Amendola formally requested Soviet assistance to prepare the party in case of such an event. The KGB drew up and implemented a plan to provide the PCI with its own intelligence and clandestine signal corps. From 1967 through 1973, PCI members were sent to East Germany and Moscow to receive training in clandestine warfare and information gathering techniques by both the Stasi and the KGB. Shortly before the 1972 Italian general election, Longo personally wrote to Leonid Brezhnev asking for and receiving an additional $5.7 million in funding. This was on top of the $3.5million that the Soviet Union gave the PCI in 1971. The Soviets also provided additional funding through the use of front organisations providing generous contracts to PCI members.[65]
In 1969, Enrico Berlinguer, the 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 Communist Party and directly told Brezhnev that the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, 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, which had absorbed the PSI's left-wing, the Italian Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity, so strengthening its leadership over the Italian left, was the largest communist party in a capitalist state, garnering 34.4% of the vote in the 1976 Italian 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 and toward Eurocommunism. The PCI sought a collaboration with the socialist and Christian democracy parties, a policy known as the Historic Compromise. The kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro, the DC leader, by the Red Brigades in May 1978 put an end to any hopes of such a compromise. The compromise was largely abandoned as a PCI policy in 1981. The Proletarian Unity Party merged into the PCI in 1984.
During the Years of Lead, 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 StB, Czechoslovakia's State Security, to withdraw their support to the group, which Moscow was unable or unwilling to do.[65] This, along with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, led to a complete break with Moscow in 1979. In 1980, the PCI refused to participate in the international conference of Communist parties in Paris; cash payments to the PCI continued until 1984.[64]
Dissolution
Achille Occhetto became general secretary of the PCI in 1988. At a 1989 conference in a working-class section of Bologna, Occhetto stunned the party faithful with a speech heralding the Revolutions of 1989, a move now referred to in Italian politics as the svolta della Bolognina (Bolognina turning point). The collapse of the Communist governments in the Eastern Europe led Occhetto to conclude that the era of Eurocommunism was over. Under his leadership, the PCI dissolved and refounded itself as the Democratic Party of the Left, which branded itself as a progressive left-wing and democratic-socialist party.[66][67] A third of the PCI membership, led by Armando Cossutta, refused to join the PDS, and instead seceded to form the Communist Refoundation Party.[68] The Democratic Party of the Left includes both those who were in favor of dissolving the Communist Party and those Ingraiani who, despite being opposed to it, preferred to remain in the party. The latter would go on to form the internal left wing of the Democratic Party of the Left: Fausto Bertinotti and Luciana Castellina (who would later join Rifondazione Comunista), Aldo Tortorella, Gavino Angius, Fulvia Bandoli, Gloria Buffo, Vincenzo Vita and Giacomo Princigalli.[69]
Ideology and policies
At its origin, the PCd'I was born as a alternative to the "pseudo-revolutionary tradition" of the PSI,[70] that, even under Nicola Bombacci and Giacinto Menotti Serrati's pro-election maximalist[71] leadership (in contrast to Bordiga’s “abstentionist communist” wing,[72] but still revolutionary), which awaited the revolution rather than preparing for it,[73] did not exploit the Biennio Rosso appropriately, in order to achieve socialism.[74][75]
When he was arrested, Gramsci's leadership was replaced by that of Togliatti, that, despite an initial closeness to Bordiga's left-communism and later to Bukharin,[76][77] was closer to Stalinist positions (accepting the doctrine of "social fascism" and the adoption of the Soviet model as a universal standard for all communist parties),[78][79] shifting the party's positions toward loyalty to the USSR and subsequently adopting Marxism-Leninism,[80][81][82] whose study and in-depth understanding were considered a duty for party members under every statute after 1921 (1946, 1949, 1951, 1957, 1962, 1966, 1969, 1972, 1975), disappearing only with that of 1979, following a decision by Berlinguer, who rejected it.[83][84]
In 1984, the PCI, together with the communist majority of the CGIL,[90] opposed the the reduction of the automatic adjustment of wages to inflation (Scala Mobile),[91][92] proposed by the Craxi government (and subsequently approved with the "San Valentine Decree")[93] due to the inflation crisis caused by the 1973 and 1979 oil crises, and proposed an abrogative referendum for these measures.
