Italian Communism: The Road to Legitimacy and Autonomy

By John A. Baker

Throughout the Cold War era, many Americans were puzzled that communism could thrive in Italy, a NATO ally with close cultural and social ties to the United States. In this study of Italian Communism and the Italian Communist Party, from its part in the Resistance during World War II to its role in Italy in the eighties, John Baker explains how Italian Communism differs from communism in other nations and why it has flourished in Italy.

Dr. Baker concentrates on the Italian Communist Party’s dilemma regarding its relationship with the Soviet Union. Since World War II, Italian Communists have sought to participate in governing Italy. As long as the Party was associated with the aspirations of the Soviet Union, however, it was suspect in the eyes of the Italian electorate and Italy’s allies. Thus, to gain influence in Italian politics, the Party was forced to “deradicalize,” that is, to disclaim endorsement of non-democratic methods and to distance itself from Soviet foreign policy. Dr. Baker traces this gradual and successful process of deradicalization.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barakaldo Books
• Release date: Oct 9, 2020
• ISBN: 9781839745980

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ITALIAN COMMUNISM

THE ROAD TO LEGITIMACY AND AUTONOMY

BY

JOHN A. BAKER

Janus was the ancient Roman god of doors and gates and, hence, of all beginnings. His symbol is the double-faced head. Janus usually is represented with two heads placed back to back so he might look in two directions at the same time.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 5

