Leone's resignation came during a very difficult moment for the Italian Republic. Tight in the grip of the "Years of Lead" and of the strategy of tension, the country had suffered major terrorist attacks during the decade, such as 1974 Piazza della Loggia bombing and 1974 Italicus Express bombing. The climax of tension came in March 1978, when the former Prime Minister Aldo Moro was kidnapped and killed by a unit of the militant far-left organisation known as the Red Brigades while on his way to a session of the Chamber of Deputies where a discussion was to take place regarding a vote of confidence for a new government that would have had for the first time ever the support of the Italian Communist Party. Politically, Moro's stance to find an accommodation between the Christian Democracy and the Italian Communist Party was a way to lead the country out of the tensions and to make the republic institutions more solid and stable as response to domestic terrorism. The Historic Compromise was made possible by the new course inaugurated by the new communist leader Enrico Berlinguer, who in 1973 launched in communist magazine "Rinascita" a proposal for a "democratic alliance" with Christian Democracy in order to prevent a coup d'état similar to the Chilean one. However the sudden death of Moro was an hard blow to the Historical Compromise politics and a major defeat for the republic institutions in front of the public opinion.