Of late, Italy has become the hot topic for discussion among a select section of columnists and a section of Left in India. Specifically, renowned columnist G Sampath, while commenting on the ongoing debate within the CPI (M), extended this to making a comparison with the Italian Communist Party (PCI). He argued that the PCI, that once commanded 34.4 percent of the vote in the 1976 elections, finally ended up by overtaking the Christian Democratic Party, which represented the Italian bourgeoisie and cautioned CPI (M) to ward off from any attempt to emulate this pattern. The author based his hypotheses on a (fictitious) scenario of the CPI (M) joining hands with the Congress to form another coalition government, all aimed at halting the BJP’s juggernaut. There are two aspects and limitations in these hypotheses. Firstly, it is marked by an absence of fact with regard to the CPI (M), specifically. Second, it amounts, in my opinion to a comparison sans any historicity.
For the CPI (M), the Draft Political Resolution (DPR) now forms the basis for any constructive criticism. Not hypothetical postulations. Hence, for one, the columnist is on wrong wicket when he begins with a foregone conclusion, “Over the long-term, however, allying with the Congress could be a strategic blunder that would only shrink the already dwindling space for progressive politics but also strengthen the purveyors of ultra-nationalist hate politics”. Then he goes on to concede that there might be some merit in allying with the Congress for short-term goals. Now, nowhere in the official document that has been released for public debate, is there even an indirect reference to such a stand. The official document released for the discussion within the Party clearly states unambiguously that the main task is to defeat the BJP and its allies by rallying all secular and democratic forces. However, this objective has to be achieved without forming an understanding or electoral alliance with the Congress party. It is very clear therefore that that the official line that is going to be debated upon in the ongoing conference does not propose at all what the Hindu columnist bases his hypothesis on. Instead of discussing the pros and cons of the propositions in the DPR, the columnist has based his arguments on a different set of propositions that he seems to be privy to.
To further his argument, the columnist paraphrases the situation thus, “The largest communist party in post-war Western Europe, the Italian Communist Party (PCI) polled 34.4 % of votes in the national elections of 1976. It then made a ‘ historic compromise’ to ally with the then Italian equivalent of India’s Congress Party, the centrist Christian Democracy (DC), ostensibly to use its mandate to advance a Left-wing agenda. But during the alliance, it was the Communists who shifted rightward. The secular, progressive PCI found itself back-pedaling on issues such as divorce and abortion, so as not to upset the DC’s Catholic middle class voters. Italy’s parliamentary Left never recovered from this alliance.”
The columnist thus attempts to find a solution to current issues by reading into the so-called history of PCI. To properly understand this comparison, contextualizing the history of the PCI in its last phase is critical. If we confine our understanding merely to the so called historic compromise, we will be misled about the key factors that played a major role in shaping the Italian polity between 1969 -1979, especially US imperialism.
Look at the developments that shaped the alleged historic compromise by PCI. Throughout the Cold War, the most important issue that occupied US diplomats – and especially those attached to the ‘Italian Desk’ within the State Department – was the largest and best organised Communist party in the Western hemisphere, the Italian Communist party whose political and social influence continued to grow during the decades that followed the war.
Between 1969 and 1979, strategic choices of the USA — elaborated by the National Security Adviser and the State Department– aimed at sustaining its hegemony over Western Europe, and deterring the expansion of influence of Eastern European Communist block. In line with this strategic aim, the US Embassy in Rome shaped and nudged the Italian centrist party for a tie up with the Communists and thus designed an imperialist strategy coercing the polity of Italy to ally with the US in order to survive. Not mentioning this specific context and merely ridiculing the historical compromise, that too of the centrist party with Communists, only succeeds in suppressing facts that will only help in arriving at out conclusions that are out of context.
In the early 1970s the Italian Communist Party’s influence spread across the regions, it became the strongest force in northern belt, which was known as the Red Belt. It won elections to numerous local administrations. Banking on its strength in the Red Belt, that PCI decided to organize a campaign to for direct involvement in national government. In this pursuit, the then general secretary of the Party, Berlinguer felt that it was time to accept the proposal from the Left leaning faction of Christian Democrats aimed at the Left being accepted as ‘a legitimised organisation, qualified eventually to take a place in a coalition government. Significantly, the CPI (M) today simply does not occupy the political space that the PCI did then; neither does the Congress represent what the Christian Democrats then did.
