Italian Communist Party

The largest communist party in the West, founded in 1921, dissolved in 1991 into the Democratic Party of the Left.

Overview

The PCI founded at Livorno in 1921 from the PSI left, survived Fascism in prison and exile, and returned in 1944 to win a third of the vote in 1946 under Palmiro Togliatti. His via italiana, constitutional roads to socialism, anchored Eurocommunism with Berlinguer in the 1970s, autonomous from Moscow after 1968, opposing the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The party averaged a quarter to a third of the vote for forty years, governing Emilia Romagna, Tuscany, and Umbria with a parallel civilization of cooperatives and municipal culture. The 1989-1991 collapse of communism forced dissolution into the PDS and the rupture of Refoundation communists, seedbed of the later Democratic Party.