Social issues
Initially, the PCI viewed divorce as a secondary issue compared to economic rights;[94] however, in 1968, along with the PSU, PRI, and PSIUP, it introduced a bill to legalize divorce (a matter first raised in 1965 by the Socialist deputy Fortuna).[95] The law was passed in 1970,[96] and the PCI subsequently aligned itself with the "No" camp in the referendum thatwanted to repeal it.[97][98]
The party supported the legalization of abortion since 1976,[99] and over the following two years contributed to the parliamentary debate that led to the passing of the "Legge 194", which allowed and regulated it,[100] and he sided with the "no" front on the referendum that wanted to eliminate abortion.[101]
It also supported the elimination of life-imprisonment.[101]
On gay rights, the PCI initially had a repressive attitude towards its homosexual members,[102] but the situation improved significantly in the late 70s/early 80s, with the gay movement coming closer to communist and socialist parties.[103] In 1984 several homosexual activists (some of whom were already members of the PDUP) announced that they were joining the party, defining sexual liberation as a key component of the PCI’s alternative and of the construction of a socialist society. This move was supported by the Circle of Homosexual Culture Mario Mieli, as well as by Carlo Leoni and Giulia Rodano, provincial secretaries of the PCI’s Rome federation. Leoni, specifically, confirmed that the relationship between the PCI and the homosexual movement had become positive.[104][105] In the following years, some openly gay PCI candidates, such as Nichi Vendola and Franco Grillini, would also run in elections.
Foreign Policy
European Economic Community
Initially, the PCI held an Eurosceptic position, opposing the creation of the European Common Market and Euratom,[106][107] and there was skepticism regarding the concept of "Europe" that was being proposed, a federation linked to the US that would have excluded the East, with a preference instead for a demilitarized pan-European project; in 1957, the criticisms became more moderate, while still remaining in economic, military, and anti-colonial terms.[108] Subsequently, during its Eurocommunist period, the PCI supported the strengthening of the European Parliament's powers (unlike the PCF), as well as the construction of a socialist Europe,[109] and the party’s pro-European vision also led to the candidacy of individuals such as the European federalist Altiero Spinelli.[110]
USSR and Pact of Warsaw Pact
From 1947,[111] the USSR provided substantial funding to the PCI, amounting to approximately 889 billion lire (in year 2000 value), out of a total of 989 billion lire in funding provided to Italy; this, in turn, represented about 25% of the USSR’s total global funding (3,900 billion lire) for leftist parties and workers' organizations.[112][113] Funding arrived both through the "red cooperatives", linked to the PCI, and Soviet ambassadors in Rome; in the 1971–1976 period alone, the USSR gave the party the equivalent of 23.3 million dollars (32-33 million dollars between 1973-1979, through the International Trade Union Fund for the Support of Left-Wing Workers' Organizations, financed mainly by the CPSU).[114][115][116] Even though the decision to stop funding from Moscow took place at the end of 1975 (thanks to Berlinguer, Cervetti and Chiaromonte), official payments took place until 1979 (in particular, in this year, the PCI obtained in two separate occasions 711.15 and 829.95 million lire),[117] and continued to flow to pro-Soviet factions until the end of the USSR, despite the party having become economically independent from the 1980s onwards, thanks in part to the 1974 law on the public financing of political parties.[115]
Under the leadership of Togliatti, the party was loyal to the USSR, first accepting social fascism and then the strategy of the popular fronts, and also supporting the repression of the Hungarian Revolution.[118][119][123]
After having assumed a more independent position from Moscow, the party condemned the repression of the Prague Spring (which it supported, as well as Czechoslovakia's leader, Alexander Dubček)[118] and as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan,[124] even though a part of the party did not agree with this last position.[125]
Spain
Under the order of the USSR, PCd'I delegates went to fought in Spanish Civil War alogside the Republican Faction, such as Luigi Longo and Togliatti. In particular, the latter had an enormous influence on the PCE, becoming the "virtual head of the party" when he replaced Codovila,[126] and, while considering the uncertainty and contradictions about the dates, it is likely that he was present in the country as early as 1936,[127] and took part in the repression of theanarchists and the POUM.[128][129]
Factions
Although the party was opposed to autonomous factions within itself, both in the 1920s[130][131] and on its return to parliament after the Second World War,[132][133][134] depending on the period it has had various factions and currents, including social democrats, Marxist-Leninists, Eurocommunists, Trotskyists, workerists and left-communists, as well as others linked to specific groups, such as Azione Comunista; it was also divided into its right (Amendola, Giorgio Napolitano),[135] center (Antonio Gramsci, Luigi Longo, Enrico Berlinguer, and subsequently Ingrao),[136][76][137] and left (Bordiga, Damen, NOI, GCR, Azione Comunista, initially Ingrao, Armando Cossuta) wings. The party even had anarchists, such as Gino Paoli,[138] elected from its lists.
