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Eurocommunism was a trend in the 1970s and 1980s within variousWestern Europeancommunist parties, which said they had developed a theory and practice of social transformation more relevant for Western Europe. During theCold War, they sought to reject the influence of theSoviet Union and itsCommunist Party. The trend was especially prominent in Italy, Spain, and France.[1] It is commonly considered to have been prompted by thePrague Spring. Although the various parties converged against the Soviet factor, their own doctrines remained as different at the dissolution of the movement as they originally were before 1968.[2]
The origin of the term Eurocommunism was subject to great debate in the mid-1970s, being attributed toZbigniew Brzezinski andArrigo Levi, among others.Jean-François Revel once wrote that "one of the favourite amusements of 'political scientists' is to search for the author of the term Eurocommunism". In April 1977,Deutschland Archiv decided that the word was first used in the summer of 1975 by Croatian journalist Frane Barbieri, former editor ofBelgrade'sNIN news magazine.[3] Outside Western Europe, it is sometimes referred to asneocommunism. This theory stresses greater independence from theSoviet Union.[4]
According toPerry Anderson, the main theoretical foundation of Eurocommunism wasAntonio Gramsci's writing aboutMarxist theory[5] which questioned thesectarianism of the left and encouraged communist parties to develop social alliances to winhegemonic support for social reforms. Early inspirations can also be found inAustro-Marxism and thedemocratic road to socialism.[6][7][8]
Eurocommunist parties expressed their fidelity to democratic institutions more clearly than before and attempted to widen their appeal by embracingpublic sector middle-class workers,new social movements such asfeminism andgay liberation and more publicly questioning the Soviet Union. However, Eurocommunism did not go as far as the Anglosphere-centredNew Left movement which had originally borrowed from the Frenchnouvelle gauche, but in the course of the events went past their academic theorists, largely abandoning Marxisthistorical materialism,class struggle and its traditional institutions such ascommunist parties.
ThePrague Spring and particularly itscrushing by the Soviet Union in 1968 became a turning point for the communist world. Romania's leaderNicolae Ceaușescustaunchly criticized the Soviet invasion in a speech, explicitly declaring his support for the Czechoslovakian leadership underAlexander Dubček. While thePortuguese Communist Party, theSouth African Communist Party and theCommunist Party USA supported the Soviet position,[9] theItalian Communist Party (PCI) and theCommunist Party of Spain (PCE) firmly denounced the occupation.[9]
The leadership of theCommunist Party of Finland (SKP),[10] the SwedishLeft Communist Party (VPK) and theFrench Communist Party (PCF) which had pleaded for conciliation expressed their disapproval about the Soviet intervention,[11] with the PCF thereby publicly criticizing a Soviet action for the first time in its history.[citation needed] TheCommunist Party of Greece (KKE) suffered a major split over the internal disputes regarding the Prague Spring,[9] with the pro-Dubček faction breaking ties with the Soviet leadership and founding theKKE Interior. KKE's legal branchUnited Democratic Left (EDA) adopted a more moderate and democratic line over the years and was also described as eurocommunist.[12][13]
The emergence of eurocommunism is often linked to the events in 1968. However this fails to explain the realignment between european communist parties and the Soviet Union from 1968 up to the early 1970s.[2]
At least one mass party, the French PCF, as well as many smaller parties opposed Eurocommunism and stayed aligned to the positions of theCommunist Party of the Soviet Union until the end of the Soviet Union, although the PCF did make a brief turn toward Eurocommunism in the mid-to-late 1970s. Some communist parties with strong popular support, notably the PCI and the PCE, adopted Eurocommunism most enthusiastically. The SKP was dominated by Eurocommunists.[citation needed]
The Finnish SKP changed its leadership in 1965 with leadership post changing from theStalinistAimo Aaltonen, who had even a picture ofLavrentiy Beria in his office, to arevisionist, quite popular trade unionistAarne Saarinen. The same happened even more drastically when theFinnish People's Democratic League also changed its leadership with the reformist Ele Alenius leading it. In 1968, these were the only parties to directly oppose the actions of the Soviet militarship in Prague in 1968, therefore the two organizations splitde facto into two different parties, with one reformist and one hard-line Soviet. The latter movement was also calledTaistoism after its leaderTaisto Sinisalo. What was peculiar was that the youth wing was nearly completely Taistoist.[dubious –discuss]
Progress was hard to make as the party accorded that the Taistoist movement had equal rights of power in the party, although it was a minority and the vast majority of the party was Eurocommunist. In 1984, with a strong Eurocommunist majority the hard-line organizations were massively expelled from the already weakened party. The Taistoist faction broke away, calling the main partyrevisionist and founded theCommunist Party of Finland (Unity) (SKPy). Pro-Soviet hard-liners from SKPy formed their own cover-organization calledDemocratic Alternative. In 1990, the newLeft Alliance integrated the parties, but Alenius chose not to be member of it because they also took hard-line Taistoists.[14]
The Spanish PCE and its Catalan referent, theUnited Socialist Party of Catalonia, had already been committed to the liberalpossibilist politics of thePopular Front during theSpanish Civil War. The PCE's leaderSantiago Carrillo wrote Eurocommunism's defining bookEurocomunismo y estado (Eurocommunism and the State [1977]) and participated in the development of the liberal democratic constitution as Spain emerged from the dictatorship ofFrancisco Franco. ThePeople's Alliance in Iceland,[15][16] theSammarinese Communist Party,[15] theCommunist Party of Austria, theCommunist Party of Belgium, theCommunist Party of Great Britain,[15] theSocialist Party of Ireland[17] and theCommunist Party of the Netherlands also turned Eurocommunist to varying degrees.[18][better source needed]