To step back in history, it was after the regional elections of 1975, when the National Council met in July, that the left-wing leader among the Christian Democrats, Aldo Moro, along with radical Socialist leaders, Francesco De Martino and Riccardo Lombardi Moro argued in favor of their coming together with the PC. The USA had warned against this arguing that the Communists must be seen as the opposition even though they represented 33 % electorate. Then, after the elections, Aldo Moro formed a coalition government. In the months that followed, US interference in Italian affairs increased ‘in a shameless way’. Ambassador Volpe risked ‘out-performing former US Ambassador Luce’ in his anti-Comunist vehemence.
Before this, during the general elections of May 1968, the Italian Communist Party (PCI) won 26.9 percent of the vote. After 1968, with almost a third of the seats in Parliament, the PCI represented ‘extreme danger’ to most US analysts, not only because of Italian governments’ weakness and internal struggles within the ruling Christian Democrats (DC), but above all because the Communists were now projecting the image of a reformist party and had become attractive to those Italians left disaffected by the lack of social reform. Coming forth as the only political opposition within the ‘immobile’ Italian political system, they were seen as a threat that might erode the electoral base of the Christian Democrats.
In January 1969, Nixon presidency appointed Henry Kissinger as National Security Adviser and Graham Martin as Ambassador to Italy. Official communications and telegrams of the US Embassy to Washington often expressed grave caution about the fact that, Communists, depicting themselves as a moderate force, would eventually convince Italian voters and enter government, which would be against US’ interests. Both American and British sources agreed on this perspective and it is with this background that the US embassy, in close coordination with the Vatican, drew out its plan.
It was at this time that Aldo Moro, a prominent leader among the Christian Democrats –and several times Prime Minister –who adopted an independent position and advocated a ‘strategy of attention’ towards the Communists. It was also a period during which international politics saw drastic change. After Nixon’s visit to Italy in January and September of 1969, in March 1971, Robert D. Murphy, a former US ambassador, sent a secret document Kissinger which depicted the left-wing leader, Aldo Moro in a bad light.
In the wake of Nixon’s resignation due to the Watergate scandal in August 1974, Gerard Ford, former Vice-President, took over the presidency and continued to oppose any ‘opening’ to the PCI, and was happy to continue to deal with conservative Christian Democrats – Rumor, Colombo and Andreotti – as Prime Ministers in Rome. On the other hand, Kissinger considered the PCI an enemy that needed to be destroyed, not a legitimate partner with democratic credentials. In September 1974, during Moro and Giovanni Leone’s visit to the United States, the ‘Communist menace’ was at the centre of all discussions, with Ford insisting that, ‘if NATO is to be strong, we can’t have the Communists participating in the political life of any member party’, while Kissinger was concerned that the PCI’s attempts to appear as a democratic force might bewitch moderate voters.
In June 1975, President Ford, visiting Italy, explained that the Atlantic Alliance had been created with the main aim of dealing with a ‘Communist threat’, and that it would be contradictory ‘to belong to the Alliance of a country in which the Communists are in power’. President Leone assured him that all the Italian parties, from the Christian Democrats to the far right, were opposed to the ‘historic compromise’ promoted by Berlinguer, and forecast that ‘the greatest danger of a Communist participation in the government is that it would bring about economic chaos, and even the possibility of a civil war’. Two months later, at the gathering to sign the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, in Helsinki, Moro and Rumor again met Ford and Kissinger and, among other things, discussed the Communist problem in Italy.
Ambassador Volpe, in an interview with the Italian weekly, Epoca, on September 20, expressed the same thought: ‘the participation of the Communists in the Italian Government would be in fundamental contradiction with the purposes of the NATO Alliance; and the United States cannot be in favour of a system of government in Italy which would be contrary to Western democratic traditions’ which was considered by, among others, Riccardo Lombardi, a leading member of the PCI left-wing, commented that Volpe’s statement was a ‘threat’ to Italian sovereignty and ‘an act of intimidation’.
