ABSTRACT
Registration of the necessary link between socialism and democracy was the first move in a major strategic initiative. The second was the shift in the revolution-protest-government spectrum. The two moves were complementary. Neither could stand independently of the other. And neither was simple, because in both cases the Eurocommunist parties had to reckon with established historical realities of the communist movement. But in the 1970s the protracted more-than-thirty-year-old historical cycle since the last time communist parties in Western Europe had been in governmental positions, was now drawing to a close.
