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X - The Return of the opposition

In early elections in June 1979 [1], the Communist Party lost 4% from the previous elections [2], while the political clout of the Christian Democrats remained unchanged. The PSI, who had lived the last years totally crushed between the DC and the PCI, with the change of leadership in the hands of domestic over Craxi and the change in the political situation, while remaining stable from the electoral point of view, he began increasingly to take up space, aiming to be the balance between the two main parties [3].

behavior "pirate" of the PSI was manifested even after the regional elections of 8 June 1980, when the Party of Craxi put difficulties in the Communist Party, fell to 31.5% in the election [4], not confirming it with the alliance formed in all the joints in the years 1975-76. The DC, rising to 36.8%, while as many as possible to regain lost government in previous years, she used to offer these in the guide to the PSI, of course with the obligation Craxi's party to change the outgoing majority. After long-ranged, local governance and with the DC that the Communist Party, the Party of Craxi stably formulated at the national level, an alliance of government with the Christian Democrats, by weighing more and more requests for places in power, its role as the party of the border [5]. Even the small parties, Liberal Party, the PRI and PSDI returned alliance which was called by the number of parties that made it up, "penta". The penta, unlike the center-left, was not raised the goal to develop an image of a reformer, but characterized it simply the inherent tendency for the conservation of power and the division of same, hiding behind this intention a word much in vogue in that period: governance [6]. The Communist Party found itself back in opposition, and above all completely isolated.

The situation is further complicated by the final break with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union that occurred in the early '80s [7]. After strongly condemned the invasion of Afghanistan, reiterating the desire of the party to no longer leave NATO, was the coup in Poland to say the last word in the relationship between the Party and what he could, at that point, be considered under state guidance. Enrico Berlinguer, with a television interview, closed "the thrust of the October Revolution [8]. The statement, which caused great uproar, caused a major rift in the party, with the wing-Soviet, headed by Armando Cossutta, who rose up and began an internal battle that nostalgic gathering support in the base, continued for different reasons, until the end of the PCI [9].

Berlinguer, for which he had fallen out of isolation in the Communist Party, tried to recall that in Italy the leading role of the social opposition that was obviously a bit 'tarnished during the years of national solidarity. The party tries to rebuild the alliances in the base of Country, seeking convergence with the new social forces that were calling for the renewal of Italian society and resuming relations with what was the traditional social reference of the Communist Party, the working class. In this should be read in the battles against the installation Euromissile, peace, and especially in the case of factory workers in 1980. The Communist Party in that fight went so far as to bypass the role of the CGIL and the final defeat and the one set years after the referendum, which was strongly backed by Berlinguer, to defend the "sliding scale" deleted by Craxi, indelibly marked in the Party .

The Communist Party began to notice that the company was changing and that the party even as he was beginning to be an inadequate tool to address and rule change. Members began to decline [10] with the same constancy with which had increased until 1976 and the party began to imagine that someone had taken the path of decline. Among these there was no doubt that Enrico Berlinguer continued with undiminished passion for politics to proceed to attempt to renew the Party of Italian politics and [11]. In XVI Congress of the Communist Party in March of 1983, Enrico Berlinguer, as well as take stock of relations with the USSR and to revive the democratic alternative, placed in the middle of his speech that was his greatest conviction, la “questione morale”, ritenendola di vitale importanza per il risanamento dello Stato.

Alle elezioni del 1983[12] chi pagò il prezzo più salato della crisi della politica di quegli anni fu la Dc, che perse, nonostante un tentativo di rinnovamento tentato negli ultimi mesi dal nuovo segretario Ciriaco De Mita, il 5,4% rispetto al 1979. Nella precedente Legislatura la Dc aveva anche ceduto la guida del governo, che per la prima volta era andata ad un laico, il repubblicano Giovanni Spadolini. La linea aggressiva del Psi, invece, pagò, ed il Partito di Craxi salì dell’ 1,6% rispetto al 1979 e pretese, per il suo leader, la Presidenza del Consiglio. Il Pci, grazie soprattutto al carisma di Berlinguer, Can you take losing only 0.5% of the vote compared to 1979.

year the European elections in 1984, was for the Communist Party a year of intense struggle. These concern both the defense of "sliding scale" in which he found himself alone with the PCI to the CGIL, both for peace, in which the Party was able to involve other sectors of society that traditionally were not close to the positions of the PCI [ 13]. The PCI approaching the European elections was thus a party that was trying to overcome its difficulties, but on 11 June 1984, after an agony lasted three days, died Enrico Berlinguer. The Sardinian leader had suffered a sudden illness during a rally in Padua during the election campaign [14]. At the funeral of Enrico Berlinguer was repeated the extraordinary participation of people who had had thirty years earlier at the funeral of Togliatti and it must be remembered the emotional presence of the President of the Republic, the former militant socialist Sandro Pertini, who considered the late leader like a son [15]. The European elections [16], in the wake of the wave of national excitement, gave him a posthumous award to the consistency of Enrico Berlinguer. His name was also written on the ballot by more than 600,000 voters and the Communist Party, in the only time in its history, he obtained a relative majority in Italy.