DEDICATION 6

Illustrations 7

MAPS 7

PHOTOGRAPHS 8

TABLE 9

Foreword 10

MAP 11

Preface 12

Chronology 18

The PCI in Post-war Italy, 1943-87 18

Seeking Parliamentary Change 27

PART ONE—Long Prelude to Power, 1921-76 37

I—The Revolutionary Vision 38

Deradicalization 38

Origin of the PCI 40

Popular Front Strategy 41

Resistance and Collaboration 42

The Cold War 45

II—The XX Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, 1956 51

Question #1: PCI Autonomy 52

Question #2: "Non-inevitability of War" Theory 56

Question #3: Relationship Between Soviet Power and PCI Political Prospects 58

Question #4: The Italian Road to Socialism 59

Summing Up 1956 60

III—Alliance Strategy: 1956-76 62

Struggle to Overcome Isolation 63

Stagnation of Soviet Foreign Policy 66

Legitimization Through Opposition to Extremism 68

New Generation of Leaders 69

Search for Legitimacy 70

Lessons of Chile 72

Electoral Momentum and Party Rejuvenation 74

Eurocommunism 74

European Policy 74

NATO 74

European Communist Party Conference at Berlin: June 1976 74

IV—Deradicalization 1956-76 74

Elements of Socialism 74

Lack of Leverage 74

Internal Brake 74

Renewal Group 74

PART TWO—Party of Government Addresses Foreign Policy, 1976-82 74

V—Faltering Détente Obstructs the PCI 74

PCI Support Yields to Doubts 74

PCI Enters Parliamentary Majority 74

As PCI Approaches Control Room, US-Soviet Relations Deteriorate 74

PCI Attempts Damage Control 74

Beginning the Critique 74

PCI and China-Vietnam Conflict 74

Summing Up Solidarity Experience 74

VI—XV Congress of the Italian Communist Party, 1979 74

The "Third Way" 74

End of Solidarity Government 74

Perceptions of Soviet Attitude Toward "National Solidarity" 74

VII—PCI Criticism of Individual Soviet Policies 74

Views of Nonaligned Movement 74

Soviet Defensiveness 74

PCI View of SS-20 Deployment 74

Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan 74

Berlinguer’s Blame Corrected 74

VIII—PCI’s Global Perception of Soviet Foreign Policy 74

Lapo Sestan’s May 1980 Analysis 74

CESPI, PCI Foreign Policy Process 74

Further Reflection on PCI Critique 74

Systemic Origins Noted 74

CPSU Congress, PCI Restraint 74

Nonaligned, Workers’ Movements 74

Revival of Ledda’s Critique 74

IX—Soviet Responsibility for Deterioration of Détente 74

Poland and the Loss of Soviet Propulsive Force 74

Reflections on the 1979-82 "Turn" 74

PART THREE—Perspectives of the PCI’S Foreign Policy Elite 74

X—Approach to Euro-Left 74

XI—Distancing From Moscow 74

Soviet Priorities 74

US Reactions to Soviet Policies 74

PCI Policy Toward US-Soviet Confrontation 74

XII—Soviet Ideology and Power and the Fortunes of the PCI 74

Post-war Momentum Checked by Containment 74

Pressures for Changes 74

PCI Reactions to Gorbachev and Vice Versa 74

Generations Seem World Apart 74

Selected Bibliography 74

Books 74

Reports and Documents 74

Articles 74

Doctoral Dissertations 74

Book Review 74

Published Interviews 74

Abbreviations 74

The Author 74

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 74

DEDICATION

To Katharine...for her patience, trailblazing on the computer, and warm support;

and to Malcolm for his technical wizardry

Illustrations

MAPS

Europe

Italy

Eastern Europe and Western Soviet Union

PHOTOGRAPHS

PCI’s VI Congress features portraits

Popular poster caricatures Premier de Gasperi

Posters reflect tensions between PCI, CD

Premier de Gasperi casts his ballot

Partisans parade during their First Congress

Leftist sympathizers demonstrate against de Gasperi

Competing posters surround statue of St. Peter

PCI leader Togliatti visits USIS exhibit in Rome

Italian communists protest Salvador Allende’s death

Pietro Ingrao, L’Unita’s editor and veteran PCI member

Posters cover Milan’s famous Galleria Endpiece

TABLE

1. Election results: Chamber of Deputies (1948-87)

Foreword

Throughout the Cold War era, many Americans were puzzled that communism could thrive in Italy, a NATO ally with close cultural and social ties to the United States. In this study of Italian Communism and the Italian Communist Party, from its part in the Resistance during World War II to its role in Italy in the eighties, John Baker explains how Italian Communism differs from communism in other nations and why it has flourished in Italy.

Dr. Baker concentrates on the Italian Communist Party’s dilemma regarding its relationship with the Soviet Union. Since World War II, Italian Communists have sought to participate in governing Italy. As long as the Party was associated with the aspirations of the Soviet Union, however, it was suspect in the eyes of the Italian electorate and Italy’s allies. Thus, to gain influence in Italian politics, the Party was forced to deradicalize, that is, to disclaim endorsement of nondemocratic methods and to distance itself from Soviet foreign policy. Dr. Baker traces this gradual and successful process of deradicalization.

Recent overtures by Mikhail Gorbachev toward the Italian Communists reflect a Soviet acknowledgment of the matured posture of the Italian Communist Party. In the context of a half-century of political turmoil in Europe, this study illuminates the evolution of one of the West’s oldest and strongest communist movements.

Bradley C. Hosmer

Lieutenant-General, US Air Force

President, National Defense University

MAP

Preface

In this study I examine the perceptions of Soviet foreign policy of the Italian Communist Party—Partito Communista Italiano (PCI)—especially the party’s foreign affairs elite. Before I begin, let me briefly trace my interest in the topic and note its particular relevance to the evolution of Soviet foreign policy since 1985.

My interest in the perceptions of Soviet foreign policy of the PCI began with a Foreign Service assignment to the political section of the American Embassy in Rome from 1960 to 1963. The analysis of the activity of the PCI and of the international communist movement, as perceived through a variety of Italian sources and publications, was a substantial part of that assignment. In that period, PCI criticism of Soviet foreign policy was rare. Even when the PCI took a diverse posture, as it did in 1962 in shifting to a less negative view of the European Common Market, it did not accent its differences with Moscow nor criticize publicly the Soviet position.

