X – The PCI in the 1980s: Break with the USSR, Workers’ Defeats, and the Death of Berlinguer (1980–1984)

In the early elections of June 1979[1], the PCI lost 4% from the previous elections[2], while the political weight of the DC remained unchanged. The PSI, which had spent the last years totally crushed between the DC and the PCI, with the change in internal leadership falling into the hands of Bettino Craxi and the changing political situation, although remaining stable from an electoral point of view, began increasingly to regain space, aiming to be the kingmaker between the two main parties[3].

The "corsair" behavior of the PSI also manifested itself after the regional elections of June 8, 1980, when Craxi's Party put the PCI, which had fallen to 31.5% in those elections[4], in difficulty by not reconfirming the alliance with it in all the local councils established in the 1975-76 biennium. The DC, having risen to 36.8%, in order to reconquer the maximum possible number of administrations lost in previous years, usually offered the leadership to the PSI, obviously with the obligation for Craxi's Party to change the outgoing majority. After having long oscillated, governing locally with both the DC and the PCI, Craxi's Party stably formed, at the national level, a governing alliance with the DC, increasingly leveraging its role as a border party in requests for positions of power[5]. The small parties, PLI, PRI, and PSDI also re-entered the alliance, which was called the "pentapartito" (five-party coalition) due to the number of parties that composed it. The pentapartito, unlike the centre-left, did not set itself the goal of adopting a reformist profile, but was simply characterized by an innate tendency towards the conservation of power and the sharing of it, concealing this intention behind a word very much in vogue during that period: governability[6]. The PCI found itself back in opposition and, above all, completely isolated.

The situation was further complicated by the definitive break of the PCI with the USSR, which occurred at the beginning of the 1980s[7]. After harshly condemning the invasion of Afghanistan, reiterating the Party's will to no longer demand withdrawal from NATO, it was the coup d'état in Poland that brought an end to the relationship between the PCI and what could, at that point, be considered the former leading State. Enrico Berlinguer, in a television interview, declared the "propulsive thrust of the October Revolution" to be concluded[8]. The declaration, which caused a great sensation, led to an important fracture within the Party, with the pro-Soviet wing, led by Armando Cossutta, rising up and beginning an internal battle which, gathering consensus among the nostalgic grassroots, continued for various reasons until the end of the PCI[9].

Berlinguer, to escape the isolation into which the PCI had fallen, tried to recover the role of protagonist of social opposition in Italy, a role that had obviously faded somewhat during the years of national solidarity. The Party attempted to rebuild alliances at the base of the Country, seeking convergences with the new social forces that demanded the renewal of Italian society and resuming relations with what was the PCI's traditional social reference: the working class. The battles against the installation of Euromissiles, for peace, and, above all, the Fiat workers' dispute in 1980 should be understood in this light. In that struggle, the PCI even managed to bypass the role of the CGIL, and the final defeat, and the one reported years later in the referendum, which had been strongly desired by Berlinguer, to defend the "scala mobile" (wage indexation system) abolished by Craxi, indelibly marked the Party.

The PCI began to realize that society was changing and that the Party, as it was, was becoming an unsuitable tool for facing and governing change. Membership began to fall[10] with the same constancy with which it had increased until 1976, and in the Party, some began to imagine that the path of decline had been taken. Among these was certainly not Enrico Berlinguer, who continued with unchanged political passion to proceed towards the attempt to renew the Party and Italian politics[11]. In the XVI PCI Congress in March 1983, Enrico Berlinguer, besides taking stock of relations with the USSR and relaunching the democratic alternative, placed at the center of his intervention his greatest conviction, the "moral question," considering it of vital importance for the recovery of the State.

In the 1983 elections[12], the one who paid the heaviest price for the political crisis of those years was the DC, which lost 5.4% compared to 1979, despite an attempt at renewal attempted in the last months by the new secretary Ciriaco De Mita. In the previous Legislature, the DC had also given up the leadership of the government, which for the first time had gone to a secular figure, the republican Giovanni Spadolini. The aggressive line of the PSI, however, paid off, and Craxi's Party rose by 1.6% compared to 1979 and demanded the Presidency of the Council for its leader. The PCI, thanks above all to Berlinguer's charisma, managed to hold its ground, losing only 0.5% of the votes compared to 1979.

The year of the European elections, 1984, had been a year of intense struggles for the PCI. These concerned both the defense of the "scala mobile," in which the PCI found itself alone along with the CGIL, and those for peace, in which the Party managed to involve other sectors of society that were not traditionally close to the PCI's positions[13]. The PCI approaching the European elections was therefore a party that was trying to overcome its difficulties, but on June 11, 1984, after an agony that lasted three days, Enrico Berlinguer died. The Sardinian leader had suffered an illness during a rally in Padua during the election campaign[14]. At Enrico Berlinguer's funeral, the extraordinary popular participation that had occurred thirty years earlier at Togliatti's funeral was repeated, and the moved presence of the then President of the Republic, the former socialist partisan Sandro Pertini, who considered the deceased leader as a son, should be remembered[15]. The European elections[16], in the wake of the wave of national emotion, granted a posthumous recognition of Enrico Berlinguer's consistency. His name was still written on the ballot paper by over 600,000 voters, and the PCI, on that unique occasion in its history, achieved the relative majority in Italy.

[1] Results of major parties in the elections for the Chamber of Deputies, June 3, 1979: PCI 30.4% - DC 38.3% - PSI 9.8%. PCI obtained 201 seats in the Chamber and 109 in the Senate.
[2] The decline was confirmed also in the first European Parliament elections, June 10, 1979: PCI 29.7% vs DC 36.4%. PCI obtained 24 seats in the European Parliament.
[3] Cf. Colarizi, op. cit.
[4] To this result, add 1.2% from the Pdup, merged into PCI a few months later.
[5] Cf. Colarizi, op. cit.
[6] Cf. Agosti, op. cit.
[7] Cf. Pansa, Farewell October – Journey among Italian Communists, Mondadori.
[8] Cf. Veltroni, op. cit.
[9] Cf. Cossutta, A Communist Story, Rizzoli.
[10] PCI membership data 1977–1990: 1977: 1,814,154; 1978: 1,790,450; 1979: 1,761,297; 1980: 1,751,323; 1981: 1,714,052; 1982: 1,673,751; 1983: 1,635,264; 1984: 1,619,940; 1985: 1,595,281; 1986: 1,551,576; 1987: 1,508,140; 1988: 1,462,281; 1989: 1,421,230; 1990: 1,264,790. Source cited.
[11] Cf. Berlinguer, op. cit.
[12] Results of major parties in the elections for the Chamber of Deputies, June 26, 1983: PCI 29.9% - DC 32.9% - PSI 11.4%. PCI obtained 198 seats in the Chamber and 107 in the Senate.
[13] Cf. Colarizi, op. cit.
[14] Cf. Veltroni, op. cit.
[15] Cf. Veltroni, op. cit.
[16] Results of major parties in the European elections, June 17, 1984: PCI 33.3% - DC 33.0%. PCI obtained 27 seats in the European Parliament.