[1] Results of the major parties in elections for the Chamber of Deputies of June 3, 1979: PCI
30.4% - 38.3% Dc - Psi 9.8%.
The Communist Party won 201 seats in the House and 109 in the Senate.
[2] The decline was also confirmed in the first elections for the European Parliament which took place June 10, 1979. The Communist Party in that election result was 29.7% of the votes against 36.4% of the DC.
The Communist Party won 24 seats in Parliament.
[3] See Colarizi op. cit.
[4] However, this result should be added the 1, 2% of Pdup, merged a few months after the PCI.
[5] See Colarizi op. cit.
[6] See Agosti op. cit.
[7] Cf Pansa "October Farewell - A journey through the Communist Italian, Mondadori.
[8] See Veltroni op. cit.
[9] See Cossutta "a common history," Rizzoli.
[10] Data from the membership of the Communist Party from 1977 to 1990:
1977: 1,814,154 members; 1978: 1,790,450 members;, 1979: 1,761,297 members; 1980: 1,751,323 members; 1981: 1,714,052 Members , 1982: 1,673,751 members; 1983: 1,635,264 members, 1984: 1,619,940 members; 1985: 1,595,281 members; 1986: 1,551,576 members; 1987: 1,508,140 members; 1988: 1,462,281 members; 1989: 1,421,230 subscribers, 1,264,790 members in 1990.
source cited.
[11] See Berlinguer op. cit.
[12] Results of the major parties in elections for the Chamber of Deputies June 26, 1983: PCI
29.9% - 32.9% Dc - Psi 11.4%.
The Communist Party won 198 seats in the House and 107 in the Senate.
[13] See Colarizi op. cit.
[14] See op Veltroni. cit.
[15] See op Veltroni. cit.
[16] Results of the major parties to the European elections of June 17, 1984: PCI
33.3% - 33.0% Dc.
The Communist Party won 27 seats in Parliament.

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XI - The crisis and the end of the PCI

For Enrico Berlinguer Alessandro Natta succeeded as general secretary, a member of the center Berlinguer, and administrative and regional elections of 12 May 1985, after the previous year, were interpreted as a decisive showdown, as where, as the previous year, had repeated the "overtaking" the Communist Party would ask for if the Presidency of the Council [1]. But the usual "fear of communism" which appealed to the Christian Democrats formed an unbeatable weapon for the "White Whale", which became a resounding success, reaching 35% of the vote. Juntas of penta were formed almost everywhere and the Christian Democrats managed to rip the opponent also the Piedmont Region and the Municipality of Rome, the last bastions of the powerful advance of 1975. At PCI, stuck at 30.2%, we have to acknowledge the end of the "red decade" in local government and the beginning of a crisis, which is confirmed by the defeat on the referendum on the sliding scale, at this point irreversible.

In April of 1986 was held in advance because of the defeat of the previous year, the XVII National Congress of the Communist Party. In response to the crisis in the leadership of the party tried, thanks to the decisive thrust of the "best" Napolitano, a repositioning of the International Communist Party proposing to complete separation from the Communist movement [2] to be, in effect, part of the left European Socialist, Social Democratic and Labour. This line is strongly opposed by a small group organized Cossutta that, in the minority in the party, had given birth to a real current organizations [3]. Alessandro Natta, by giving precedence to a sort of political continuity with Berlinguer, would not arrive at the turn, which came a few years later, Achille Occhetto.