For this reason, after a long absence from analysis of PCI affairs, I was struck by the dramatic assessments of the Soviet system set forth by the PCI leadership in the wake of the declaration of martial law by Polish Prime Minister Wojciech Jaruzelski in December 1981. At that time, PCI Secretary-General Enrico Berlinguer and the Party Secretariat made the following judgment:

The political, state, and ideological model achieved in

the Soviet Union has exhausted its propulsive force.{1}

This judgment was confirmed by the PCI Central Committee in January 1982, and, notwithstanding an angry response from the chief Soviet ideological journal, Kommunist, was reconfirmed at the PCI’s XVI Party Congress in March 1983. It served to reinforce a brief but pithy critique of the Soviet policy of power contained in a report to the PCI secretariat from the party’s Central Committee in October 1981.{2}

The PCI’s statements of October and December 1981, and Berlinguer’s subsequent defense of them before the PCI’s Central Committee in January 1982, were more far-reaching and systematic in their implications than the PCI’s principal preceding criticisms. These criticisms included its dissent from the more blatant Soviet interventions in Czechoslovakia in 1968, its questioning of the 1977 Soviet decision to deploy SS-20 intermediate—range nuclear missiles targeted on Western Europe, and its criticism of the Soviet aggression in Afghanistan in late 1979.

What lends these criticisms particular relevance now, eight years later, is that they have been, with the exception of the judgment on Czechoslovakia, wholly validated by authoritative Soviet spokesmen. In addition, referring to Berlinguer’s judgment, quoted above, on the Soviet model of socialism, Vladimir Naumov, a Soviet expert on the PCI close to the Soviet party’s Central Committee staff, wrote in Kommunist in January 1989:

The PCI said it and it would not be appropriate to fault it for that inasmuch as it was true.

The October and December 1981 statements posed the following questions:

What was the source of the PCI’s growing realism and candor about the nature of the Soviet model and the foreign policy it expressed in the 1977-81 period?

Was it that the PCI had gained more latitude, as its nostalgic hard-line minority passed from the scene, to call a spade a spade?

Was it that Soviet foreign policy had become more assertive, on the strength of recognized nuclear strategic parity and the American post-Vietnam syndrome, damaging the international climate of détente that had facilitated the party’s electoral advance in the mid-seventies?

Was it that the left-of-center electorate pursued by the PCI no longer had an automatic tilt toward socialism of any kind—hence the need for a foreign policy which appeared less communist and more Italian?

Was it seeking, for this reason, to give credibility to its acceptance of NATO by taking distance from Moscow’s threat or use of force?

Did it wish to align its foreign policy views with those of the socialist mainstream of the European left, thereby enhancing its credentials for a role on the European political stage?

The leading Italian Communist historians of the Soviet Union periodically, since 1956, had faulted the Soviet leadership for not taking the logical next step after denouncing Stalin’s crimes—profound reform of the system that made those crimes possible. The party’s principal leader, Palmiro Togliatti (1926-54), had signaled this problem in 1964 in his Yalta Memorandum, in effect his political will and last testament. Was the Italian Communist Party leadership now linking this failure to the excesses of Soviet foreign policy, implying that systemic stagnation was driving the Soviet leadership to substitute use of force for its waning ideological appeal?

I set out to answer these and other questions, unaware that I would do so on the very eve of a period in which Soviet proponents of new thinking, stimulated by Mikhail Gorbachev, also would be studying the origins of the PCI analysis, and coming to many of the same conclusions.

An inquiry early in 1984 to the president of the PCI’s Center for the Study of International Politics (CESPI) indicated that an exploration of Italian Communist perceptions of Soviet foreign policy would be possible. The PCI established CESPI as a think tank in 1978. Since then, the center has provided research and analysis to support and inform PCI judgments on foreign and security affairs. In 1979-82, when PCI perceptions had their most significant evolution, CESPI provided the rationale by which PCI Secretary-General Enrico Berlinguer distanced the PCI from Soviet foreign policy.

With the help of CESPI, I established a connection, during my visit to Rome in July 1984, with a young scholar in charge of the Gramsci Institute’s Center for Study of the Socialist Countries. The Gramsci Institute’s recent transformation into an institution staffed (like CESPI) by non-communists as well as party members was designed to increase its political objectivity and its usefulness to non-communist scholars and researchers, such as myself.

