On January 21st, 1921 in the San Marco theatre in Livorno (Leghorn), from a secession of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), the Partito Comunista d'Italia (PCdI, Communist Party of Italy), Italian section of the Communist International took origin, which in 1943 took the name of Partito Comunista Italiano, (PCI, Italian Communist Party), and on February 3rd, 1991 broke up, merging into the Partito Democratico della Sinistra (Left Democratic Party). The San Marco theatre was located in the Venezia Nuova (New Venice) quarter of Livorno, in via San Marco, but was destroyed by bombing during the last war. Today the remains of the facade can be seen, on which a plaque commemorates the event.
The reasons
for the secession
The delegates of the Socialist Party, at the 16th
Congress in October 1919, had approved by acclamation the decision
of the Directorate to join the Third International (the Communist
International or Comintern), despite strong opposition from the
party's right-wing leader, Filippo Turati,. Anyway between reformists
and maximalists an open rift remained, in addition to the harsh
disagreements on the party's position on Italy's participation
in the First World War and on the proletariat's strategy to take
power.
In 1919 Amadeo Bordiga explained in a letter: "nowadays
we are determined to work for the constitution of a truly communist
party and for this our Faction within the PSI works"
(Spriano,
page 38), while on
May 16th, 1920 the newspaper "Il
Soviet", which defined itself as the "organ of
the abstentionist communist faction of the PSI", announced
that it would be necessary "to call, after the Congress
of the Communist International, a Constituent Congress of the
PCI".
The 2nd Congress of the Communist International,
from 19th July to 7th
August 1920 in Petrograd and Moscow, established that "all
those parties that wish to belong to the Communist International
must change their names. Every party that wishes to belong to
the Communist International must bear the name Communist Party
of this or that country (Section of the Communist International)".
(Spriano,
page 71)
Another reason for
the secession was the failure of the factory occupation experience
of September 1920, which showed that the Socialist Party did not
have a political and military organization able to lead the armed
insurrection, but that an organized communist party had to be
created as a tool for this task. Bordiga wrote in "Soviet":
"we must not hesitate to denounce the old party, this
old mixture that is not susceptible to regenerate itself, and
to constitute the necessary new body, indispensable for the proletarian
revolution". (Spriano,
page 94)
The
Socialist congress
The 17th National
Congress of the Italian Socialist Party took place between
15th and 20th January, 1921 in the Carlo
Goldoni theatre in Livorno. The likelihood of a secession
by the "pure" Communists faction (as distinct from the
"unitary" one) was clear by reading the third point
of their motion, which
committed the Socialist Party to change "the name of the
party to that of Communist Party of Italy (section of the Third
Communist International)" while the fourth point stated
"the presence in the Party of all those who are against
the principles and conditions of the Communist International is
incompatible". The motion was signed by Nicola Bombacci,
Amadeo Bordiga, Bruno Fortichiari, Antonio Gramsci, Francesco
Misiano, Luigi Polano, Luigi Repossi and Umberto Terracini.
However, the sectional congresses of the PSI had given the majority
to the unitary maximalists of Giacinto Menotti Serrati with 98,028
votes, the pure communists of Amadeo Bordiga and Antonio Gramsci
had 58,783 votes and the concentrationist reformists of Filippo
Turati had 14,695. (Spriano,
page 106)
Umberto Terracini
in his speech at the Congress confirmed, among other things, that:
"the political class party is a weapon which is absolutely
necessary for the proletarian struggle for the conquest of power". (Spriano, page
114)
The afternoon of January
20th voting on the motions took place, and on
the morning of 21st the outcome was announced, which
led to the secession: at first Luigi Polano, on behalf of the
Federazione Giovanile Socialista Italiana (FGSI, Italian Socialist
Youth Federation), declared that it "releases any commitment
with the party and deliberates to follow the decisions
that the communist faction will take". (Spriano, page 115).
Then Amadeo Bordiga read a declaration, written by Ruggero Grieco,
with which the communist faction abandoned the congress activities
and called itself for 11:00 at the San Marco Theatre for the foundation
of the PCd'I. The delegates of the motion of the "pure"
communists left the socialist congress singing "the Internationale"
to reach the theatre, about 1,300 meters away, where they founded
the new party.
A cartoon drawn by the
great cartoonist of the socialist newspaper Avanti! Giuseppe
Scalarini describes the separation of the Communist Party as a
break between generations, perhaps also because, as we have seen,
the overwhelming majority of the Socialist Youth Federation had
taken sides in favour of the secession, while the same Avanti!
the next day
blamed the secession on an external order from Moscow.
