Enrico Berlinguer
Enrico Berlinguer (
IPA ) (
May 25,
1922 -
June 11,
1984), was an
Italian politician and was national secretary of the
Italian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano or PCI) from
1972 to
1984.
Early career
The son of
Mario Berlinguer and Maria Loriga, Enrico Berlinguer was born in
Sassari,
Italy to a noble and important
Sardinian family, in a notable cultural context and with familiar and political relationships that would have heavily influenced his life and his career. His surname 'Berlinguer' is of
Catalan origin, a reminder of the period when Sardinia was part of the
Aragonese-Catalonian empire.
He was the first cousin of
Francesco Cossiga (who was a leader of the
Italian Christian Democrats and later became a
President of the Italian Republic), and both were relatives of
Antonio Segni, another Christian Democrat leader and President of the Republic. Enrico's grandfather, Enrico Berlinguer Sr., was the founder of
La Nuova Sardegna, an important Sardinian newspaper, and a personal friend of
Giuseppe Garibaldi and
Giuseppe Mazzini, whom he had helped in his parliamentary work on the sad conditions of the island.
In
1937 Berlinguer had his first contacts with Sardinian
anti-Fascists, and in
1943 formally entered the Italian Communist Party, soon becoming the secretary of the Sassari section. The following year a riot exploded in the town; he was involved in the disorders and was arrested, but was discharged after 3 months of
prison.
Immediately after his detention ended, his father brought him to
Salerno, the town in which the
Royal family and the government had taken refuge after the
armistice between Italy and the
Allies. In Salerno his father introduced him to
Palmiro Togliatti, the most important leader of the Communist Party and a schoolfellow of Don Mario.
Togliatti sent Berlinguer back to Sardinia to prepare for his political career. At the end of
1944, Togliatti appointed him to the national secretariat of the Communist Organisation for Youth (FGCI); he was soon sent to
Milan, and in
1945 he was appointed to the Central Committee as a member.
In
1946 Togliatti became the national secretary (the highest political role) of the Party, and called Berlinguer to
Rome, where his talents let him enter the national leadership only two years after (at the age of 26, one of the youngest members ever admitted); in
1949 he was named national secretary of the FGCI, a post he held until
1956. The year after he was named president of the
World Federation of Democratic Youth, an international Communist front organisation. In
1957 Berlinguer, as a member of the central school of the PCI, abolished the obligatory visit to the
Soviet Union, which included political training, that was until then necessary for admission to the highest positions in the PCI.
Party leader
Berlinguer's career was obviously carrying him towards the highest positions in the party. After having held many responsible posts, in
1968 he was elected a
deputy for the first time for the electoral district of
Rome. The following year he was elected deputy national secretary of the party (the secretary being
Luigi Longo). In this role he took part in the
1969 international conference of the Communist parties in
Moscow, where his delegation disagreed with the "official" political line, and refused to support the final report.
Berlinguer's unexpected stance made waves: he gave the strongest speech by a major Communist leader ever heard in Moscow. He refused to "excommunicate" the Chinese communists, and directly told
Leonid Breznev that the invasion of
Czechoslovakia by the
Warsaw Pact countries (which he termed 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.
In
1970 Berlinguer engaged in an unexpected opening towards the world of industry, and towards the country's conservative forces more generally, publicly declaring that the PCI would look with favour on a new model of development, concepts that were part of the program of the industrialists.
Secretary of the PCI
Already a principal leader in the party, Berlinguer was elected to the position of national secretary in
1972 when Luigi Longo resigned due to illness.
In
1973, having been hospitalized after a car accident during a visit to
Bulgaria, Berlinguer wrote three famous articles ("Reflections on Italy," "After the facts of
Chile" and "After the Coup [in Chile]") for the intellectual weekly magazine of the party,
Rinascita. In these he presented the strategy of the so-called Historic Compromise, a proposed coalition between the PCI and the Christian Democrats to grant Italy a period of political stability, at a time of severe economical crisis and in a context in which some forces were allegedly manoeuvering for a coup in Italy.
International relations
The following year in
Belgrade he met
Yugoslav president
Josip Broz Tito, developing his relationships with the major Communist parties of
Europe,
Asia and
Africa.
In
1976, in Moscow again, Berlinguer confirmed the autonomous position of the PCI vis-à-vis the Soviet communist party. In front of 5,000 Communist delegates, he spoke of a "pluralistic system" (translated by the interpreter as "multiform"), referring to the PCI's intentions to build "a socialism that we believe necessary and possible only in Italy."
When Berlinguer finally expressed the PCI's condemnation of any kind of "interference", the rupture with the Soviets was complete. Since Italy was suffering the "interference" of
NATO, the Soviets said, it seemed that the only interference that the Italian Communists could not suffer was the Soviet one. In an interview with
Corriere della Sera he declared that he felt "safer under
NATO's umbrella."
In
1977, at a meeting in
Madrid between Berlinguer,
Santiago Carrillo of the Spanish Communist Party and
Georges Marchais of the French Communist Party, the fundamental lines of
Eurocommunism were laid out. A few months later Berlinguer was again in Moscow, where he gave another speech which was poorly received by his hosts, and published by
Pravda only in a censored version.