The young scholar assisted me by identifying and locating useful documents, pinpointing key members of the party’s foreign affairs elite, and co-ordinating appointments during my return visit to Rome in February-March 1985.

Members of the party’s foreign affairs elite were generous in the time and consideration they gave my inquiries. Interviews with 30 of these individuals provided a valuable survey of insights and reactions. I narrowed this group to a smaller sample of 10 interviews by excluding several prestigious elder statesmen whose influence is declining and including respondents who were—

1. Full-time and influential officials in foreign affairs.

2. Born in the decade of the twenties, the generation of the party elite.

3. Members, or higher, of the party’s Central Committee or Central Control Commission.

The only exception to the first criterion was the principal critic of the party’s foreign policy, a man somewhat an anomaly at the leadership level. This individual had no fulltime operational role in foreign affairs, probably because he represented the PCI element that resisted the party’s critique of Soviet foreign policy He is an articulate critic with long experience at top levels of the party; a member of the party’s directorate until dropped after the party’s XVII Congress in April 1986, he now works in the domestic policy area.

Two other exceptions were active foreign affairs operatives with important roles, but were not members of the Central Committee or Central Control Commission.

Five of these ten respondents worked in PCI headquarters. They were responsible for such areas as the peace movement, the European Parliament, defense policy, Soviet-bloc relations, and direct support of the party’s secretary-general. Two had substantial experience in managing CESPI and have written analytical articles on Soviet policy in the Soviet bloc and the Third World for the party’s magazine and newspaper. One was senior theoretician at the party’s school; another was a former chief of the party’s foreign affairs section, who now makes contacts with European non-communist parties, especially the German Social Democrats.

Of 20 other individuals interviewed in detail, five were members of the party’s directorate particularly versed in foreign and security policy affairs, including the two top foreign and security affairs officers of the party’s secretariat; five were Central Committee members intimately connected with foreign affairs issues at various times in the past 15 years; five were experts in the journalist-scholar category; and five were younger members of the party active in policy studies, research, and foreign policy operations.

The interviews conducted with the PCI foreign affairs specialists took place during the month just prior to the death of Soviet Communist Party (CPSU) Secretary General Chernenko and the accession to CPSU leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev. In the four years that have elapsed since then, the new Soviet foreign policy leadership installed by Gorbachev has acted to undo a substantial number of foreign policy actions criticized in 1981-82 by the PCI foreign affairs elite, as well as other western analysts of Soviet foreign policy Furthermore, with glasnost and perestroika, Gorbachev is addressing the long-delayed problem of reform of the increasingly unproductive Stalinist system.

On 24 April 1981, three months after the beginning of the Reagan administration, the Moscow correspondent of the PCI’s daily newspaper, L’Unita, reported that the Soviets want détente but won’t give up the positions they conquered since 1976 in Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, and Cambodia to get it. Eight years later, they apparently are willing to contemplate nonaligned regimes with normal relations with the Soviet Union in most of these places and in Afghanistan as well.

The SS-20s are being dismantled under the US-Soviet INF Treaty signed in 1987; an agreement reached between factions in Angola is expected to lead to the withdrawal of Cuban armed forces transported there in 1975 by the Soviets; the Soviets appear to be supportive of an agreement ending Vietnam’s occupation of Cambodia; and Soviet forces have been taken out of Afghanistan. In Eastern Europe, the Soviets do not appear to be blocking the Polish Communist Party’s March deal with Solidarity, making that movement a legitimized opposition. Hungary, moving toward political pluralism, has reburied, with honors, the martyred leader of the ill-fated 1956 popular uprising (no longer a counterrevolution) without Soviet objection.

Clearly, under these circumstances, the PCI’s 1981-82 critique of Soviet foreign policy has lost some of its originality—for a communist party—especially as the Soviet leader has even adopted as his own PCI leader Togliatti’s characterization of the international workers’ movement: Unity in Diversity.

Part One of this study develops the beginnings of the party’s foreign affairs orientation and its deradicalization in the key period of 1956-76.

