If he hadn't caught a stroke during that meeting in Padua, Enrico Berlinguer would have turned one hundred on May 25th.
One of the most beloved politicians ever, as evidenced by the huge crowd at his funeral and the vivid memory he left behind; in many, despite having only seen him from under a stage during the rallies, they had not only lost a political leader. They had lost a friend they looked upon with affection and admiration .
A " great leader ", titled the Sardinian Union on his death; a " just man " wrote Il Manifesto. An icon that still today many look to with nostalgia and regret for a left that no longer exists. Loved by Communist Party militants and respected by opponents . To watch over him in the agony that led to his death, his friend and President of the Republic Sandro Pertini , who then brought the body back to Rome by presidential plane.
A GREAT SARDINIAN
Meek and reserved, but at the same time stubborn and proud. Even of his own land, which he never forgot despite having spent most of his life in Rome. A few months before his death he had made his last visit to Sardinia . Meeting the miners of Sulcis and the workers of Porto Torres, the farmers and shepherds.
One of the many important Sardinian politicians who have given prestige to the island: with him, Antonio Gramsci, the presidents of the Republic Francesco Cossiga and Antonio Segni , up to the politicians of the days with the former minister Arturo Parisi and the important figure of the Democratic Party Luigi Zanda .
HIS SARDITY
Enrico Berlinguer was born on May 25, 2022 in Sassari : father Mario lawyer, descendant of a noble family and convinced anti-fascist, mother Mariuccia Loriga cousin of Francesco Cossiga's mother .
He graduated from the classical high school "Domenico Roberto Azuni" and enrolled in law. He cultivates a great passion for philosophy (“As a boy, before turning to politics, I wanted to be a philosopher”), but he didn't finish university.
He joined the PCI in 1943 , and Sardinia was facing a very hard winter: the island was cut off, disconnected both from the South liberated by the Allies and from the rest of the country occupied by the Germans . Supplies are scarce and Berlinguer together with some young comrades organizes a protest to ask for bread, pasta and sugar. Protest that degenerates in the following days into real attacks on the ovens and he is arrested and taken to the prison of San Sebastiano , where he remains three months until his acquittal.
MOVES TO ROME
He meets Togliatti thanks to his brother Giovanni and makes a good impression on him, so much so that he moves to Rome , where he gets a job in the youth section of the party. Togliatti himself sent him to Milan to try to convince the young comrades to lay down their arms and stop the political vendettas and violence.
His rise in the party is rapid; he married Letizia Laurenti in 1957 (with whom he will have 4 children, Bianca, Laura, Marco and Maria Stella) and moved to Cagliari , after being chosen as deputy secretary of the party in Sardinia. A return to the island that lasts a year, because Berlinguer is recalled to Rome and in 1960 he enters the national leadership of the party .
He immediately indicates the path he will follow in the future, when he becomes secretary, that of detachment from the Soviet Union , from which he begins to distance himself. In 1969 at the International Conference of Communist Parties, as deputy secretary of the party and before Brezhnev - after the speakers of 35 other parties had supported the Soviet positions - he held what is still remembered today as " the hardest speech ever given in Moscow by a foreign executive ".
"We reject the notion that there can be a single and valid model of socialist society for every situation," he says among other things.
In 1972, at the XIII congress of the PCI, he was elected national secretary of the party . And he immediately outlined the characteristics of his secretariat, two in particular. The " historic compromise ", or the collaboration of the government with the Christian Democrats to carry out economic and social reforms. And " Eurocommunism ", the will to represent a new communism independent of the USSR and autonomous from Moscow . He is also among the first to talk about the ecological question , calling for an austerity of consumption .
At the policies of 1976 , the PCI reached the apex of electoral consensus , obtaining 34.37% of the votes, 3.5 million more than the previous ones. Between January and February 1978 the historic compromise is almost done: the PCI agrees, the DC secretary Aldo Moro also, but everything is thwarted by the kidnapping and dramatic killing of Moro . The party also lost blows due to the Red Brigades , which the following year killed the trade unionist Guido Rossa. And at the beginning of 1980, with the invasion of Afghanistan by the USSR, Berlinguer did not hesitate to define the Soviet Union as an imperialist power on a par with the United States.
Meanwhile, the policy of historical compromise is being put aside. Not so much for the murder of Moro as for the corruption and malpractice that dominate the government parties, which become the object of a harsh reprimand by the PCI secretary.
In an interview with the Republic still cited today and very current, Berlinguer on July 28, 1981 opens the so-called " moral question ".
THE SPEECH
“ Today's parties are above all machines of power and customers : little or mystified knowledge of life and the problems of society and people, ideas, ideals, few or vague programs, feelings and civil passion, zero. They manage interests, the most disparate, the most contradictory, sometimes even shady, in any case without any relationship with the emerging human needs and needs, or distorting them, without pursuing the common good "..
The most famous passage : “ The parties have occupied the state and all its institutions, starting with the government. They occupied local authorities, social security institutions, banks, public companies, cultural institutes, hospitals, universities, Rai TV, some large newspapers . In short, everything is already divided up and divided up or one would like to divide up and divide up. And the result is dramatic. All the operations that the various institutions and their current leaders are called upon to carry out are seen mainly in function of the interest of the party or current or clan to which the office is owed. A bank credit is granted if it is useful for this purpose, if it provides advantages and customer relationships; an administrative authorization is given, a contract is awarded, a chair is assigned, a laboratory equipment is financed, if the beneficiaries act of loyalty to the party that provides those advantages, even when it is only a question of due acknowledgments ".
He also attacks Craxi's PSI from the front and with this interview he makes many enemies on the left, even in his own party, where many will begin to make war on him.
RELATIONS WITH THE USSR
Another traumatic break is the definitive one with the USSR when it represses the Solidarity protests in Poland in blood and with numerous arrests. Here Berlinguer strongly returns to indicate a "third way ": different from that of social democracies which "only defend unionized workers" by not dealing with the underclass, the unemployed and women, and different from Eastern European models.
Despite the growing internal opposition and the PSI as well, Berlinguer was re-elected in 1983 at the head of the party.
THE DRAMA
On June 7, 1984, during a rally in Padua he was hit by a stroke that forced him to take a break while saying the sentence: "Comrades, all work, house by house, company by company". Clearly tried, he continues the speech until the end while the crowd, after the supporting choirs, invites him to stop shouting: " Enough, Enrico ".
At the end of the meeting he returns to the hotel and immediately enters a coma. He died 4 days later, in hospital, due to a cerebral hemorrhage. Over a million people attended his funeral on June 13 : never before has such a display of affection towards a politician been seen.
The PCI in the following European elections leaves him as leaders and for the first and only time overtakes the DC establishing itself as the first Italian party (33.3% against 33%). Berlinguer gets 719 thousand preferences.
The moral question, still current and cited today, and that 33.3% is not the last legacy left by the great Enrico Berlinguer . Loved as a man, first of all for his moral rectitude and honesty, and as a politician because he is irreplaceable.
