Historic compromise

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Historical compromise ( ital. Compromesso storico ) is the name for a strategic political line in Italy that was developed in 1973 by the then secretary of the Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI), Enrico Berlinguer , and strongly supported by Aldo Moro on the side of the Democrazia Cristiana .

As part of the historical compromise, the PCI decided to work with the most important democratic parties represented in parliament (Democrazia Cristiana, Partito Socialista Italiano ). In this collaboration, the aim was to seek the broadest possible consensus within the democratic institutions and implement a reform policy to prevent authoritarian tendencies.

Specifically, the strategic line led to the toleration of the minority government of National Solidarity under Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti in 1978. An unintended consequence of the historic compromise was the further radicalization of both left and right militant groups, which either rejected the course taken by the PCI as inadequate or which Tried to prevent the communists' participation in the government in general.

As a result of this radicalization and prevention strategy, one of the two main actors of the Historic Compromise, the former Prime Minister and chairman of the Democrazia Cristiana, Aldo Moro, was murdered by the communist terrorist organization Red Brigades (BR) in 1978.

The historical compromise envisaged by Berlinguer and Moro never came about.

It was only realized, under completely different framework conditions and names, after the end of the Eastern Bloc: through the split of the Communist Party of Italy in 1991 and the renaming of the mainstream social democratization to Partito Democratico della Sinistra (Democratic Party of the Left) and through the dissolution of the Democrazia Cristiana in the wake of corruption allegations.

The majority currents of both parties, which were constituted in new parties, formed the electoral alliance L'Ulivo in 1996 , from which the new, joint Partito Democratico (PD) emerged in 2007 .

literature

  • Heinz Timmermann: The discussion about the "historical compromise". Observations and remarks on the 14th Congress of the ICP (March 1975). Cologne 1975 (= reports of the Federal Institute for Eastern Studies and International Studies; 1975, 21).
  • Heinz Timmermann: The "historical compromise" - aspects and perspectives. Italy's communists after the elections of June 1975. Cologne 1975 (= reports of the Federal Institute for Eastern Studies and International Studies; 1975, 45).
  • Pietro Valenza (ed.): The historical compromise. VSA, Berlin 1975, ISBN 3-87975-087-4 .
  • Eric J. Hobsbawm , Giorgio Napolitano : On the way to the "historical compromise": a conversation about the development and program of the KPI. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1977.
  • Detlev Albers (ed.): Democracy and socialism in Italy: the "historical compromise" and the strategy of the parties and trade unions. Campus, Frankfurt 1978, ISBN 3-518-00851-X .
  • Giuseppe Are: Comunismo, compromesso storico e società italiana: profilo di un innesto fallito. Lungro di Cosenza (Cosenza), 2004, ISBN 88-88897-35-6 .
  • Frank Deppe : Historical compromise. In: Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism , Vol. 6 / I, Argument-Verlag, Hamburg 2004, Sp. 311-315.

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