Italian Communist Party
The
Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI) or
Italian Communist Party emerged as
Partito Comunista d'Italia or
Communist Party of
Italy from a secession by the
Leninist comunisti puri tendency from the
Italian Socialist Party (PSI) during that body's congress on
21 January 1921 at
Livorno.
Amedeo Bordiga and
Antonio Gramsci led the split.
In
1991 the PCI disbanded to form the
Partito Democratico della Sinistra (PDS), with membership in the
Socialist International. The communist tendency, led by
Armando Cossutta, left the party to form the
Partito della Rifondazione Comunista (PRC) or Communist Refoundation Party. In
1998 the PDS, with several smaller parties, the
Laburisti (liberal socialists), the
Cristiano Sociali (christian socialists), the
Comunisti Unitari (right-wing split of the PRC), the
Sinistra Repubblicana (left republicans) and the
Riformatori per l'Europa (social democratic trade unionists), co-founded the "Democratici di Sinistra" (DS) or
Democrats of the Left party. Later in the same year the
Armando Cossutta tendency left the PRC to form the
Partito dei Comunisti Italiani (PdCI) or
Party of Italian Communists.
In
1926 the PCI was outlawed by the
Fascist government of
Benito Mussolini. Although forced underground, the PCI continued in clandestinity and exile. In 1926 its left wing led by Bordiga was finally defeated and replaced by a new leadership around Gramsci at a conference in Lyon which issued a set of theses expressing the programmatic basis of the party at that point. However Gramsci soon found himself jailed by Mussolini's repression and the leadership passed to
Palmiro Togliatti. Togliatti would lead the party until it emerged from illegality in
1944 and relaunched itself as the Italian Communist Party.
The party took part in every government during the
national liberation and
constitutional period from June
1944 to May
1947. In the first general elections of
1948 it joined the PSI in the
Democratic Popular 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, never joining directly. One of its successes was the lobbying of
Fiat to set up the
AvtoVAZ (Lada) car factory in the
Soviet Union. The party always had its stronghold 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.
After the
Athens Colonel Coup in April of
1967, Longo and other PCI leaders became alarmed at the possibility of a repeat in Italy (there were two attempted coups in
Italy in
1964 and
1970 by neo-fascist and military groups).
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 May 1972 elections, Longo personally wrote to
Leonid Brezhnev asking for, and receiving an additional $5.7 million in funding. This was on top of the 3.5 million that the PCI was given in 1971. The Soviets also provided additional funding through the use of front companies providing generous contracts to PCI members.
[Andrew, Christopher; Mitrokhin, Vasili. The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGBBasic Books (2001)]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. 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 Brezhnev 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. At the time the PCI was the biggest Communist Party in a democratic state, obtaining a score of 34,4% in the
1976 general elections.
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Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo's The Fourth Estate (1902), a popular image amongst the worker's movement. |
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 1970-80s, definitely embracing social-democracy (
eurocommunism) and the
Socialist International. The PCI sought a collaboration with Socialist and
Christian Democracy parties (the
historic compromise). Christian-democrat 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.
This as well as 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.
*
Secretaries of Italian Communist Parties*
Official DS web page*
Official PRC web page*
Official PdCI web page*
Archive of PCI posters*
Archive of PCI posters, part 2*
Archive of PCI posters, part 3
