The Italian Communist leader Enrico Berlinguer became a symbol of "Eurocommunism," the commitment of many European Communist parties to a democratic nonrevolutionary route to socialism independent of Soviet influence.
Background
Berlinguer was born on May 22, 1922, in Sassari, Sardinia, into a wealthy landowning family with a tradition of leftist politics.
In late 1973 Berlinguer proposed an "historic compromise" between the PCI and its long-time antagonist, the governing Christian Democratic Party. Berlinguer argued that a leftist government with a narrow majority and headed by the Communists could provoke a disastrous polarization in Italy. The Communists would therefore seek to govern in coalition with the Christian Democrats and smaller parties.
On June 11, 1984, Berlinguer died in Padua from a stroke suffered while campaigning in elections for the Italian deputation to the European Parliament. In those elections the PCI gained a plurality of the vote, the first time it had ever won a nationwide election. Berlinguer's funeral was attended by nearly two million Italians.
Career
In 1944 he was arrested for inciting a bread riot in Sassari, and he came to the attention of Palmiro Togliatti, national leader of the PCI.
In 1945 he was elected to the PCI central committee and put in charge of the party's youth division. In 1948 he was elevated to membership in the party executive committee. Berlinguer later held a succession of increasingly important posts in the PCI hierarchy.
In February 1969 he was named deputy secretary-general of the party and became heir-apparent to the PCI leader Luigi Longo. He succeeded Longo in March 1972.
Politics
In late 1973 Berlinguer proposed an "historic compromise" between the PCI and its long-time antagonist, the governing Christian Democratic Party. Berlinguer argued that a leftist government with a narrow majority and headed by the Communists could provoke a disastrous polarization in Italy. The Communists would therefore seek to govern in coalition with the Christian Democrats and smaller parties.
Communist participation in the national government was not achieved during Berlinguer's lifetime. However, the PCI became increasingly popular with Italian voters. After 1975 a majority of Italians lived in cities or regions governed by Communist-Socialist coalitions. Between 1976 and 1979 the Christian Democrat-led national government openly solicited and depended upon Communist parliamentary support, but after 1979 the PCI went back into opposition.
Under Berlinguer's leadership the Italian Communists made it clear that they did not consider the Soviet Union to be an acceptable model of socialism. The PCI sharply condemned Soviet persecution of dissidents, the Soviet invasions of Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan, and the suppression of Solidarity, the independent Polish labor movement.