Enrico Berlinguer (; 25 May 1922 – 11 June 1984) was an Italian politician and statesman who was the most popular leader of the Italian Communist Party (PCI). He led the PCI as the national secretary from 1972 until his death during a tense period of Italian history, which was marked by the Years of Lead and social conflicts, such as the Hot Autumn of 1969–1970. Berlinguer was born into an upper-class family; his father was a socialist who became a deputy and later senator. After leading the PCI's youth wing in his hometown, he led the Italian Communist Youth Federation (FGCI) at the national level from 1949 to 1956. In 1968, he was elected to Italy's Chamber of Deputies, and he became the leader of the PCI in 1972; he remained a deputy until his death in 1984. Under his leadership, the number of votes for the PCI peaked. The PCI's results in 1976 remain the highest for any Italian left-wing or centre-left party both in terms of votes and vote share, and the party's results in 1984, just after his death, remain the best result for an Italian left-wing party in European elections, and were toppled, in terms of vote share in a lower-turnout election, in the 2014 European Parliament election in Italy.
During his leadership, Berlinguer distanced the party from the influence of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and pursued a moderate line, repositioning the party within Italian politics and advocating accommodation and national unity. This strategy came to be termed Eurocommunism, and he was seen as its main spokesperson. It came to be adopted by Western Europe's other significant like-minded parties, such as the Communist Party of Spain and later the French Communist Party; its significance as a political force was cemented by a 1977 meeting in Madrid between Berlinguer, Georges Marchais, and Santiago Carrillo. Berlinguer described his alternative model of socialism, distinct from both the Soviet bloc and the capitalism practised by the Western bloc during the Cold War, as terza via (third way, with no relation to the centrist liberal Third Way movement and the politics practised by subsequent prime ministers Romano Prodi and Matteo Renzi), or terza fase (third phase), after the legacy of the Second International and the Comintern had been exhausted. winning significant victories in the regional and local elections in 1975, and 34% of the vote in the 1976 Italian general election, its highest share of the vote and number of seats. With these gains, he negotiated the Historic Compromise with the DC, lending support to their government in exchange for consultation on policy decisions, as well as social reforms. These stands were not reciprocated with sufficient concessions from Giulio Andreotti's government, leading the PCI to leave the coalition in 1979. The combination of austerity advocacy, hard line against the Red Brigades, and attempts at an accommodation with the DC affected the PCI's vote at the 1979 Italian general election and the compromise was ultimately ended in 1980.
One of the most important figures of the First Italian Republic, Berlinguer had an austere and modest but charismatic personality, he remained a popular politician,
Family
thumb|left|A young Berlinguer during an [[Italian Communist Party rally]]
The son of Mario Berlinguer and Maria "Mariuccia" Loriga, Enrico Berlinguer was born in Sassari on 25 May 1922, it was also registered in the Stamenti nobiliari della Sardegna, Sardinia's Italian nobility register, and was linked by a dense network of relatives to other families of the Sardinian aristocracy and bourgeoisie.
Berlinguer's father was a socialist and anti-fascist; as many of his ancestors, he belonged to the Italian Freemasonry and was Great Master (33rd Scottish Rite Mason) of the regular lodge of Sassari. His cousin, Luigi Berlinguer, followed this tradition of left-wing members of Freemasonry. Another cousin of his was Sergio Berlinguer, who was a diplomat. His brother, Giovanni Berlinguer, was a medician and politician who died in 2015. His surname is of Catalan language origin, a reminder of the period when Sardinia was part of the dominions of the Crown of Aragon. He was a second cousin of Francesco Cossiga, who was a leader of Christian Democracy (DC) and later became president of Italy, and both were relatives of Antonio Segni, another DC leader and president of Italy.
