Italian Communist Party

The **Italian Communist Party** is a democratic communist political party in the Italian Republic and one of two main parties in the country, together with the Christian-Popular Party. It's current secretary, Nicola Fratoianni, is Head of the Opposition in the Chamber of Deputies while the president of its cultural wing, Comunisti Per La Cultura, professor Tomaso Montanari, is Head of the Opposition in the Chamber of Associations. The current President of the Italian Republic, history professor Alessandro Barbero, is also a member, although he has announced his unwillingness to run a second term in 2024, stating "This position has been exhausting to me, and its not made for me. I'll be glad to go back being a professor full time."

## **BACKGROUND**

The Italian Communist Party derives from a reorganization of the Communist Party of Italy, founded in 1922 as a splinter of the Italian Socialist Party. The Communists split from the Socialists due to their unwillingness to partake in armed revolution during the Biennio Rosso, a period of instability and near civil war from 1919 and 1921, and accusing them of being traitors like the German Social Democrats, joining the Soviet-led Third International.

Under the charismatic leadership of Amadeo Bordiga, the Communist Party of Italy began to be an organism very different from the other parties that had joined the International. The purely working-class composition had not produced the usual internal pyramid hierarchy with intellectuals at the top. On the other hand, the rigorous internal discipline was not based so much on statutory provisions, but on the program and on what was taking shape in that period as "organic centralism". This particular "natural" structure was explained and claimed as early as 1921 as a distinctive element of the "Italian" Communist Left. In an article of the same year, Bordiga clarifies that the revolutionary party is characterized by the fact that it is already the project, the founding basis of the future society and from this derives its specific nature and structure, while rejecting any internal mechanism borrowed from the present society. Communist leaders were immediately persecuted and often arrested by the fascist regime, until it was banned. The Communist Left of Bordiga was made minoritary in 1926, when his protegé Antonio Gramsci got the party to vote for a "bolshevization" on the Leninist model. The PCI was so born, but it's chief leader Gramsci was soon arrested and sent to a fascist prison, where he eventually died.

## **HISTORY**

From 1927, the PCI was directed in exile by Palmiro Togliatti from Moscow, while its members acted clandestinely in Italy against the fascist regime. With the fall of Mussolini in 1943 and the beginning of the Italian Civil War, the party was legalized in the Kingdom of the South and formed Partisan groups to fight against nazifascist occupation in the Italian Social Republic. The communist resistance was the single strongest one during the war, and the popularity of the ideology skyrocketed. In the new Italy. Togliatti worked to build a "new party", strongly radicated in regional politics and focused on all the everyday struggles of the worker. Part of this was because of directives from Moscow against an armed revolution. Stalin did not want to risk a new World War by supporting rebels in a Western European country, but despite this many communist considered it a matter of time. The closest point was in 1948, when, soon after the elections, Togliatti was nearly killed by a monarchist shooter, causing riots and conspiracies. Togliatti expressed support for decolonization and suggested the international communist movement join forces with non-communist anti colonialists such as Nasserite Egypt, which was promptly done. He was extremely loyal to the ties with Moscow, but did not spare the Soviet leadership from criticism, particularly when he thought they failed to understand Italy's situation and tried to act on it in an inappropriate manner.

The revolutionary fervor of the forties died out in the fifties, with the PCI focusing now on regional politics and reformism, but there was a revival in the late 1960s due to the anti-war, counterculture movement. The increasing strenght of the Left spurred increased far right conspiracies against it, such as the 1964 Piano Solo, a planned coup to prevent the formation of a center left government, the Golpe Borghese, a aborted neofascist coup by former Mussolini officer Junio Valerio Borghese, or the support for neofascist terrorist acts. The 1970s then saw the birth of the Brigate Rosse, Lotta Comunista and other far left terrorist formations. They were only loosely and secretly linked to parts of the PCI. Under the leadership of Enrico Berlinguer, the Party kept away from them and acted more and more independently from Moscow, working towards a coalition with the Demo-Christians in 1978, which was however collapsed the following year by the DC. In these years, the more hardcore new age communists such as Maoists and environmentalists formed Democrazia Proletaria, a rival far left party. Following the 1979 economic crash and the P2 Scandal, where hundreds of influential figures were found to be part of an anti communist Masonic Lodge with a subversive agenda, the PCI triumphed in the 1983 elections, forming a coalition with the young left-catholic Christian-Popular Party and Democrazia Proletaria. Terrorism and the sudden death of Berlinguer the next year, however, brought about a military coup, followed by a brief right wing government by MSI member Gianfranco Fini. The CGIL, the PCI's trade union, as well as all it's Coops, it's regional governors and the Brigate Rosse rose up, threatening a full scale civil war before the military stepped in again to overthrow Fini and negotiate a deal. The PCI remained part of the ruling coalition but without a premier until their complete victory in 1993 in coalition with Democrazia Proletaria. Afterwards, the Reform Assembly initiated the era of the Second Republic. The Party detached from Moscow and joined the ADC in 1996, accusing Yeltsin of being an imperialist.

The PCI remained the dominant force for twenty years, until the Great American War and American Spring sent shockwaves across the ADC, leading to the PCP winning. The PCI mantained control over the Presidency and got back the Chamber of Associations in 2019, but the Chamber of Deputies and the Premiership remain catholic. The polls suggest a equal match in the elections of mid 2024.