Part Two describes the PCI’s growing concern with the negative impact of Soviet foreign policy on détente, after its 1975 high point in Helsinki, and the PCI’s development in 1978-82 of a critique of Soviet foreign policy.

Part Three describes the rationale for the PCI’s identification with the European left and its distancing from Moscow and concludes with some reflections on the relationship of Soviet ideology and power to the fortunes of the Italian Communist Party.

A concluding section to the final chapter summarizes my findings and discusses them in the context of generational changes affecting the party’s continuing deradicalization. A postscript assesses interesting evidence that the PCI critique has had a substantial impact on the new thinking about international relations called for by Mikhail Gorbachev, Secretary General of the Soviet Union.

The PCI’s corps of foreign affairs specialists includes not only respected and experienced analysts of Soviet foreign policy, but also capable executors of foreign policy on the inter-party level in Eastern and Western Europe. A number of the party’s foreign affairs specialists have lived substantial periods in Moscow, giving them more direct experience with the operations and culture of the making of Soviet foreign strategy in the international department of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union than many other westerners. Their experiences often changed their perceptions of the Soviet system, and many of them actively criticized Soviet foreign policy well before the PCI did so officially. These individuals provided the early momentum for the party’s shift to a global critique of Soviet foreign policy.

From my discussions with the party’s foreign affairs elite, it was clear that the overwhelming majority opposed Soviet efforts to exert pressure on PCI policies by way of direct or indirect appeals to its membership. They did not plan nor desire to enter power on a rising Soviet tide in Europe, because they did not expect such a tide. On the other hand, they did not welcome an anti-socialist tide in Europe nor a unilateral rollback of Soviet influence not accompanied by a corresponding reduction of US influence.

My inquiries were based on an assumption that Italian Communist perceptions of Soviet foreign policy do not derive solely from a study of Soviet elections and motives. They also are influenced and motivated by political needs of the party as it seeks power inside a changing Italian and European society.

The result is a PCI posture neither anti-Soviet nor anti-American but critical of both.

*****

Preparation of this study would not have been possible without the support and collaboration of a considerable number of persons and institutions. None of them, I must stress, is co-responsible for any of the judgments or conclusions presented here. Among the foremost is the National Defense University’s Research Directorate, which proposed the study, helped me structure it, and provided clerical support. I especially thank Joe Goldberg and Ed Seneff for their useful suggestions and editing, and Frederick Kiley for his artful final editing and overall supervision.

I am grateful as well to the Department of State for agreeing to the assignment, my final one in the Foreign Service, so that I could accept the Research Directorate’s proposal.

I am also indebted to the Gramsci Institute and the Center for the Study of International Politics in Rome for the assistance their directors and researchers provided in guiding me to relevant materials and arranging requested appointments.

Finally, the patience, encouragement, and support of my wife, Katharine, were crucial to completion of the main writing phase, as was the key instruction and support on word processing techniques provided by my son, Malcolm.

Chronology

The PCI in Post-war Italy, 1943-87

1943

8 July—American and British troops land in Sicily

8 September—Italian government accepts armistice

15 September—Mussolini proclaims Republic of the North; Committees of National Liberation proliferate in northern Italy

1944

27 March—PCI leader Togliatti returns from Moscow and announces PCI’s willingness to serve in new provisional Badoglio government

21 April—New Badoglio government formed, including Togliatti

6 June—D-Day in Normandy

9 June—Rome liberated

19 June—Bonomi government formed

December—Committees of National Liberation for Northern Italy (CLNAI) recognized by Bonomi government as delegates for occupied areas

1945

April—Committees of National Liberation, frequently under PCI leadership, participate in liberation of northern Italy

9 May—End of war in Europe: VE (Victory in Europe) Day

15 June—Formation of government headed by Ferruccio Parri, choice of CLNAI, member of Action Party

27 November—Alcide de Gasperi, Christian Democrat, forms new government; Allied Military Government withdrawn, except in Trieste area

