ABSTRACT
The federation of Bari was ‘renewed’ even later than Modena. The socio-economic changes which threatened the Party in the late 1950s and early 1960s did not coincide with the process of rinnovamento. Of all the regions of southern Italy, Apulia offered the most favourable terrain for the Communist Party. Unlike the rest of the south, it contains broad plains which are suitable for large-scale farming on a capitalist basis. The ‘penetration of the monopolies’ into the south had created a new social situation which the bracciante cadres of the PCI found especially difficult to grasp and deal with. Reichlin’s ideas had the advantage of providing a general strategy to which all the specific, local struggles could be linked. The case of Bari illustrates the important role that one or a few intellectuals can play all the more clearly because Reichlin made several errors which eventually, after 1966, lost him the support which he had earlier gained.
