ABSTRACT
Throughout most of the post-war period, the Italian Communist Party (PCI) was the largest communist party in Western Europe, and from the 1960s on, it was the largest non-ruling communist party in the world. It hegemonised the opposition in Italy during this time span: after 1963, its electoral support never fell below 25 per cent of the vote, and it rose above 30 per cent in the mid-and-late 1970s. When its organisation went into deep crisis after the announcement that a new, post-communist party was to rise out of the ashes of the PCI, its membership of 1.3 million was still far greater than all other Italian parties: for most of the post-war period, membership never fell below 1.5 million. Nor is this a complete picture of the party’s influence in Italy, which included, among other things, its massive presence in the trade union and cooperative movements, as well as its domination of society and government in the ‘red zones’ of central Italy.