Giovanni Loriga and Cossiga's maternal grandfather, Antonio Zanfarino, were half-brothers on their mother side; Loriga was Berlinguer's maternal grandfather. His paternal grandfather, Enrico Berlinguer Sr., was a co-founder of the Sardinian newspaper La Nuova Sardegna and a personal friend of Giuseppe Garibaldi and Giuseppe Mazzini, whom he had helped in his attempts, through his parliamentary work, to improve the sad conditions on the island. Berlinguer's grandmother, Giuseppina Satta Branca, had a brother, Pietro Satta Branca, who was an Italian Republican Party (PRI) member and progressive mayor of Sassari during an era marked by Giovanni Giolitti's rule; Berlinguer Sr. also took part in Satta Branca's administration.
Early political career
About his adolescence, Berlinguer recalled the feeling of rebellion that was in him. He was against everything: the state, religion, clichés, and social customs. Politically, he felt anarchist when in the library of one of his uncles, a humanitarian socialist, he found a book of Mikhail Bakunin. As a member of the bourgeoisie, he was attracted to the world of the workers and craftsmen, who were followers of Amadeo Bordiga and kept their ideals even under Fascist Italy. He said: "They exerted a strong attraction on me ... there was, in their stories, a lot of suggestion." Immediately after his detention ended, his father brought him to Salerno, the town in which the House of Savoy, Italy's royal family, and the government had taken refuge after the armistice of Cassibile between Italy and the Allies of World War II. In Salerno, his father introduced him to Togliatti, the most important leader of the PCI. Togliatti sent Berlinguer back to Sardinia to prepare for his political career; he also met Benedetto Croce, and said that for a period he was a follower of his. Berlinguer was soon sent to Milan, and he was appointed to the central committee as a member in 1945. In 1946, Togliatti became the national secretary (the highest political position) of the PCI and called Berlinguer to Rome, where his talents let him enter the national leadership two years later in 1948; at the age of 26, he was one of the youngest members to be admitted. In 1949, he was named national secretary of the FGCI, a post he held until 1956. In 1950, he became president of the World Federation of Democratic Youth, an international anti-fascist youth organisation.
In the post-war years, the PCI respected Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union for their anti-fascist role in World War II and the Italian resistance movement, and thus avoided criticism; In 1957, as a member of the central school of the PCI, he abolished the obligatory visit to the Soviet Union, including political training there, which had been necessary for admission to the highest positions in the PCI. He refused to excommunicate the Chinese Communists and directly told Leonid Brezhnev that the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, which he termed "the tragedy in Prague", had made clear the considerable differences within the international Communist movement on fundamental questions, such as national sovereignty, socialist democracy, and the freedom of culture. was followed by further condemnations in the 1980s.
Already a prominent leader in the party, Berlinguer was elected to the position of national secretary in 1972, when Longo resigned on grounds of ill health. At the party's thirteenth congress that elected him, Berlinguer said that he would be neither Togliatti nor Longo. In 1973, having been hospitalised after a car accident during a visit to the People's Republic of Bulgaria, later claimed to have been an attempted assassination orchestrated by Moscow, Berlinguer wrote three famous articles ("Reflections on Italy", "After the Facts of Chile", and "After the Coup [in Chile]") for the party's intellectual weekly magazine Rinascita. In these, he presented the strategy of the Historic Compromise, a proposed coalition between the PCI and the DC to grant Italy a period of political stability, at a time of severe economic crisis, and in a context in which, after Piano Solo and Golpe Borghese had been revealed, some forces were allegedly manoeuvering for a coup d'état in Italy. In November 1977, upon the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the October Revolution, Berlinguer held another speech in Moscow titled "Democracy is a Universal Value".
When Berlinguer secured the PCI's condemnation of any kind of interference, the rupture with the Soviets was effectively complete, although the party still for some years received money from Moscow. Since Italy was suffering the interference of NATO, the Soviets said it seemed that the only interference that the Italian Communists could not suffer was the Soviet one. Berlinguer's acceptance of NATO did not dent American suspicion of him; appearing on the cover of Time on 14 June 1976, he was named "The Red Threat". In a 1975 speech to Italy's Chamber of Deputies, Berlinguer had said that the Italian Communists had sympathy for the American people and wanted to cultivate a friendship with the United States but that the "respect for alliances does not mean that Italy has to keep its head down".