Trotskyists
Members of the PCI who later gravitated toward Trotskyism were present from the party’s founding, such as Alfonso Leonetti, Paolo Ravazzoli, Pietro Tresso, Mario Bavassano and Gaetana Teresa Recchia, who, in 1930, established the "New Italian Opposition" (NOI) as an internal opposition faction within the PCd'I. They did not believe that the social context in Italy was pre-revolutionary, did not share the view that social democracy and other anti-fascist groups had become weak (though they were not clear about the "social-fascist" nature of social democracy, as it was characterized by the Comintern), and did not consider a "democratic prelude" to a socialist revolution to be the most likely scenario in Italy, insisting "on the need to employ democratic slogans of a transitional nature."[76] That same year, all five of them faced disciplinary sanctions and/or were subsequently expelled from the party,[139][140][141] with the NOI becoming an independent organization, part of the International Left Opposition.
On 1 and 2 January 1949, some Italian Trotskyists, including both long-standing members and younger people from the PCI, the Socialist Youth Federation, and the Action Party, came together to form the Revolutionary Communist Groups. In 1952, many members of the GCR adopted the practice of entryism, joining the PCI while remaining in the GCR at the same time. These members tended to see primarily the negative effects of the mass party, in particular the large number of registered members with low levels of political participation and preparation, and they viewed it as corresponding "to the needs of the bureaucratic leaderships, which wanted to transform communist parties not into revolutionary vanguard organizations […] but rather into gigantic electoral machines, whose individual members would engage in limited, day-to-day propaganda within their own respective spheres on the eve of elections, all while lacking that continuous, mutual contact which fosters the exchange of opinions and experiences, develops a critical sense, and heightens the desire to participate in shaping the party’s political line". According to them, this reduced party cells and sections to merely carrying out directives from above, and limited internal democracy.[137][142]
When Khrushchev delivered his secret speech and began de-Stalinization, the GCR argued that "a ruling class cannot make mistakes for twenty years", criticizing the partial self-acquittal, in particular due to the admission of guilt regarding "the elimination of a whole series of communist militants and leaders, the abandonment of Leninism, and the violation of internal party democracy".[143] The GCR also supported the Hungarian revolutionaries in 1956.[144] Also during the mid-1950s, the entrists had managed to integrate themselves effectively into the party. The 20th Congress of the CPSU brought an end to the political isolation of the GCR, leading to a relative increase in their influence as they took on a role of "bearing witness": "The disoriented communist militant […] who, especially if young, barely knew of the existence of a Trotskyist 'sect,' would realize, upon reading the newspaper […], that this 'sect' was not really a 'sect' at all, given that it could grasp the fundamental problems faced by comrades in crisis and speak their language",[145] up until the point when a dialogue with them was acknowledged, which occurred during the conference on Gramsci studies in January 1958, to which Livio Maitan was invited, and his contribution regarding the relationship between Gramsci and Trotsky was accepted, with the explicit support of Togliatti.[146]
The Trotskyists criticized Amendola’s idea of a single party that would bring together communists, socialists, and liberal socialists, but they agreed on the possibility of organizing into internal tendencies within the party.[147] At the 11th party congress (1966), criticisms and demands regarding internal democracy were also supported by Pietro Ingrao, of the PCI’s left wing, with whom the GCR tried to collaborate,[137] but then a distancing occurred, following the passive stance taken by members close to Ingrao after the defeat of the left-wing faction at the congress,[148] despite the reprisals from the party’s right wing, involving reassignments and expulsions.[149][150] In 1968, following the failure of the attempt to move closer to Ingrao, and with the emergence of new social forces on the left, outside of the traditional parties, the GCR decided, at its 12th Congress, to bring an end to its entryist experience within the PCI.[137]
Azione Comunista
Azione Comunista ("Communist Action"), an informal name for the Movement for the Communist Left (MSC) derived from the group's newspaper, was a left-wing faction within the PCI between 1954 and 1956,[151] which subsequently broke away due to both voluntary departures by dissidents and expulsions, in particular after the publication of the newspaper’s first article,[152] the expression of solidarity with the Hungarian revolutionaries (a move that also alienated a Stalinist base that had previously sympathized with the group), and the eighth party congress.[153]
