page_title: Aldo Moro
section_title: Historic compromise
hierarchical_section_title: Aldo Moro / Historic compromise
caption_attribution_description: Aldo Moro
context_page_description: Aldo Romeo Luigi Moro was an Italian statesman and a prominent member of the Christian Democracy. He served as 38th Prime Minister of Italy from December 1963 to June 1968 and then from November 1974 to July 1976.
  Moro also served as Minister of Foreign Affairs from May 1969 to July 1972 and again from July 1973 to November 1974; during his ministry he implemented a pro-Arab policy, which characterised Italy during the 1970s and the 1980s. Moreover, he was appointed Minister of Justice and of Public Education during the 1950s. From March 1959 until January 1964, Moro served as secretary of the Christian Democracy. On 16 March 1978 he was kidnapped by the far-left terrorist group Red Brigades and killed after 55 days of captivity.
  He was one of Italy's longest-serving post-war Prime Ministers, leading the country for more than six years. An intellectual and a patient mediator, especially in the internal life of his own party, during his rule, Moro implemented a series of social and economic reforms which deeply modernized the country.
context_section_description: After the 1976 general election, the PCI gained a historic 34% votes and Moro became a vocal supporter of the necessity of starting a dialogue between DC and PCI. Moro's main aim was to widen the democratic base of the government, including the PCI in the parliamentary majority: the cabinets should have been able to represent a larger number of voters and parties. According to him, the DC should have been as the centre of a coalition system based on the principles of consociative democracy. This process was known as Historic Compromise.
  Between 1976 and 1977, Berlinguer's PCI broke with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, implementing, with Spanish and French communist parties, a new political ideology known as Eurocommunism. Such a move made an eventual cooperation more acceptable for Christian democratic voters, and the two parties began an intense parliamentary debate, in a moment of deep social crises.
  In 1977, Moro was personally involved in international disputes. He strongly defended his long-time friend, Mariano Rumor, during the parliamentary debate on the Lockheed scandal, and some journalists reported that he might have been involved in the bribery too. The allegation, with the aim of politically destroying Moro and avoiding the risk of a DC–PCI–PSI cabinet, failed when Moro was cleared on 3 March 1978, 13 days before his kidnapping.
  The early-1978 proposal by Moro of starting a cabinet composed by Christian democrats and socialists, externally supported by the communists was strongly opposed by both superpowers. The United States feared that the cooperation between PCI and DC might have allowed the communists to gain information on strategic NATO military plans and installations. Moreover, the participation in government of the communists in a Western country would have represented a cultural failure for the USA. On the other hand, the Soviets considered the potential participation by the Italian Communist Party in a cabinet as a form of emancipation from Moscow and rapprochement to the Americans.
caption: Aldo Moro in 1978
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