Historic Compromise
thumb|Berlinguer with the [[Italian Socialist Party leader Bettino Craxi]]
Moving step by step, Berlinguer was building a consensus in the PCI towards a rapprochement with other components of society. After the surprising opening of 1970 toward conservatives and the still discussed proposal of the Historic Compromise, he published a correspondence with Monsignor Luigi Bettazzi, the Bishop of Ivrea; it was an astonishing event since Pope Pius XII had excommunicated the communists soon after World War II and the possibility of any relationship between communists and Catholics seemed very unlikely. This act also served to counteract the allegation, commonly and popularly expressed, that the PCI was protecting leftist terrorists in the harshest years of terrorism in Italy. In this context, the PCI opened its doors to many Catholics and a debate started about the possibility of contact. Notably, Berlinguer's Catholic family was not brought in out of its strictly respected privacy. He said: "Today's parties are above all machines of power and clientela." In the same interview, he reiterated: "We do not give up building a 'society of free and equal', we do not give up leading the struggle of men and women for the production of the conditions of their lives." About other Communist parties, he said: "Our main 'anomaly' compared to several other communist and workers' parties is that we are convinced that in the process towards this goal we must remain — and we will remain — faithful to the method of democracy. The 'assault on heaven' — this beautiful image of Marx — is not for us Italian communists a project of irrationalistic climbing to the absolute." he said: "If young people organise themselves, take over every branch of knowledge, and fight with the workers and the oppressed, there is no escape for an old order founded on privilege and injustice." titled "Party and Society in the Reality of the 1980s", Berlinguer said: "There can be no inventiveness, imagination, creation of the new if you start by burying yourself, your history and reality."
Break with the Soviet Union and the Democratic Alternative
In 1980, the PCI publicly condemned the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and Moscow then immediately sent Georges Marchais to Rome to try to bring Berlinguer into line; he was received with perceptible coldness.
In 1981, Berlinguer said that, in his personal opinion, the progressive force of the October Revolution had been exhausted. The PCI criticised the martial law in Poland and soon the PCI's split with the CPSU became definitive and official, followed by a long polemic between Pravda and l'Unità (the official newspaper of PCI), not made any milder after an October meeting with Cuban leader Fidel Castro in Havana; the PCI joked that they succeeded where the CIA failed when Berlinguer closed the hand of Castro's security chief in the door of a GAZ Chaika who let out a single stoic moan (l'Unitàs Havana correspondent recalled that "a sinister noise of broken bones" was heard) before being hospitalised but the episode did not spoil Berlinguer's visit. Nonetheless, his last years were marked by attempts for unity among the national and international political left.
Death and funeral
thumb|180px|[[Sandro Pertini, the then Italian president, at Berlinguer's funeral in 1984]]
Berlinguer's last major statement was a call for the solidarity among the leftist parties. On 7 June 1984, he suffered a brain haemorrhage while giving a speech at a public meeting in Padua. He entered a coma on the same day and died on 11 June, four days later. During this time, Sandro Pertini, the then Italian president, remained at the hospital with Berlinguer's family. More than a million people attended his funeral in the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran at Piazza San Giovanni, the largest funeral in Italy's history at the time. Reflecting his stature in Italian politics, the leaders of all parties paid tribute to his career and the Vatican expressed condolences.
Apart from all the major politicians across the political spectrum, many international figures, such as the Soviet deputy leader Mikhail Gorbachev and Chinese prime minister Zhao Ziyang, attended his funeral. From Gorbachev and Zhao to Georges Marchais, Santiago Carrillo, Yasser Arafat, and the Communists of the Philippines, Israel, Yugoslavia, and North Korea, to Giancarlo Pajetta and Pietro Ingrao, who said that the party would not deny him and that Communists would try to carry his name, they respended him and recognised him as an international leader. At his funeral, Tomaso Albinoni's "Adagio in G minor" and Johann Sebastian Bach and Franz Schubert's music were played. Much discussed, including from other parties like the DC and PSI and their representatives, such as Ciriaco De Mita, who praised the Historic Compromise, and Rino Formica, who said that the PCI had to decide between the left-wing alternative and the Historic Compromise, was the future of the PCI.
