Enrico Berlinguer

Enrico Berlinguer (API ) (born the May 25th 1922 with Sassari, in Sardinia - died the June 11th 1984 with Perugia, in Ombrie) was a Politician Italy N, general secretary of the Italian Communist party of 1972 to its death.

Biography

A promising beginning

Born in a family from Sardinian minor nobility, republican tradition, it adheres to NCV and takes part in Resistance antifascist as from 1943 what is worth to him to be imprisoned for 3 months. He is elected at the Central committee since 1945 and the Secretariat the following year. In 1947, Togliatti names it responsible for Italian Communist youths. It removed in 1957 the obligation for the members of the party to go in Soviet Union following the Soviet military intervention to Hungary in 1956. Its rivals say of him, because of its fulgurating promotion: " Enrico was registered very young person… with the direction of the Party! ". Elected official appointed in 1968, it was distinguished the following year by criticizing at the time of a congress in Moscow the invasion of the Czechoslovakia by the Soviet troops at the time of the Printemps of Prague.

General secretary of the NCV

Berlinguer replaces Luiggi Longo as general secretary in 1969 and was affirmed like the European Communist leader most independent with respect to the USSR. Craftsman of the centring of the Italian PC which gains more than 30% of the votes to the elections of 1976, Berlinguer however failed in his strategy of the “historical Compromis”, which would have seen the party integrating a coalition government with the center-right. Indeed, Berlinguer draws from the fall of the government Allende with the Chile in 1973 the analysis that the union of the left forces, NCV and PSI is insufficient to be maintained durably with the capacity. A historical compromise is thus necessary with the Christian Democrat which dominates, with the assistance of the Catholic church, the political life and the civil society in Italy. Given opposition of the pope Paul VI, leader in fact of the Christian Democrat, with any alliance with the NCV, and that of the USA, in spite of the promise of Berlinguer to maintain Italy in NATO, remain insurmountable; the political tension born from the assassination of Aldo Moro, in favor of the historical compromise, in May 1978, by the terrorists of the red seconds Brigades made null and void the majority of political expansions of the NCV. Berlinguer was in favor, during this crisis, of an extreme firmness, excluding any dialog from the political world with the terrorists.

Rupture with the Soviet Union

In 1975, he proposes a policy of autonomy with respect to the USSR with the French and Spanish PC; it is the Eurocommunisme, with the name of which the three Communist parties criticize the interior policy of the socialist countries and the Soviet Union. In 1976, in front of the delegates of XXVe congress of PCUS, in Moscow, Berlinguer claims a " pluralist system " of socialism, which will be translated into Russian by " multiform system ". In 1981, he declares during an interview: " the force progressist exit of the Revolution of October is definitively exhausted ".

However, the total alignment of PCF on the Soviet foreign politics and the bursting of the PCE after the withdrawal of Santiago Carillo disaggregate this union. The logistical support of the USSR for the Red Brigades accentuates the rupture of the NCV with the socialist countries because Berlinguer sees the hand of Moscow there to counter its strategy of access to the capacity. He will condemn firmly the invasion of the Afghanistan by the Red Army in December 1979, the Polish coup d'etat of December 1981 and will support the Italian government in the Crisis of Euromissiles in the Eighties.

A posthumous victory

Enrico Berlinguer died abruptly of an brain attack, which has occurred during an electoral assembly, three days before the poll of the European elections of 1984, elections which its party gained by the margin of 0,3% over the Democracy-Christian woman (33,3% for the NCV compared with 33% for cd.).

Enrico Berlinguer understood as of end of the year 60 that the Soviet model was not adapted any more to the Occident; the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, and Afghanistan in 1979 will convainqueront it that the Soviet Union would always make pass its geopolitical interests before the cause of socialism and the episode of the Red Brigades will reinforce it in this analysis. Also, it will have imposed on the NCV an evolution which will allow its integration in the political life like governing party, rather easily, in the Nineties, under the new name of Democratic party of Left (PDS).

Which place in the History

Enrico Berlinguer occupies a particular place within the communist movement. Compared to other communist political personalities such as Stalin, André Marty, Rakosi, Ceaucescu and Pol Pot, which is insane bloodthirsty men and if all the poor ones are forgotten (they are innumerable…), Berlinguer is certainly out of the commun run by independence with respect to the ideology and of the interests of the Soviet Union which it could express as of the Seventies.

----

Random links: