Abstract
In the ’50s and early ’60s the Italian Communist Party (ICP) was one of the main actors involved in informal and unconventional diplomacy between Italy and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In the absence of diplomatic relations between the two countries, the presence in Italy of the largest Communist party in Western Europe undoubtedly acted as an important channel for unofficial Sino-Italian exchanges. This paper tries to trace the development of ICP-CCP relations focusing in particular on the Italian Communists’ views and analysis of the CCP’s historical experience. It also would like to show that ICP leaders generally viewed the CCP’s revolutionary in a positive way, an evaluation which largely stemmed from the ICP’s own national experience and its search for a more autonomous international role.
Highlights
In the ’50s and early ’60s the Italian Communist Party (ICP) was one of the main actors involved in informal and unconventional diplomacy between Italy and the People’s Republic of China (PRC)
In the absence of diplomatic relations between the two countries, the presence in Italy of the largest Communist party in Western Europe undoubtedly acted as an important channel for unofficial Sino-Italian exchanges
In October 1963, a long resolution approved by the ICP Central Committee (CC) denounced the “mistaken views of the Chinese comrades”, and criticised the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s vision of Asia, Africa and Latin America as the “stormy center of world revolution” (“Per una nuova avanzata e per l’unità del movimento comunista internazionale” 1968)
Summary
In the ’50s and early ’60s the Italian Communist Party (ICP) was one of the main actors (together with the Italian Socialist Party) involved in informal and unconventional diplomacy between Italy and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). With a view to overcoming military blocs, and firmly anchored in the strategy of peaceful coexistence, Togliatti tried to fulfil his desire to carve out greater space for autonomous action where the USSR was concerned, by elaborating an original idea based on ‘polycentrism’ Such a perspective implied a re-assessment of the traditional leading role of the Soviet Union within the Communist movement and sparked off the ICP’s interest in the non-European world, with initiatives such as the ‘non-aligned movement’, whose origins date back to the 1955 Bandung Conference (Galeazzi 2011; Pons 2012). Even in the years during which the political and ideological dispute between the two parties was vitriolic, the ICP leadership continued to support diplomatic recognition of the PRC as one of the main objectives of Italy’s foreign policy.
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