The foundation
of the Communist Party of Italy
At the San Marco theatre, some officers checked the delegates'
membership cards, stamping them with a hammer and sickle. The
theatre, as Terracini narrates, was in state of neglect, with
windows with broken glass panes, railingless boxes and gramy torn
up curtains, for having been used as a deposit for army materials.
The delegates had to stand for hours, in the absence of chairs
or benches, and had to open the umbrella even inside the hall,
because the decayed roof let in showers of rain. The floor was
also crumbling, with dips and holes.
The Central Committee of the new party was elected, composed by
Bordiga, Grieco, Parodi, Sessa, Tarsia, Polano, Gramsci, Terracini,
Belloni, Bombacci, Gennari, Misiano, Marabini, Repossi and Fortichiari
and the party's headquarters were established in Milan.
The Party
under the fascist dictature
Since its first year
of life, the P.C. d'I found itself in a condition of semi-legality
imposed by the authorities, and the militants were victims of
innumerable attacks, even lethal, by the fascist squads. On October
28th, 1922, the fascists took power and on February
13th, 1923 Umberto Terracini wrote: "The
fascist government has opened the great anti-communist hunt that
had long been announced. In the space of a week the police arrested
over 5000 comrades, including all the secretaries of our federations,
all the communist trade union organizers, all our municipal and
provincial councilors. Furthermore, it has managed to seize all
our funds, giving a possibly fatal blow to our press".
(Spriano,
page 260)
On November 5th,
1926 the council of ministers passed the special laws imposed
by the fascist dictatorship which decreed the dissolution of the
anti-fascist organizations and on November 25th
the so-called special court for the defense of the state was established,
made up of militiamen and not of judges, which overall sentenced
4,671 antifascists, 4,030 of which were communists. (Spriano, page
513)
During the twenty
years of fascist dictature, the P.C.d'I. members were continually
arrested, confined, persecuted in every way, and in many cases
murdered. During the nazi occupation of Italy the Party was the
most active in the fight against the nazi-fascist oppressors,
payed a particularly significant toll of dead, wounded, tortured
and incarcerated and was the most active widespread in pushing
the population to rebel. Thirty of the 335 victims of the Fosse Ardeatine massacre
belonged to the Italian Communist Party.
After World War II, the PCI organized itself as a mass party (in
1948 it exceeded two million members), participated successfully
in the elections and was a decisive
part of the Constituent Assembly and of the first governments
of the Republic, until in 1947 the leader of the Christian Democrats
Alcide De Gasperi, returning from a trip to the USA, decreed the
end of the government collaboration with the PCI.
In the following years the PCI stood out as the largest communist
party in Western Europe, always remaining in opposition, but proving
decisive in the democratic resistance of the country against the
attacks of fascist terrorism and that of the Red Brigades and
other "communist" groups.
At the end of the 20th Congress, held in Rimini from
January 31st to February 3rd,
1991, the PCI was dissolved and the Democratic Party of the Left
was founded.
General
Secretaries of the Party
The first Secretary (actually a de facto leader) was Amadeo Bordiga (from 1921 to 1923), then
Antonio Gramsci (from August 1924 to
November 8th, 1926), Palmiro
Togliatti (from November 1926 to January 1934), Ruggero
Grieco (from 1934 to 1938), Giuseppe
Berti (April 1938), again Palmiro
Togliatti (from May 1938 to August 21st,
1964), Luigi Longo (from August 22nd,
1964 to March 16th, 1972), Enrico
Berlinguer (from March 17th, 1972 to June 11th,
1984), Alessandro Natta (from June 26th,
1984 to June 10th, 1988), Achille
Occhetto (from June 21st, 1988 to February 3rd,
1991).
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BIBLIOGRAPHY:
-
AMENDOLA Eva Paola (2006) Storia fotografica del Partito Comunista
Italiano. II edition. Editori Riuniti, Roma.
- CATALANO Franco (1965) Storia dei partiti politici italiani.
ERI Edizioni Rai, Torino.
- SPRIANO Paolo (1967) Storia del Partito Comunista Italiano.
1. Da Bordiga a Gramsci, Giulio Einaudi editore, Torino.
WEBSITES VISITED:
-
http://www.resistenzatoscana.org/monumenti/livorno/lapide_della_fondazione_del_partito_comunista/
- Fondazione Gramsci - images from XX century fron Photographic
archive of PCI https://immaginidelnovecento.fondazionegramsci.org/
- Italian Senate of the Republic - Digital Library - Avanti! http://avanti.senato.it/avanti/controller.php?page=archivio-pubblicazione
- Digital collection of periodicals of National Central Library
of Rome (Il Messaggero, Il Giornale d'Italia) http://digitale.bnc.roma.sbn.it/tecadigitale/emeroteca/explore
page created: January 11th, 2021 e aggiornata il: July 3rd, 2021