After his funeral, Berlinguer was interred in Rome's Cimitero di Prima Porta. His death took place six days before the 1984 European Parliament election in Italy. The PCI gained a significant sympathy vote as a result, winning the most votes for the only time. His death remains controversial due to the fact he was taken back to the hotel to rest and an ambulance was called only two hours after he first fell ill. According to sociologist and journalist Rocco Turi, Berlinguer died not as a result of a cerebral stroke but for the direct responsibilities that he links to a series of delays in the same first aid operations. He said that "we are now able to deny the theses of those years. They waited too long to take Berlinguer to the hospital; after the first illness, Berlinguer was in fact transported slowly first to the hotel, and then after more than two hours an ambulance was finally called. A completely crazy choice." While seemingly cold in public and in front of their children, their relationship has been described as "a love from Romeo and Juliet". He often used to give his children tutoring lessons, including after a political meeting was concluded, on topics like Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and pre-Socratic philosophers but never in a forceful way; he did not expect them to follow his path in politics. he was said to have been a supporter of Juventus. As many of his security escorts were supporters of SS Lazio, Berlinguer was forced to watch the club's matches. He once left in the middle of a lunch with party members to watch a Juventus match. A fan of motorcycles, Berlinguer came to be the owner of an Harley Davidson.
Legacy
Personality
Not many journalists could have interviewed Berlinguer, as he could not bear fame and discouraged anecdotes. He was described as reserved, "bashful, probably shy", and not much was known about his private life, including his music preferences, whether Bach or Wagner, when he was alive. A Sardinian fisherman who had known him in distant times told a reporter that "[Berlinguer] was a serious, very reserved child. He never laughed." His notable 1983 television interview with Giovanni Minoli on Mixer is seen as evidence of Berlinguer not being corroded by vanity. he was sincerely respected even by his opponents, such as the Italian Social Movement leader Giorgio Almirante, Attended by more than a million people, his funeral was among the highest ever seen in Rome, and was reminiscent of the funeral of Palmiro Togliatti in 1964; in both cases, a group of directors filmed the event for a documentary. As evidence of his legacy, the Five Star Movement (M5S) put him in their pantheon and the former M5S leader Luigi Di Maio, who culturally formed himself on the political right, claimed Berlinguer's legacy. in Pier Paolo Pasolini's terms expressed as a warning in 1974 that "true fascism is the consumer society", is seen as a testament to his durature legacy and thinking.
In the words of Giorgio Bocca, in his analysis after his death, Berlinguer had understood that, after "the lacerations, the convulsions, the loss of prestige, of dynamism, of leadership of the PCI and of the left in general in the Seventies" that had derived "above all from the cultural inadequacy of a sclerotic Marxism and a formalist anti-fascism", he needed "to bring back to the party and the left what remains alive of Marxism, its humanism, the defence of man from the exploitation and alienation that continue and perhaps worsen in post-industrial society." In the words of sociologist Francesco Alberoni, Berlinguer's critique of Soviet Communism was "never crude or hostile", and he had "always considered it a deviation from an original project, an error, understandable in those historical situations, and correctable in the future. This is typical of the great ideological, intellectual leader who interprets history with a view to the future. It was these merits of him, as leader of an Italian party, as a democrat, as an outstanding ideological figure of international Communism, that provoked the sense of loss everywhere and even the homage of enemies." In October 2012, Nichi Vendola said of his alternative Europeanism that "the one that we continue to dream is not the unbalanced power that rules today, with an unknown identity. No: it is the Europe of Willy Brandt, of Olof Palme, of Enrico Berlinguer." Within the broad international Communist movement, Berlinguer had many opponents. The more orthodox Marxist–Leninist opposition argued that he had turned a workers' party into a bourgeois and revisionist one. External opponents said that the strappo, the break with the CPSU, took several years to be completed; this was seen as evidence that there had been no definitive decision on the point. The acceptance of NATO is generally seen as evidence of the genuine autonomy of the PCI's position, and Berlinguer was seen in declassified CIA documents as the strongest critic of Soviet actions, such as their role in suppressing the Prague Spring of 1968, which was a turning point.