The movement took shape following a meeting in October 1953, which was attended by the Anarchist Groups for Proletarian Action (GAAP) (which for some years had adopted a "frontist" stance regarding anarchist-revolutionary organizations), Onorato Damen and other militants of the Internationalist Communist Party, and some Trotskyists of the Gruppi Comunisti Rivoluzionari (Revolutionary Communist Groups); subsequently, in 1954, the group was also joined by dissidents from the PCI who held workerist and revolutionary views and were associated with Giulio Seniga. However, between 1956 and 1957, Trotskyists, Damenists and communists loyal to Pietro Secchia did not finally join Azione Comunista, which formed the MSC together with the Federazione Comunista Libertaria (formerly the GAAP).[154]
Popular support
In all its history, the PCI was particularly strong in Central Italy, in the Red Regions of Emilia-Romagna, Marche, Tuscany, and Umbria, as well as in the industrialised cities of Northern Italy. The party's municipal showcase was Bologna, which was held continuously by the PCI from 1945 onwards. Amongst other measures, the local PCI administration tackled urban problems with successful programmes of health for the elderly, nursery education and traffic reform,[155] while also undertaking initiatives in housing and school meal provisions.[156]
Communist administrations at a local level helped to aid new businesses while also introducing innovative social reforms. From 1946 to 1956, the Communist city council built 31 nursery schools, 896 flats, and 9 schools. Health care improved substantially, street lighting was installed, new drains and municipal launderettes were built and 8,000 children received subsidised school meals. In 1972, the then-mayor of Bologna, Renato Zangheri, introduced a new and innovative traffic plan with strict limitations for private vehicles and a renewed concentration on cheap public transport. Bologna's social services continued to expand throughout the early and mid-1970s. The city centre was restored, centres for the mentally sick were instituted to help those who had been released from recently closed psychiatric hospitals, handicapped persons were offered training and found suitable jobs, afternoon activities for schoolchildren were made less mindless than the traditional doposcuola (after-school activities), and school programming for the whole day helped working parents.[57]
↑Femia, Joseph P. (April 1987). "A Peaceful Road to Socialism?". Gramsci's Political Thought: Hegemony, Consciousness, and the Revolutionary Process (paperbacked.). University of Oxford Press. pp.190–216. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198275435.003.0006. ISBN978-9-0045-0334-2.
↑Jones, Steven (2006). Antonio Gramsci. Routledge Critical Thinkers (paperbacked.). London: Routledge. p.25. ISBN978-0-4153-1947-8. Togliatti himself stated that the PCI's practices during this period, which also foresaw the later Eurocommunist trend, were congruent with Gramscian thought. It is speculated that Gramsci would likely have been expelled from his party if his true views had been known, particularly his growing hostility towards Stalin.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
↑Liguori, Guido (21 December 2021). "Gramsci and the Italian Road to Socialism (1956–59)". Gramsci Contested: Interpretations, Debates, and Polemics, 1922–2012. Historical Materialism. Translated by Braude, Richard (E-booked.). Brill. pp.94–123. doi:10.1163/9789004503342_005. ISBN978-0-1982-7543-5. S2CID245586587.
↑Bosworth, R. J. B. (13 January 2023). "Giorgio Amendola and a National Road to Socialism and the End of History". Politics, Murder and Love in an Italian Family: The Amendolas in the Age of Totalitarianisms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp.152–186. doi:10.1017/9781009280167.008. ISBN978-1-0092-8016-7.
↑Bernocchi, Piero (8 January 2021). "La rivoluzione ungherese del 1956 e il ruolo del PCI". PieroBernocchi.it. Retrieved 17 July 2023. La rottura che ne seguì fu completa. Il Psi si staccò definitivamente da ogni legame e sudditanza con l'Urss ma contemporaneamente si ruppero anche la forte intesa e l'attività unitaria con il Pci, avviata a partire al Patto di unità d'azione stipulato a Parigi nel 1934 e poi rinnovato nel settembre 1943 e nell'ottobre 1946, e con il frontismo negli anni del dopoguerra. Saltò anche il Patto di consultazione, che in un primo momento sembrò poter sostituire il Patto d'unità d'azione, e prevalse il rifiuto di un'alleanza organica con il Pci per conquistare il governo in Italia: obiettivo che invece il Psi raggiunse con i governi di centro-sinistra negli anni Ottanta.[The ensuing break was complete. The PSI definitively detached itself from all ties and subjection to the USSR but at the same time the strong understanding and unitary activity with the PCI was also broken, initiated starting from the Pact of unity of Action stipulated in Paris in 1934 and then renewed in September 1943 and in October 1946, and with frontism in the post-war years. The Consultation pact, which at first seemed to be able to replace the Unity action pact, was also broken, and the refusal of an organic alliance with the PCI to conquer the government in Italy prevailed: an objective that the PSI instead achieved with centre-left governments in the 1980s.]