Domestic politics
Berlinguer, moving step by step, was building a consensus in the PCI towards a rapprochement with other components of society. After the surprising opening of
1970 toward conservatives, and the still discussed proposal of the Historic Compromise, he published a correspondence with Monsignor Luigi Bettazzi, the Bishop of
Ivrea; it was an astonishing event, since
Pope Pius XII had
excommunicated the Communists soon after
World War II, and the possibility of any relationship between communists and Catholics seemed very unlikely.
This act also served to counteract the allegation, commonly and popularly expressed, that the PCI was protecting leftist
terrorists, in the harshest years of terrorism in Italy. In this context the PCI opened its doors to many Catholics, and a debate started about the possibility of contact. Notably, Berlinguer's strictly Catholic family was not brought out of its strictly respected privacy. In the general election of June 1976, the PCI gained 34.4% of the vote.
In Italy a so-called "government of national solidarity" was ruling, but Berlinguer claimed that in an emergency government, a strong and powerful cabinet to solve a crisis of exceptional gravity was needed. On
March 16 1978,
Aldo Moro, President of the Christian Democratic Party, was kidnapped by the
Red Brigades, an ultra-left terrorist group, on the day that the new government was going to be sworn in before parliament.
During this crisis, Berlinguer adhered to the so-called "Front of Firmness," refusing to negotiate with terrorists. (The Red Brigades had proposed to liberate Moro in exchange for the release of some imprisoned terrorists.) Despite the PCI's firm stand against terrorism, the Moro incident left the party more isolated.
In June the PCI gave its approval, and ultimately active support, to a campaign against President
Giovanni Leone, accused of minor bribery. This resulted in the President's resignation. Berlinguer also supported the election of the veteran Socialist
Sandro Pertini as President of Italy, but his presidency did not produce the effects that the PCI had hoped for.
In Italy, after a new president is elected, the government resigns. The PCI expected Pertini to use his influence in their favour. But the President was influenced by other political leaders like
Giovanni Spadolini of the
Italian Republican Party and
Bettino Craxi of the
Italian Socialist Party, and the PCI remained out of the government.
During these years the PCI governed many Italian regions, sometimes more than half of them. Notably, the regional government of
Emilia-Romagna and
Tuscany was concrete proof of PCI's governmental capabilities. In this period, Berlinguer turned his attention to the exercise of local power, to show that "the trains could run in time" under the PCI. He personally took part in electoral campaigns in the provinces and for local councils, while other parties sent only local leaders; this helped the party to win many elections at these levels.
The break with the Soviet Union
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People at the funeral of Enrico Berlinguer. |
In
1980 the PCI publicly condemned the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan; Moscow then immediately sent Marchais to Rome, to try to bring Berlinguer into line, but Marchais was received with a notable coldness. The break with the Soviets and other Communist parties became clear when the PCI did not participate in the
1980 international conference of Communist parties held in
Paris. Instead Berlinguer made an official visit to
China. In November in Salerno, Berlinguer declared that the idea of an eventual Historic Compromise had been put aside; it would be replaced with the idea of the "democratic alternative."
In
1981 Berlinguer said that, in his personal opinion, "the progressive force of the October Revolution had been exhausted." The PCI criticised the "normalisation" of
Poland and very soon the PCI's split with the Soviet Communist Party became definitive and official, followed by a long polemic between
Pravda and
L'Unità (the official newspaper of PCI), not made any milder after the meeting with
Fidel Castro in
Havana.
On an internal side, Berlinguer's last major statement was a call for the solidarity among the leftist parties. In June
1984 Berlinguer suddenly left the stage during a speech at public meeting in
Padua: he had suffered a brain haemorrhage, and died three days later. More than a million citizens attended his funeral.
Enrico Berlinguer has been defined in many ways, but he was generally recognised for political coherence and a certain courage, together with a rare personal and political intelligence. A serious man, he was sincerely respected even by his opponents, and his three days' agony was followed with great attention by the general population. His funeral was followed by a large number of people, perhaps among the highest ever seen in Rome.
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The funerals of Enrico Berlinguer produced probably the largest crowds ever to gather in Rome; here they are shown making the clenched fist, symbol of the Communist and leftist movements |
The most important political act of his career in the PCI was undoubtedly the dramatic break with Soviet Communism, the so-called
strappo, together with the creation of Eurocommunism, and his substantial work towards contact with the conservative half of the country.
Berlinguer nevertheless had many enemies. An internal opposition in the PCI claimed that he had turned a workers' party into a sort of bourgeois revisionist club. External opposition figures noted that
strappo took several years to be completed; this was seen as evidence that there had been no definitive decision on the point. The acceptance of NATO is however generally seen as evidence of the genuine autonomy of the PCI's position.
All the work of Berlinguer, however, even if supported by a notably successful Communist local governments, was unable to bring the PCI into the government. Berlinguer's final platform, the "democratic alternative," was never translated into reality. Within a decade of his death the Soviet Union, the Christian Democrats and the PCI all disappeared, transforming Italian politics beyond recognition.
*Italian
singer-songwriter Antonello Venditti dedicated a song, "Dolce Enrico" ("Sweet Enrico"), to Berlinguer.
*Italian actor and director
Roberto Benigni declared publicly his admiration and personal love for Enrico Berlinguer. Beside having been protagonist of the movie
Berlinguer ti voglio bene, Benigni appeared during a public political demonstration of the Italian Communist Party (of which he was a sympathiser), taking in his arms and dandling Berlinguer.
