A Credibility Test for the Italian Communists
SENIGALLIA, SILVIO F.
DISSIDENTS IN THE SOVIET BLOC A Credibility Test for the Italian Communists BY SILVO F. SENIGALLIA Rome The simultaneous activities of spreading dissident movements in the Soviet bloc countries,...
...Second, it has been unable to quell dissatisfaction over food and other shortages through Western-style consumerism...
...In a January 12 editorial severely condemning the persecution of "Charter 77" signatories, PCI's daily, Unita, scored "unacceptable violations of liberties," "rejection of a dialogue on the respect of human rights," and "the refusal to seek reconciliation and heal old wounds...
...These questions concern the repressive political and social structures of the Soviet Union and its Eastern European allies, which deprive workers and organized labor, national minorities and religious communities of rights taken for granted in a real democracy...
...Its unquestionable progress will continue to be viewed with skepticism or suspicion...
...Third, the courageous rights campaigns being waged in Moscow and Warsaw have encouraged similar activities in Prague...
...Such a conclusion, La Malfa fears, would lead the PCI away from pluralism and back to the totalitarian model...
...Finally, Pelikan points to the evolution of Eurocommunism and its stand on pluralistic Socialism...
...The historian, who has been expelled from the Soviet party and whose works are banned in the USSR, was recently visited in Moscow by an Italian Communist delegation that arranged to issue other works by him...
...And the possibility that the PCI policies and pronouncements of the past eight years (since Berlinguer's 1969 rejection of "limited sovereignty" for national Communist parties, that is) may be part of a prearranged Trojan horse conspiracy is widely rejected as well...
...The issue was reportedly an important topic of discussion at the late-December meeting in Rome between Berlinguer and Alexander Grlickov of Yugoslavia...
...sequently as an important test of its credibility...
...Although Berlinguer is in full control of the party, he is already being pressed by its extreme Left and by intransigent sectors of organized labor...
...And Jiri Pelikan, the self-exiled chief of Czech television under Alexander Dubcek, who is now politically active in Rome, has offered a much discussed explanation of why, after eight years of inertia and fear, a sudden explosion of protest has erupted in his native country...
...La Malfa stresses the need for the PCI to commit itself to salvaging Italy's industrial society and thus prevent a possible reversal of its current policies by a surge of pessimism and maximalism...
...The main question, then, has little to do with good or bad faith...
...His ultimate objection to Communist participation in the government is not based on domestic issues: He neither fears a Communist coup aimed at the creation of a one-party regime, nor basically disagrees with the PCI platform on economic and social affairs...
...DISSIDENTS IN THE SOVIET BLOC A Credibility Test for the Italian Communists BY SILVO F. SENIGALLIA Rome The simultaneous activities of spreading dissident movements in the Soviet bloc countries, and the resultant repressions that despite their variations seem to flow from a single master plan, are being closely watched here...
...Last December 29, a long front-page article vigorously defended the right to dissent as the cornerstone of political democracy in a truly Socialist society...
...Saragat concerned with the international situation—would like to see the PCI complete its process of democratization at least before Tito's successor has to be chosen in Yugoslavia...
...He sees such a coalition as a deal between the two major parties to partition power, responsibility and patronage...
...For both men, how much further the PCI is willing to go in opposing repression in Eastern Europe is a critical clue to what it can be expected to do at home...
...Back home, Berlinguer received Belgian Communist leader Louis Van Geyt in mid-January...
...Another leader of Italy's democratic Left, Republican Ugo La Malfa, is also opposed to the "historic compromise" between the Christian Democrats and the PCI, but for a somewhat different reason...
...The flurry of activity seems designed to demonstrate that the PCI is making a very definite effort to give additional strength and purpose to Eurocommunism, including seeking support outside of Europe...
...But more significant to Italians are the implications of the PCI attitude toward the dissidents...
...These two views on Communism in Italy are complementary...
...They now know that some Communist parties reject the Soviet model and advocate autonomous national policies...
...They see this as a gauge of how far the party has come along the road to independence from Moscow, and con...
...For to Italians the phenomenon has a bearing on the very real prospect of Communist participation in their own government, and on the related question of the legitimacy and credibility of Eurocommunism...
...Soon afterward, the PCI party chief flew to Bucharest to see President Ni-colae Ceausescu...
...But as long as the PCI is unwilling or unable to go beyond the denunciation of individual cases, Italy's second largest party is bound to find itself located in an ideological limbo...
...Berlinguer's stated opposition to Italy's withdrawal from NATO is important, he says, but not enough...
...paper had previously condemned folksinger Wolf Biermann's expulsion from East Germany, defended the right of Polish workers to protest the high cost of living, and come out against the persecution of Soviet intellectuals...
...That editorial was only one in a series of sharply critical comments by Unita on the ferment in the Soviet bloc...
...a short time later, a delegation of Japanese Communists arrived in Rome...
...In mid-January he told the Turin daily La Stampa that he believes the speeches delivered by Italy's Enrico Berlinguer, France's George Mar-chais and Spain's Santiago Carrillo at the European Conference of Communist Parties last June—and reprinted in their entirety by the East German presshave provided Eastern European dissidents with "an important reference point...
...The official communique issued at the conclusion of their talks declared that the Italian and Rumanian Communist parties advocate cooperation with Socialists, Social Democrats and other forces inspired by democratic and Christian principles, and emphasized the right of individual Communist parties to act autonomously...
...La Malfa does not rule out a priori a government role for the PCI...
...Rather, as lucidly phrased by dissident Soviet historian Andrei Amal-rik, it is whether the PCI's steady denunciations of the violations of human rights in the Communist countries will eventually lead it to a thorough analysis of the basic questions raised by those who have been persecuted...
...First, he notes, the Gustav Husak regime has failed to bring about even a small measure of liberalization...
...The Italian Communist party (PCI), meanwhile, aware that its positions are under close observation, has also reacted to the situation...
...Particular attention is being paid to events in Czechoslovakia, where the approximately 300 signatories of "Charter 77," the human rights manifesto (published in The New Leader of January 31), are currently victims of a campaign of slander and persecution...
...Few here still believe in the monolithic structure of the international Communist movement...
...The all-important problem yet to be resolved, he holds, has to do with the PCI's ties to the USSR, and its reluctance to draw any conclusions on the basis of Soviet history...
...The PCI's reaction to the unrest in Eastern Europe has, moreover, not been limited to the pages of its newspaper...
...In his opinion this clarification should take place as quickly as possible: Further decay of Italy's social structure and economy could alter the PCI's apparent determination to operate within Italy's existing political system in a nonrevolutionary manner...
...Unita's editorial comments are not overlooked, and neither is the publication by Editori Riuniti, the PCI publishing house, of Roy Med-vedev's Was the October Revolution Inevitable...
...The worsening of depressingly familiar problems—unemployment, inflation, inadequate medical services, lack of low-cost housing—might well convince a large number of influential Communists that no reform program, no matter how sound, could be carried out under present conditions...
...it must be preceded, however, by "a general clarification of the individual issues...
...And the Silvio F. Senigallia reports regularly for The New Leader on Italy...
...Veteran Social Democrat Giuseppe Saragat, a former President of the Italian Republic, has been quite outspoken on this subject...
Vol. 60 • February 1977 • No. 4