↑Spriano, Paolo (1967). Storia del Partito comunista italiano. Da Bordiga a Gramsci (in Italian). Vol.I. Turin: Einaudi. ISBN978-8-8060-8029-7.
↑Sabbatucci, Giovanni; Vidotto, Vittorio (2008). Storia contemporanea. Il Novecento. Editori Laterza. ISBN978-8-8420-8742-7.
↑Mason, Timothy W. (1995). "The Turin strikes of March 1943". Nazism, Fascism and the Working Class. Cambridge University Press.
↑Agosti, Aldo (2012). "Les baleines du corset. Togliatti, le PCI et les intellectuels (1944–1947)". In Bechelloni, Antonio; Del Vento, Christian; Tabet, Xavier (eds.). La vie intellectuelle entre fascisme et République 1940–1948 (in French). ENS éditions. pp.17–32. doi:10.4000/laboratoireitalien.633. ISBN978-2-8478-8382-4.
↑Cervi, Mario; Montanelli, Indro (2003). Storia d'Italia (in Italian). Rcs Quotidiani.
↑Bianchi, Giovanni. "La Resistenza". In Montanelli, Indro (ed.). Storia d'Italia (in Italian). Vol.8. p.368.
↑Paolo Spriano (1975)Storia del Partito comunista italiano: La Resistenza. Togliatti e il partito nuovo, ed. Einaudi, 13 may 2010, 1975
↑Fabrizio Loreto (2009) Storia della CGIL dalle origini ad oggi: manuale per la formazione di delegati, lavoratori, Ed. Ediesse, o. 191, 2009, ISBN9788823014190
↑Merve Emre (2023)The Worlds of Italo Calvino, in The New Yorker, February 27, 2023
↑Joan Acocella (2020) The Italian Genius Who Mixed Marxism and Children’s Literature, in The New Yorker, December 7, 2020;
↑Juri Meda (2012) “O partigiano, portami via…”. La rappresentazione della Guerra di Liberazione nei componimenti scritti e nei disegni presentati dalle scuole italiane al Concorso nazionale sulla Resistenza, Published in: “History of Education & Children’s Literature”, VII, 1 (2012), pp. 261-294
↑Rossana Rossanda (2020) The Comrade from Milan, Ed. Verso, o. 384, 27 october 2020, ISBN9781789601534
↑Miriam Mafai (2012) Una vita, quasi due, Ed. Rizzoli, ISBN8817060909
↑Stazi, Guido (30 October 2021). "Sessanta anni senza Einaudi, il governatore che da Chigi salì al Colle". MF Milano Finanza (in Italian). Retrieved 8 July 2023. Einaudi annotava nel suo Diario di una cena a casa dell'Ambasciatore d'Italia in Unione Sovietica Quaroni, in cui si conveniva che gli Stati Uniti gli aiuti veri non li avrebbero concessi con i comunisti ancora al governo.[Einaudi noted in his Diary of a dinner at the home of the Italian Ambassador to the Soviet Union Quaroni, in which it was agreed that the United States would not grant real aid with the Communists still in government.]
↑Kautsky, John H.; Benjamin, Roger W. (March 1968). "Communism and Economic Development". American Political Science Review. 62 (1): 122. JSTOR1953329.
↑Carl Colby (director) (September 2011). The Man Nobody Knew: In Search of My Father, CIA Spymaster Ashley Colby (Motion picture). New York City: Act 4 Entertainment. Retrieved 15 September 2011. Edward Luttwak, interview: "[W]e estimated at the time they were getting $40–50 million a year at a time when we were putting $5–6 million into Italian politics.
↑Kertzer, David I. (1998). Politics and Symbols: The Italian Communist Party and the Fall of Communism. Yale University Press. ISBN978-0-3000-7724-7.
