page_title: Italian Communist Party
section_title: Early years
hierarchical_section_title: Italian Communist Party / History / Early years
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of Antonio Gramsci around 30 in the early 20s Français&#160;: Portrait d'Antonio Gramsci, vers 30 ans, au début des années 1920. Català: Antonio Gramsci fundador de L'Unità
context_page_description: The Italian Communist Party was a communist political party in Italy.
  The PCI was founded as the Communist Party of Italy on 21 January 1921 in Livorno by seceding from the Italian Socialist Party. Amadeo Bordiga and Antonio Gramsci led the split. Outlawed during the Fascist regime, the party played a major role in the Italian resistance movement. It changed its name in 1943 to PCI and became the second largest political party of Italy after World War II, attracting the support of about a third of the vote share during the 1970s. At the time, it was the largest communist party in the West, with peak support reaching 2.3 million members, in 1947, and peak share being 34.4% of the vote in the 1976 general election.
  The PCI travelled from doctrinaire communism to democratic socialism by the 1970s or the 1980s. In 1991, it was dissolved and re-launched as the Democratic Party of the Left, which joined the Socialist International and the Party of European Socialists. The more radical members of the organization formally departed to establish the Communist Refoundation Party.
context_section_description: The roots of the Italian Communist Party date back to 1921, when the Communist Party of Italy (Partito Comunista d'Italia, PCd'I) was founded in Livorno on 21 January, following a split in the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) on their 17th Congress. The split occurred after the socialist Congress of Livorno refused to expel the reformist group as required by the Comintern. The main factions of the new party were L'Ordine Nuovo, based in Turin and led by Antonio Gramsci, and the "maximalist" faction led by Nicola Bombacci. Amedeo Bordiga was elected Secretary of the new party.
  In the same year, PCd'I participated to its first general election, obtaining 4.6% of the vote and 15 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. At the time, it was an active yet small faction within Italian political left, which was strongly led by the Socialist Party, while on the international plane it was part of Soviet-led Comintern.
  In 1926, the Fascist government of Benito Mussolini outlawed the Communist Party. Although forced underground, the PCd'I maintained a clandestine presence within Italy during the years of the Fascist regime. Many of its leaders were also active in exile. During its first year as a banned party, Antonio Gramsci defeated the party's left-wing which was led by Amadeo Bordiga, becoming the new Secretary during the party's congress in Lyon and issued a manifesto expressing the programmatic basis of the party. However, Gramsci soon found himself jailed by Mussolini's regime and the leadership of the party passed to Palmiro Togliatti. In 1930, Bordiga was expelled from the party on the charge of Trotskyism. The same fate had already occurred to members of the party's right-wing.
  On 15 May 1943, the party changed its official name in Partito Comunista Italiano (Italian Communist Party), often shortened PCI.
caption: Antonio Gramsci
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