ABSTRACT: On the occasion of Communist Party Secretary Enrico Berlinguer's funeral the information media falsified the history of the PCI in the most shameful way. From the divorce referendum to "national unity" the PCI's policy expressed the maximum amount of sectarianism and violence against any dissent on the left. It contributed to and aggravated the corporative character of the de facto regime set-up with its jungle of laws and ordinances, of taxes, categories, and the uncontrolled mechanism of expenses for patronage, social assistance, public and semi-public. "

(NOTIZIE RADICALI No.67, March 25, 1984)

Vainly we ask ourselves whom and what are served by the shameful falsification of the history of Communist politics in the last fifteen years perpetrated on all sides and supported by all sides if only by silence. Above all we ask ourselves if those are served in the PCI who feel the need of a radical renewal - those on its margins starting with the prestigious "Manifesto" [a daily paper, ed.] or the greater part of its editorial staff who during this period have opposed for years the strategic choices and concrete actions.

Since the history of a party - as for everything else - is also a reflection of its nature, one explanation is certainly that those who think that they have failed in the search for new directions and find no other solution but to return home while singing its praises or, at least, lending it a "past" which is non-existent but useful for assuring their present, presumed decorum.

But that is not enough. We find ourselves remembering - to limit ourselves to the last decade - the launching of the "historic compromise" (1) formula (deprecated by Longo, by Fausto Gullo, by Terracini) at the very time when others were mobilised to assure the calling of the referendum on divorce against which the PCI and the "unions" were mobilised to the hilt until March 1974 accusing it of being a presage of the attack on "union unity" which had already called an assembly (what an illusion!) in Florence in June. And in the same period the liquidation of all will to actuate the Constitutional provisions on codes and civil rights. The Communist Party was the only one that did not even present a bill for the recognition of conscientious objectors. They were against the "Valpreda amendment" warmly supported by Umberto Terracini, against the rejection of the Reale law (2) deliberated by the PSI [Socialist Party, ed.] at first within the framework of a reform of the centre-left; against the abortion battl

e which was already in progress in 1972.

The leadership of the PCI did not believe until the very end that the divorce referendum would be victorious, thus they did not in the least believe in the ensuing 1975 regional election victory. They prepared to use - and did use - the more predictable victory of 1976 to make a gift to the DC and Giulio Andreotti of the mass of votes won by the left (a total of 47.3% amassing the PCI, PSI, Proletarian Democrats, and Radical Party) within the framework of "national unity" which already contained in itself, evidently, the alliance of the P2 and P38. (3) They wasted an opportunity and an immense power, a majority power, in the name of the Chilean risks run by any alternative with 51%. They raised the standard of the right wing with endless violence and sectarianism against the referendums to abolish the Reale law and the public financing of political parties, having already worked to end the Lockheed scandal (4) in a way that would not involve the secret services and President [of the Republic] Leon

e.

They pushed for a revision of the Concordat, even in the face of "rough drafts" that Giulio Andreotti and the DC themselves withdrew for the sake of decency. They put "Eurocommunism under the protection of NATO and its nuclear umbrella and were the source of rearmament choices which ended in the execution of Lagorio and the installation of missiles in Northern Italy and Sicily. They collaborated in the vital ganglia of institutional life with the Cefis and Rovelli gangs and pushed for mad and suspect energy choices such as an "almost all-nuclear" one (1977 and afterwards). They cohabited and collaborated in the work of the military sector and the mass media of the P2 (without realising it, they say today), and animated and made possible the most aberrant degradations of justice as a reply to "a terrorism" set up and defended by the secret services for whom Andreotti and Cossiga, their closest allies, were responsible. They assured the "normalisation" of Parliament by making Pietro Ingrao and Nilde Jotti

presidents [of the chambers, ed.] and they mobilised the Constitutional Court, the mass media of the state, the Chamber and the Senate against referendums such as the one on abolishing military courts, the Enquiry, the Rocco code (5), the Concordat and the military penal codes, thus assuring the "strategic direction" and the "subjective secretariat" of the party-power "national unity" ranks otherwise deployed along lines of moderate replies to public and parliamentary opposition.

It contributed to and aggravated the corporative character of the de facto regime set-up with its jungle of laws and ordinances, of taxes, categories, and the uncontrolled mechanism of expenses for patronage, social assistance, public and semi-public.

With regard to foreign policy it is enough to remember that during the years of "national unity" assistance to the Third World was reduced to ignoble levels, for example 0.023% of the GNP, which hid behind American policies more than ever and the irresponsible practice of "detente", long-range disarmament for the West, rearmament for the East. They continued to support a policy of decrees emitted in fits and starts despite the personal sensibility manifested by Ingrao.

The policy of the PCI during all these years was of the maximum of sectarianism and violence against all dissent on the left, of "pas d'ennemis à droite", since it had placed "on the left" the old DC right wing of Andreotti and of worse circles connected to it.

Then, after being chased out of the government majority coalition but still always more firmly installed in the "institutional" one, the Communists imposed the most violent and irresponsible policies, cultural as well as practical, on the sectors of justice, the press and the unions.

And finally the ramshackle sequence of strategic, tactical, operative and ideological orders and counter-orders: alternation, alternative, "different" governments of the "honest and the capable", with the Socialists, against the Socialists... Policies obliged to be doubled or tripled with points of paranoid violence when there was danger of the electorate being touched by the accusations and the proposals of the Radical Party...

Is this "great politics"? Is it coherent and loyal politics according to the definition of Giorgio Almirante? (6) Is this the "great inheritance" such as to make Allesandro Natta's [a PCI leader] hands tremble? Aw, come on.

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TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

1) Historic compromise - The policy of the Communist Party to collaborate with the Christian Democrats.

2) A public order law severely curtailing civil liberties with the excuse of fighting terrorism.

3) Secret Masonic lodges later exposed and dissolved for numerous financial scandals and obscure political maneuverings.

4) A kick-back scandal for purchases of Lockheed Hercules aircraft.

5) The Fascist penal code still operative in Italy long after the fall of Fascism and the creation of the new constitution.

6) Giorgio Almirante (1914-1988) - Leader of the neo-Fascist MSI from 1969-1987.