↑Adesioni, le firme della mozione Natta-Ingrao, in l'Unità, 28 dicembre 1989
↑Togliatti, Palmiro (1962). La formazione del gruppo dirigente del PCI nel 1923-24[The formation of the PCI leadership group in 1923–24]. Pensiero e azione socialista (in Italian). Rome: Editori Riuniti. p.56.
↑Roberto, Vivarelli (2012). Storia delle origini del fascismo[History of the origins of fascism] (in Italian). Vol.2. Bologna: Il Mulino. p.211. ISBN9788815239877.
↑Candeloro, Giorgio (1996). Storia dell'Italia moderna, vol. VIII – La prima guerra mondiale, il dopoguerra, l'avvento del fascismo. Vol.8 (6thed.). Milano: Feltrinelli. pp.298–300. ISBN9788807888533.
↑Sabbatucci, Giovanni; Vidotto, Vittorio (2008). Storia contemporanea. Il Novecento[Contemporary History. The Twentieth Century.] (in Italian). Bari: Laterza. p.71. Più che preparare la rivoluzione la aspettavano, ritenendola comunque inevitabile [Rather than preparing for the revolution, they were awaiting it, considering it inevitable in any case]
↑Spriano, Paolo (1967). Storia del Partito Comunista Italiano[History of the Italian Communist Party] (in Italian). Vol.1. Turin: Einaudi. pp.27, 83, 109.
↑Vidotto, Vittorio (1975). Il Partito Comunista Italiano dalle origini al 1946[The Italian Communist Party from its origins to 1946] (in Italian). Bologna: Cappelli. p.15.
123Mastrolillo, Gabriele (16 October 2024). "I trockisti e il Pcd'I (1930-1935)". In Labeÿ, Marion (ed.). Altri comunismi italiani - Dissidenze e alternative al PCI da Livorno al Sessantotto. BHM. La Biblioteca di «Historia Magistra». Turin: Accademia University Press. pp.73–95. doi:10.4000/12ijy. ISBN979-12-5500-109-6.
12Fiori, Giuseppe (1995) [1966]. Vita di Antonio Gramsci (1sted.). Bari: Laterza. pp.250–251. ISBN88-420-4766-X.
↑"Dottorato di ricerca in Politica, Istituzioni, Storia - Ciclo XXVII - Sinistra extraparlamentare e partito comunista in Italia 1968-1976"(PDF). Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna. 2015: 28–29 – via AMS Dottorato. per il leader comunista si trattava di mantenere un difficile equilibrio tra l'adesione ideologica al modello sovietico, la cui revisione non sarebbe stata accettata né da una parte consistente della base né da una parte importante del gruppo dirigente ‒ e che, oltretutto, risultava a lui per primo inconcepibile ‒ e la battaglia contro una tendenza militarista e insurrezionista presente in certi settori[for the communist leader, it was a matter of maintaining a difficult balance between ideological adherence to the Soviet model, whose revision would have been rejected both by a substantial part of the grassroots and from an important part of the leadership group ‒ and which, moreover, was inconceivable to him —and the struggle against a militaristic and insurrectionist tendency present within certain sectors]{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
↑Harman, Chris (June 1977). "Gramsci versus Eurocommunism". International Socialism (99): 10–14 – via Marxists Internet Archive.
↑Femia, Joseph P. (April 1987). "A Peaceful Road to Socialism?". Gramsci's Political Thought: Hegemony, Consciousness, and the Revolutionary Process (paperbacked.). University of Oxford Press. pp.190–216. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198275435.003.0006. ISBN978-9-0045-0334-2.
↑Liguori, Guido (21 December 2021). "Gramsci and the Italian Road to Socialism (1956–59)". Gramsci Contested: Interpretations, Debates, and Polemics, 1922–2012. Historical Materialism. Translated by Braude, Richard (E-booked.). Brill. pp.94–123. doi:10.1163/9789004503342_005. ISBN978-0-1982-7543-5. S2CID245586587.
↑Nilde. Parole e scritti 1955–1998(PDF) (in Italian). Edited by Comitato per la costituzione della Fondazione Nilde Iotti. Rome: Health Communication. October 2010. p.12.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
↑"Il terrorismo e le stragi impunite in Italia"(PDF) (in Italian). Edited by Vincenzo Ruggero Manca, Marco Toniolli, Cosimo Ventucci, Antonio Leone, Raffaele Marotta and Enrico Nan. 29 December 2000. p.284.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
↑Osteuropa in Tradition und Wandel(PDF) (in German). Vol.6. Commissioned by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation Saxony (Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Sachsen e. V.) and the Society for Cultural Sociology (Gesellschaft für Kultursoziologie e. V.). Edited by Ernstgert Kalbe, Wolfgang Geier, and Holger Politt. Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Sachsen. 2004. p.277. ISBN3-89819-190-7.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
↑"Il terrorismo e le stragi impunite in Italia"(PDF). Senato della Repubblica (in Italian). Edited by Vincenzo Ruggero Manca, Marco Toniolli, Cosimo Ventucci, Antonio Leone, Raffaele Marotta and Enrico Nan. 29 December 2000. p.163. Retrieved 4 November 2026.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
↑"La Stampa". 11 September 1996. Alla segreteria del CC del PCUS. 30 ottobre 1956. Gli avvenimenti ungheresi hanno creato una situazione pesante all'interno del movimento operaio italiano e anche nel nostro partito. Il distacco di Nenni da noi che pure, a seguito delle nostre iniziative, aveva mostrato una tendenza a ridursi, si è ora bruscamente acuito. La posizione di Nenni sugli avvenimenti coincide con quella dei socialdemocratici. Nel nostro partito si manifestano due posizioni diametralmente opposte e sbagliate. Da una parte estrema si trovano coloro i quali dichiarano che l'intera responsabilità di quanto avvenuto in Ungheria risiede nell'abbandono dei metodi stalinisti. All'altro estremo vi sono coloro che accusano la direzione del nostro partito di non aver preso posizione in difesa dell'insurrezione di Budapest e che affermano che l'insurrezione era pienamente da appoggiare e che era giustamente motivata. Questi gruppi esigono che l'intera direzione del nostro partito sia sostituita e ritengono che Di Vittorio dovrebbe diventare il nuovo leader del partito. Essi si basano su una dichiarazione di Di Vittorio che non corrispondeva alla linea del partito e che non era stata da noi approvata. Noi conduciamo la lotta contro queste due posizioni opposte ed il partito non rinuncerà a combatterla. Tuttavia vi assicuro che gli avvenimenti ungheresi si sono sviluppati in modo tale da rendere molto difficile la nostra azione di chiarimento all'interno del partito e per ottenere l'unità attorno alla sua direzione. Nel momento in cui noi definimmo la rivolta come controrivoluzionaria ci trovammo di fronte ad una posizione diversa del partito e del governo ungheresi e adesso è lo stesso governo ungherese che esalta l'insurrezione. Ciò mi sembra errato. La mia opinione è che il governo ungherese, rimanga o no alla sua guida Imre Nagy, si muoverà irreversibilmente verso una direzione reazionaria. Vorrei sapere se voi siete della stessa opinione o se siete più ottimisti. Voglio aggiungere che tra i dirigenti del nostro partito si sono diffuse preoccupazioni che gli avvenimenti polacchi ed ungheresi possano lesionare l'unità della direzione collegiale del vostro partito, quella che è stata definita al XX Congresso. Noi tutti pensiamo che, se ciò avvenisse, le conseguenze potrebbero essere molto gravi per l'intero nostro movimento.
↑Bekes, Csaba; Byrne, Malcom; Rainer, Janos M., eds. (2002). The 1956 Hungarian Revolution: A History in Documents. Budapest-New York: Central European University Press. p.294.
↑Guerra, Adriano (2005). Comunismi e Comunisti. Bari: Dedalo. pp.190–191.
↑"l'Unità"(PDF). l'Unità (in Italian). 5 June 1980. p.21. Noi abbiamo preso ferma posizione — ha continuato — contro ogni intervento militare che ha violato l'indipendenza di un paese sovrano, da quaiunque Stato esso sia stato compiuto. Siamo preoccupati per l'estendersi di questi interventi militari. Il mondo è mutato: le sue sorti non debbono e non possono essere decise solo da alcune superpotenze. Una pace vera può essere costruita oggi solo sull'indipendenza, sulla pari dignità delle nazioni, sulla partecipazione delle grandi masse umane. È in base a queste concezioni che il nostro partito ha nettamente condannato l'intervento sovietico in Afghanistan.[We have taken a firm stand — he continued — against any military intervention that violated the independence of a sovereign country, regardless of which state carries it out. We are concerned by the spread of such military interventions. The world has changed: its fate should not and cannot be decided solely by a few superpowers. A true peace can only be built today upon independence, the equal dignity of nations, the participation of the great human masses. It is based on these principles that our party has unequivocally condemned the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.]
