The Communists Seize the Initiative

As campaigning for Italy's special national election on June 20 began last week, the Communists--perhaps prophetically--seemed to be first off the mark. From Rome top party officials fanned out to speak at urban rallies across the country, disciplined young Communist workers--like sports fans lined up early for scarce tickets to a soccer match--laid siege to courthouses to file for the top spot on Italy's complicated ballots, granted on a first-come first-served basis. Almost invariably, the Communists beat out representatives of the eleven other parties.

The central act in the Communist kickoff took place in the glassy modernistic Palazzo dei Congressi outside Rome. There, amid red bunting, Communist flags and green-white-and-red Italian tricolors, slender Party Leader Enrico Berlinguer, 53, formally opened the campaign at a massive rally. He called for "an end to the disastrous predominance of the Christian Democrats" and urged voters to "give Italy a government that's different." Significantly, the overflow audience that roared approval of Berlinguer's words was mostly young and middle class.

No Neofascists. Thus began the premature election campaign--the most important in Italy since World War II. The central question: whether the Christian Democrats will remain Italy's dominant party or whether the Communists will at last come to share power nationally. The prospect worries many in the West, particularly in the U.S. Attending the NATO meeting in Oslo last week, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once more pointed up the dangers in talks with other delegates.

Since the fall of the most recent Christian Democratic government --an event that forced the early election--the Communists have had to accelerate their political timetable. In the long run, they still seek a "historic compromise" in which they would share power with the Christian Democrats and the Socialists. In the short run, though, they have become less gradualist. Last week, citing "impelling needs of the present," Berlinguer called for an emergency government of "national solidarity" which would involve all parties except the extreme right neofascists.

Some new and--for Italy--daring campaign maneuvers are being introduced in this election. To offset the same kind of voter distrust that has generated anti-Washington feelings in the U.S. presidential primaries, Italian parties for the first time signed up a host of non-political "personality" candidates. The Christian Democrats nominated Nuclear Physicist Luigi Broglio, respected Banker Gaetano Stammati and Auto Executive Umberto Agnelli. Agnelli, 41, is the younger brother and second in command to Fiat's Gianni Agnelli, Italy's leading industrialist. (Gianni had considered running as a centrist Republican Party candidate but bowed out instead after Umberto filed.)

The Communists did even better: they shrewdly lined up candidates who might help offset anti-Communist criticism from NATO, the Common Market and the Vatican. One of their Senate candidates is Nino Pasti, 67, a retired four-star general who formerly served as NATO's Southern Europe Air Force Commander. "They are fully reliable," insisted Pasti of the Communists. "It's a democratic party; I am convinced of that." Common Market Commissioner Altiero Spinelli, 68, meanwhile, became a surprise Communist choice for the Chamber of Deputies. Spinelli, a former Communist and political prisoner under Mussolini, became his nation's most celebrated European federalist after the war. "Italy is taking a gamble with the Communists," Spinelli admitted last week from his Common Market office in Brussels. "But things have deteriorated so much that we have to take a risk."

Worried Pope. In the biggest surprise of all, the party also lined up six dissident Catholic intellectuals, including Raniero la Valle, former editor of the Christian Democratic newspaper Il Popolo, and Paolo Brezzi, a noted scholar of Christian history. The coup obviously startled Pope Paul, who referred elliptically to the election as "the forthcoming sociopolitical event," and angrily complained at a weekly audience: "Sometimes our dearest friends, our most trusted colleagues, those who share our table, are the very ones who turn against us." With the Pope's concurrence, Bologna's Antonio Cardinal Poma noted in his keynote address last week to a conference of 250 Italian bishops that Catholics who actively campaign for the Communists are cutting themselves off from the faith--a veiled threat of excommunication.

The Communists are convinced now that the election they did not really want has become the election in which there must be a Communist advance. The vote will determine their position in any possible coalition, but as Berlinguer himself recently told TIME, "experience teaches us that it is very hard to really change anything unless you have a say in the executive. Contrary to what is commonly thought abroad, the Parliament here works fairly well. What does not work is the Executive Branch, which is of course the major operational instrument of any state. So that is the level at which the real changes will have to be made."

Berlinguer said that the party had not yet examined the question of specific Cabinet seats. "But by and large," he added, "the ministries we consider the most important are the economic portfolios (treasury, finance, budget) because they are the ones that have done the worst under the Christian Democrats."

Voter Dialogues. The secretary firmly defended his party against charges that they have not really changed. Said he: "People sense a renewal has taken place. There is also something that is not recognized sufficiently abroad; broad masses of citizens have been involved, reflected in millions of votes. Therefore, even if the leadership were not sincere, it would be difficult to move backward. Although it is not true, supposing the leadership had intentions that were nondemocratic. The first to rebel would come from our own ranks."

For the next month, Berlinguer and other Communist leaders intend to promulgate that message across the country, frequently in dramatic give-and-take dialogues with voters--another new campaign tactic (see box). For years to come, Italian politics will be profoundly shaped by the number of voters who believe them.

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