1946—

2 June—First post-war elections held; monarchy abolished by referendum

1947

11 January—Giuseppe Saragat leads group defecting from Socialist Party, then closely tied to PCI, to form Social Democrat Party (PSDI)

10 February—Peace Treaty with Allies signed

12 March—Truman Doctrine proclaimed

31 May—PCI and PSI (Socialists) excluded from government, but not PSDI

5 June—Marshall Plan announced

17 June—Communists win control of League of Co-operatives, major instrument for financial and electoral support in north central Italy

Mid-September—Founding of Cominform, association of Soviet-bloc communist parties plus French and Italian communist parties; announced 5 October

27 December—Constitution signed

1948

20 February—Communist Party of Czechoslovakia takes full control in Prague, completing Soviet takeover in Eastern Europe

18 April—Italian parliamentary elections: PCI+PSI=31%; DC=48%

26 June—Beginning of Berlin blockade

28 June—Tito break with Stalin becomes public

14 July—Attempted assassination of PCI leader Togliatti by Sicilian neo-fascist student

1949

4 April—North Atlantic Treaty signed

November—PCI supports Cominform report: Yugoslav CP in the Hand of Assassins and Spies

1950

18 March—Italian Parliament ratifies Italy’s adherence to NATO

May—Formation of National Committee of Partisans for Peace to support Stockholm appeal to Ban the Bomb

1951

January—Stalin asks Togliatti to head Cominform activity in Europe in Moscow; Togliatti resists this effort to replace him as PCI leader

8 April—VII Congress of PCI affirms unbreakable faith in USSR

1953

5 March—Stalin dies

7 June—Italian parliamentary elections: PCI, 22.6%

1954

5 October—Trieste returned to Italy; Yugoslavia gets Zone B south of Trieste on Istrian Peninsula

1955

July—Summit meeting between Eisenhower and Khrushchev: Geneva Spirit

1956

14-25 February—XX Congress of Soviet Communist Party (CPSU): Secret report by Khrushchev reveals Stalin’s crimes against party. Non-inevitability of war and diversity of roads to socialism asserted

30 May—Togliatti calls for polycentrism in article in Nuovi Argomenti, citing need for unity in diversity and noting degeneration in USSR

Khrushchev woos Tito in Moscow

29 June—Demonstrating workers shot down in Poznan, Poland

19 October—Formerly jailed Polish Communist Gomulka chosen to head Polish Communist Party after showdown with Khrushchev and Soviet forces

23 October—Uprising in Budapest

1 November—Soviet military intervention in Hungary

16 November—Togliatti justifies Soviet intervention as blocking return of fascism to Hungary

7-17 December—VIII Congress of PCI: New alliance strategy proclaimed

1957

25 March—Treaty of Rome establishes Common Market in Western Europe

17 November—Declaration of communist parties in Moscow asserts General Laws for takeovers by communist parties

1958

25 May—Italian parliamentary elections: PCI, 22.7%

1960

19 July—Christian Democratic government headed by Tambroni and supported by neo-fascist party (MSI) toppled by leftist demonstrations

6 December—World Conference of Communist Parties reveals Sino-Soviet split

1962—PCI shifts position toward acceptance of Common Market as Western European and Italian economic revival gains momentum

February—X PCI Congress: Togliatti calls for Democracy of a New Type and autonomy of decision of each party

1963

8 January—Christian Democrat Amintore Fanfani forms government with Socialist Party support for first time since 1947, creating Opening to the Left

28 April—Italian parliamentary elections: PCI, 25.3%

4 December—Aldo Moro forms government, including socialist ministers for first time since 1947

1964

August—Togliatti dies at Yalta, leaving memorandum critical of Soviet neglect of reform; Luigi Longo becomes PCI leader, publishes memorandum 4 September

31 October—Khrushchev removed by colleagues from position of secretary general of CPSU; PCI expresses perplexity and reservations over process

1966

January—XI PCI Party Congress: Longo solidifies control

1967

24 April—Meeting of European Communist Parties at Karlovy Vary in Czechoslovakia appears to offer opening to West Germany

1968

19 May—Italian parliamentary elections: PCI,