↑"L'organizzazione del nostro Partito". Partito Comunista Internazionale (in Italian). 20 January 1922. Retrieved 30 October 2026. Essa si sforza di perfezionarsi perseguendo un'opera continua di polizia interna, di autopurificazione, nello stesso momento in cui tende a rendersi più snella ed agile, più accentrata ed omogenea.[It strives to perfect itself by pursuing an ongoing process of internal policing and self-purification, while simultaneously seeking to become leaner and more agile, more centralized and homogeneous.]
↑Togliatti, Palmiro (1985). Da Gramsci a Berlinguer: la via italiana al socialismo attraverso i congressi del Partito comunista italiano, 1921-1984. 1956-1964 (in Italian). Vol.3. Edizioni del Calendario. pp.23–71. Si scartino le scorie che qua e là, ad opera di compagni meno esperti, sono venute alla luce e che soltanto possono fare ostacolo all'azione rinnovatrice. Tali io considero certe posizioni, che si introducono come un contrabbando quando si dibattono le questioni della nostra vita interna e della circolazione delle idee nelle nostre file. Tale è, prima di tutto, il frazionismo, la violazione dei principi disciplinari e di quella unità del partito, che è la base della sua forza e si mantiene rispettando le norme del centralismo democratico, quale il nostro statuto le definisce. Tale è la richiesta che si organizzino nel partito delle tendenze, cosa che non favorirebbe, ma ostacolerebbe la circolazione delle idee e ridurrebbe la vita democratica a forme inammissibili di parlamentarismo deteriore.
↑"Nord e Sud - anno IX - n. 26 - febbraio 1962". www.bibliotecaginobianco.it. Retrieved 30 October 2026. Il dibattito, franco e fraterno, non dovrà mai essere considerato come avvio alla formazione di correnti o frazioni.
↑Mantovani, Alessandro (16 October 2024). "I trockisti e il Pcd'I (1930-1935)". In Labeÿ, Marion (ed.). Altri comunismi italiani - Dissidenze e alternative al PCI da Livorno al Sessantotto. BHM. La Biblioteca di «Historia Magistra». Turin: Accademia University Press. pp.96–119. doi:10.4000/12ijy. ISBN979-12-5500-109-6.
1234Giachetti, Diego (16 October 2024). "I trotskisti e il Pci (1950-1970)". In Labeÿ, Marion; Mastrolillo, Gabriele (eds.). Altri comunismi italiani - Dissidenze e alternative al PCI da Livorno al Sessantotto. BHM. La Biblioteca di «Historia Magistra». Turin: Accademia University Press. pp.161–186. doi:10.4000/12ijy. ISBN979-12-5500-109-6.
↑[Romolo Gambino], P. Brando (1954). "Cosa significa 'formare ed educare l'attivo del Partito". Bandiera Rossa.
↑"Continua nell'Urss il declino dello stalinismo". Bandiera Rossa. 1956.
↑"Viva la rivoluzione ungherese! Vergogna ai suoi calunniatori". Bandiera Rossa. 1956.
↑Samonà, Giuseppe Paolo (1997). La formazione politica di un intellettuale rivoluzionario. Note autobiografiche. (1950-1968). Florence: BI-ELLE. p.8.
↑Studi gramsciani - Atti del convegno tenuto a Roma nei giorni 11-12 gennaio 1958. Edited by Istituto Antonio Gramsci. Editori Riuniti. 1958. pp.579–584.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
↑[Massimo Gorla], I. Rivera (1965). "Ai segretari di gruppo". Gruppi Comunsti Rivoluzionari, Comitato esecutivo.
↑Maitan, Livio (1967). "Ingrao manca ancora all'appuntamento". Bandiera Rossa.
↑"Radiati dal Pci Paolicchi e Illuminati". Bandiera Rossa. 1966.
↑"Successo della "Sinistra" reazioni dei burocrati". Bandiera Rossa. 1966.
Aldo Agosti, "The Comintern and the Italian Communist Party in Light of New Documents," in Tim Rees and Andrew Thorpe (eds.), International Communism and the Communist International, 1919–43. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998.
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