40 years ago, in the European elections held on June 17, 1984, the Italian Communist Party managed to surpass the Christian Democrats for the first and only time in a national electoral call. It was the posthumous triumph of an extraordinary politician: Enrico Berlinguer. Seen from here, from the contemporary political wasteland, his figure stands titanic, inspiring, moving.
Berlinguer had died a few days before, on June 11. A stroke struck him on the 7th, while he was giving a speech at a rally in Padua. Just the heartbreaking images of the man who, despite the serious suffering from the stroke, resists on the stand to finish his intervention, say so much: of an unwavering sense of duty, of public service, of inner strength and dignity.
Even more so, I would say the funeral held in Rome. A truly oceanic crowd flooded the streets to pay tribute to him—how pathetic in comparison do the pretensions of certain current parties that celebrate small-time demonstrations as triumphs sound. Without a doubt there were many citizens there who were not communists, who showed their respect to an admirable man. Among them, Giorgio Almirante, leader of the fascist MSI. Those who were there say that, when it was known that he would go, there was some concern in the communist leadership. How would the crowd receive the fascist? Giancarlo Pajetta, historical leader of the PCI, who appears in Family lexicon of Natalia Ginzburg, still in shorts and already anti-fascist, said: I will receive you myself. Even the fascist leader recognized the greatness of that man.
What does that greatness reside in? It is impressive to reread his writings, speeches, and interviews today. They make up a monument that embodies political high-mindedness.
Berlinguer, as is well known, is the leader who promoted the historic commitment, the policy of opening the PCI to collaboration with the DC. In that decision there were undoubtedly tactical calculations of the party’s interest, but also undoubtedly a noble willingness to think about the democratic interest of the country as a whole. After the overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile, Berlinguer was clear that the PCI would not have been able to govern normally if it had achieved a parliamentary majority. There would have been a reaction, perhaps a blow. He thought it was necessary to strengthen an image of responsibility and credibility, consolidate legitimation and try to influence in that way. In parallel, Berlinguer wanted to avoid at all costs a brutal polarization of the country in very dark times. Does it sound familiar to you?
Read what he wrote in one of the three articles in which he raised the historic commitment, published in Rinascita: “The opposition and frontal clash between parties that have a base in the people and by which important masses of the population feel represented, lead to a rupture, to a true split in two of the country, which would be fatal for democracy. and would overwhelm the very foundations of the survival of the democratic State. (…) The task of a party like ours cannot be other than to isolate and drastically defeat the tendencies that are committed to the vertical rupture of the country.” What a chasm with today’s professional polarizers.
There is a famous photo that portrays Berlinguer and Aldo Moro, his Christian Democrat counterpart, another righteous man, stretching across a table that separates them to shake hands in 1977. Berlinguer and Moro were, in some way, projecting themselves beyond the wall of Berlin long before it fell. As is well known, the infamous terrorist group the Red Brigades kidnapped and murdered Moro. Berlinguer’s PCI maintained loyal external support for the Christian Democrat governments in dark years of lead.
The historic compromise did not prosper. In the DC, more right-wing approaches won and rot, dirty play, and corruption advanced. Berlinguer, who was not a dogmatist, modified the strategy. His positions from then resonate very strongly today. In an interview given for the 1984 European elections, he opposed those who “recommend going back, to the Europe of the homelands.” “It is not conceivable that the way out of the crisis of the European Community could consist of the withdrawal of each State into its peculiar identity, in locking itself in the particularity of its interests. (…) It does not make sense for those who have a minimum of long-term vision. (…) From the crisis does not emerge the need for each nation to withdraw into itself, but rather the need for a Europe truly united from a political point of view, truly independent on the international level, finally autonomous in initiative.” Do the concepts of a Europe of the homelands, of the need for autonomy, sound familiar to you?
He had already said before that it was better under the umbrella of NATO than under that of the Warsaw Pact. It’s hard to keep your mind from turning to Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his polarizing, Eurosceptic, anti-Otanist instincts. It seems that he is half a century behind Berlinguer.
There is much more. Berlinguer is of course the man who definitively severed the ties of the PCI with the USSR—a relationship that had alienated figures like Calvino from the party—in the name of an unwavering adherence to democratic values, marking the path of Eurocommunism; the politician who denounced the rottenness of the party system with astonishing lucidity – the so-called moral question –, pointing out its conversion into machines of power and patronage far from collective interest; the leader who raised the idea of moderation in consumption to protect the environment; that introduced into public discourse reflection on the difficult path to happiness for people in the capitalist system.
Roberto Benigni, who starred in a 1977 Giuseppe Bertolucci film titled I love you Berlinguer, recently said of him that he had “the purity of a child.” An image is famous in Italy in which the actor-director – a cultured student of The Divine Comedy— picks up the then general secretary of the PCI in his arms at a public event, swings him, and he can be seen smiling, happy. Like a child, perhaps.
This is not meant to be nostalgic and naive praise. Berlinguer was not perfect, he made mistakes. He failed to govern. But he was a beneficial force for the country, and in him and in his leadership there are indisputable values that shine as a necessary example today in this troubled Europe.
An editorial from this newspaper published after his death and titled After Berlinguer included these two observations: “One of the most pronounced characteristics of Berlinguer’s personality was that he never bowed to the demands of political tactics”; “his style was particularly dialogic; “He needed to have a team around him to discuss before making the decision.” Both qualities seem fundamental in contemporary Europe.
The chronicle of the funeral written by the then Morning Express correspondent in Rome, Juan Arias, said: “Berlinguer can rest in peace. It is difficult for a human being to be fired with an explosion of affection like the one received yesterday by the late general secretary of the PCI.”
He had enormous human greatness, made of honesty, courtesy, and moral aspirations, which earned him the respect of everyone; He had enormous political greatness, made of a noble, far-sighted progressive vision, which put the collective democratic interest before any partisan benefit.
What would be his political proposal today, in times of retrograde and dangerous far-rights, of right-wings in a very dark drift towards being far-rights themselves, of leftists given over to the tactics and polarization that he abhorred?
From here below, some of us miss you so much, expensive Enrico.
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