The negative trend continued into the PCI in the subsequent parliamentary elections of 1987 [4] where the party lost a new 3.3% of votes compared with previous elections, which made him return to the results of previous years to the big advance. Instead the Christian Democrats, with 1, 4% more votes than in 1983, was entitled to the crisis and urges for the return of the PSI as President of the Council. Yet another failure in 1988 forced the resignation of the administrative Alessandro Natta. Il politico ligure aveva perso la fiducia della maggioranza del gruppo dirigente del Pci, ormai saldamente nelle mani di Achille Occhetto, che gli successe come segretario generale. Alle spalle di Occhetto c’erano un gruppo di giovani dirigenti, i cosiddetti “quarantenni” e il più importante di questi era senz’altro D’Alema. Massimo D’Alema, che ricoprirà nel Pci l’incarico di coordinatore della segreteria, era già stato Segretario nazionale della Fgci ai tempi di quell’Enrico Berlinguer che, primo fra tutti, nel 1949, aveva svolto lo stesso incarico.

Nel XVIII Congresso del Pci, del marzo 1989, Occhetto provò ad aprire una nuova fase per il Pci sancendo the end of "consociativismo, the recognition of the universal value of democracy and making numerous openings against the capitalist system and the" market "efficiency measures and driving force of the economic system [5]. The new course Occhetto seemed to give immediate access to the fruits as the European elections of June 1989 [6] marked a turnaround in the results of the PCI in recent years.

But the "real socialism" was disintegrating and the event that best represented the collective imagination, that collapse was the "fall of the Berlin Wall the night between 9 and 10 November 1989. The consequences in Italy were immediate, November 12, 1989 Achille Occhetto, speaking before an audience of ex-partisans in the historic section of Bolognina, predicted "big changes". Party leader suggested, only by taking the decision to go to a real "turning point" a prelude to the overcoming of the PCI and the birth of a new party [7]. The Party is a heated debate and dissent, for the first time, was significant and involved large areas of the base. National leaders of major importance which Ingrao, Natta and Tortorella, as well as Cossutta, opposed so convinced at the turn.

To decide on the proposal was announced Occhetto an Extraordinary Congress of the Party, the nineteenth, which was held in Bologna in March 1990. There were three motions that countered:
- the first motion, entitled "Giving life to the stage of forming a new political force" was to Occhetto, which proposed the construction of a new political democratic reform and open to members and lay Catholic, which exceeded the democratic centralism. 67% of the votes obtained by the motion of Occhetto allowed the re-election to the office of Secretary-General and the confirmation of his policies.
- the second motion, entitled "For a true renewal of the PCI and the Left" was signed by Ingrao and, among others, Angi, Castellina, and Tortorella declarant. The Communist Party, according to the supporters of this motion, it was renewed, in politics and organization, but without losing oneself. This motion was defeated by obtaining 30% of the vote.
- the third motion, entitled "To a socialist democracy in Europe" was submitted by a Cossutta. Built on a deeply orthodox plant got only 3% of the vote.

The turning point was passed in the months after Occhetto braced his proposal in October, choosing the name and symbol of the new party: it would be called the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS) and its symbol was an oak tree at the base was present the symbol of the Communist Party. The Communist Party suffered, in his last months, a collapse of both inscriptions election getting to the regional elections of 6 May 1990, only 23.4% compared with 33.4% of the DC.

The XX Congress, held in Rimini in February 1991 was the last of the Communist Party and the first of the PDS. The motions that are countered in this Congress were always three, the first, who got 72% of Occhetto, D'Alema and many other leaders, in favor of the new party, a motion-term, led by Bassolino, and a third to the contrary, dall'accorpamento born of motions submitted to Cossutta Ingrao and the previous Congress. On February 3, 1991, after seventy years of history, ended the history of the Italian Communist Party and the PDS was born. Some managers che avevano osteggiato la svolta, e tra questi Armando Cossutta, Sergio Garavini, Lucio Libertini, Ersilia Salvato, Rino Serri e Nichi Vendola, non aderirono al nuovo Partito e diedero vita a Rifondazione Comunista.


[1] Cfr. Colarizi op. cit.
[2] Non era però minoritaria la posizione di chi riteneva reali le possibilità, con l’avvento di Gorbaciov a capo del Pcus, di riforma del Comunismo mondiale.
[3] Cfr. Cossutta op. cit.
[4] Risultati dei maggiori partiti alle elezioni per la Camera dei Deputati del 14 giugno 1987:
Pci 26,6% - Dc 34,3% - Psi 14,3%.
Il Pci ottenne 177 seggi alla Camera e 101 al Senato.
[5] Cfr. Agosti op. cit.
[6] Risultati of the major parties in the European elections June 18, 1989: PCI
27.6% - 32.9% Dc.
The Communist Party won 22 seats in the European Parliament.
[7] See Zavoli "Once upon a time the First Republic", Mondadori.