Meanwhile, a sort of cordon sanitaire was being arranged abroad to deal with a possible Communist-led government in Rome. Immediately after the Italian elections, during the G-7 summit in Puerto Rica, the US, British, French and West German governments agreed to make economic aid for Italy conditional on the exclusion of the Communists from national government Italy had been invited to the previous meeting, at Rambouillet in November 1975, partly to reinforce the Government’s credibility and to confirm that it was an integral part of the Western world. In Puerto Rico, as the US representatives, Alan Greenspan and Brent Scowcroft, reported, Moro ‘was the weakest of all participants at the Summit’ and played a low-key and cautious role, protecting Italian interests, but taking no initiative.
Whilst Italy was engaged with its own mess and struggling for stability, Ford immersed in presidential campaign, US foreign policy was dominated by Kissinger, who believed that all the Western European Communist parties were soaked in ‘Leninist dogmas and principles’. It was feared that a ‘NATO without Italy’ would necessitate a reshaping of the Alliance’s southern flank, moving bases to nearby Malta. This international mobilisation of opposition to a Communist share of power may have been the reason Berlinguer gave a celebrated interview to the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, in which he acknowledged ‘the positive role played by international alliances for the security and sovereignty of the Western European countries’ and stated that the Atlantic Alliance ‘constituted a shield for the construction of Italian socialism in conditions of freedom’. Such statements suggested that the PCI was now ready to accept Italian membership of NATO.
On January 10, 1978, a US document commented on Andreotti’s options, in the light of a PCI threat to end its policy of abstention on crucial votes. The Christian Democrats could only either dissolve Parliament and ask for fresh elections, or try to arrange an accommodation, a ‘compromise’, with the PCI which could have apocalyptic consequences, including ‘further impetus to terrorism as the only effective vehicle for protest against the government’. A day later, at a meeting between Ambassador Gardner and members of the State Department, the CIA, the White House and the NSC, the view prevailed that the PCI had not yet evolved completely towards democracy and was still based on Leninist and Stalinist principles. John Trattner, the spokesman of the State Department, was categorical in stating that Washington would not view with favour the PCI’s participation in government. The declaration echoed one Kissinger had delivered in April 1976, at a press conference in Washington: the United States would not be indifferent to the growth of Communist parties in allied countries, and had the duty to state its political preferences.60
For Moro, an alliance between Christian Democrats and Communists appeared inevitable, even if it depended on their eventual transformation ‘into a mildly reforming machine’. In January 1978, Andreotti tried to form a new Cabinet, in a climate dominated by the crucial question of whether or not to involve the PCI. The political impasse was overcome, in the wake of the Moro kidnapping by the Red Brigade, when Andreotti formed a single-party government of the Christian Democrats, a Cabinet of ‘national solidarity’, supported by all the Italian parties, the PCI included, which experimented with a legislative coalition between Christian Democrats and Communists on a limited but essential program: the defense of democratic institutions and the fight against terrorism. With Moro’s murder, an event that shocked the country the Italian Republic rallied in its own defense, without abrogating the civil rights of its citizens and proved to be more stable than many detractors had assumed.
The 1970s, a turbulent decade, closed in 1979, when the new President of the Republic, the old Socialist leader Sandro Pertini, was forced to announce new early elections, confirming once again Italy’s domestic instability. At the polls, the PCI faced a sharp setback, by four percentage points, so that its leadership had to reconsider its docility vis-à-vis the Christian democrat-led government and implement new, more confrontational policies. In 1980, Gardner remembered that, when Carter had taken office, the PCI seemed ready to seize power, making Italy an unstable and unreliable ally at best, or a non-aligned country at worse. But the Italian people did not choose that course and, by the time Carter stepped down, the threat from the PCI was past its peak. The Christian Democrats, notwithstanding their strong left wing, experimented with different political alliances to ferry the country to the 1980s without yielding to the temptations of a Communist alliance. They subsequently found a precious domestic ally in Bettino Craxi, a vehement anti-Communist Socialist.
If we look at above brief historical facts, comparing the Indian political situation and the Indian Left with that of Italy in those decades, is wholly superfluous.
(The writer is an advocate of the High Court)