The DanishSocialist People's Party, which already broke away from theCommunist Party of Denmark after theHungarian Revolution of 1956, was also sometimes described as Eurocommunist.[19][20] The eurocommunist wing ofNKP leaderReidar T. Larsen joined theSocialist Left Party.[21] TheCommunist Party of Belgium flirted with Eurocommunism in the 1970s, but did not want to explicitly reject the Soviet model and engaged in a polemic with Carrillo for this reason. It also remained more critical towards the idea of a Western European power bloc.[22] The main radical-left force in Belgium that rejected the Soviet model at the time wasAMADA [nl] (the forerunner of thePVDA-PTB), but it did this from aMaoist viewpoint about Soviet "social imperialism", while also denouncing Eurocommunism.[23]
The Italian PCI in particular had been developing an independent line from Moscow for many years prior which had already been exhibited in 1968, when the party refused to support theSoviet invasion of Prague. In 1975, the PCI and the PCE had made a declaration regarding the "march toward socialism" to be done in "peace and freedom". In 1976, the PCI's leaderEnrico Berlinguer had spoken of a "pluralistic system" (sistema pluralistico translated by the interpreter as "multiform system") in Moscow and in front of 5,000 communist delegates described the PCI's intentions to build "a socialism that we believe necessary and possible only in Italy".[24] TheHistoric Compromise (compromesso storico) with theChristian Democracy, stopped by thekidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro in 1978, was a consequence of this new policy.[25]
Western European communists came to Eurocommunism via a variety of routes. For some, it was their direct experience offeminist and similar action, while for others it was a reaction to the political events of the Soviet Union at the apogee of whatMikhail Gorbachev later called theEra of Stagnation. This process was accelerated after the events of 1968, particularly the crushing of thePrague Spring. The politics ofdétente also played a part. With war less likely, Western communists were under less pressure to follow Soviet orthodoxy, yet also wanted to engage with a rise in Western proletarian militancy such as Italy'sHot Autumn and Britain'sShop Stewards Movement.[citation needed]
Eurocommunism was in many ways only a staging ground for changes in the political structure of the European left. Some, like the Italians, becamesocial democrats while others, like the Dutch, moved intogreen politics and the French party during the 1980s reverted to a more pro-Soviet stance. Eurocommunism became a force across Europe in 1977, when the PCI'sEnrico Berlinguer, the PCE'sSantiago Carrillo and the PCF'sGeorges Marchais met in Madrid and laid out the fundamental lines of the "new way".
Eurocommunist ideas won at least partial acceptance outside of Western Europe. Prominent parties influenced by it outside of Europe were theIsraeli Communist Party,[26] theCommunist Party of Australia, theJapanese Communist Party, theMexican Communist Party, their successor theUnified Socialist Party of Mexico,[27] and the VenezuelanMovement for Socialism.[18]Soviet leaderMikhail Gorbachev also referred to Eurocommunism as a key influence on the ideas ofglasnost andperestroika in his memoirs.
Thebreakup of the Soviet Union and the end of theCold War put practically all leftist parties in Europe on the defensive and madeneoliberal reforms the order of the day. Many Eurocommunist parties split, with the right factions (such as theDemocrats of the Left or theInitiative for Catalonia Greens) adopting social democracy more whole-heartedly while the left strove to preserve some identifiably communist positions (theCommunist Refoundation Party or the PCE and theLiving Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia). The successors of KKE Interior,Renewing Communist Ecological Left (AKOA) andGreek Left (EAR), alongside other left-wing groups and politicians including EDA's last leaderManolis Glezos would go on and formSynaspismos.
In 2017, the Communist Party of Spain nominally returned toMarxism–Leninism.[28]
Several criticisms have been advanced against Eurocommunism. First, it is alleged by critics that Eurocommunists showed a lack of courage in sufficiently and definitively breaking off from the Soviet Union (for example, the Italian Communist Party took this step in 1981 after the repression ofSolidarność in Poland). This has been explained as the fear of losing old members and supporters, many of whom admired the Soviet Union, or with apragmatic desire to keep the support of a strong and powerful country.[1]
Other critics point out the difficulties the Eurocommunist parties had in developing a clear and recognisable strategy.[29] They observe that Eurocommunists have always claimed to be different—not only fromSoviet communism, but also fromsocial democracy—while in practice they were always very similar to at least one of these two tendencies. As a result, critics argue that Eurocommunism does not have a well-defined identity and cannot be regarded as a separate movement in its own right.[citation needed]
From aTrotskyist point of view inFrom Stalinism to Eurocommunism: The Bitter Fruits of 'Socialism in One Country',Ernest Mandel views Eurocommunism as a subsequent development of the decision taken by the Soviet Union in 1924 to abandon the goal ofworld revolution and concentrate on social and economic development of the Soviet Union, the doctrine ofsocialism in one country. According to this vision, the Eurocommunists of the Italian and French communist parties are considered to be nationalist movements, who together with the Soviet Union abandonedinternationalism.
From ananti-revisionist point of view,Enver Hoxha argued inEurocommunism is Anti-Communism[30] that Eurocommunism is the result ofNikita Khrushchev's policy ofpeaceful coexistence. Khrushchev was accused of being arevisionist who encouraged conciliation with thebourgeoisie rather than adequately calling for its overthrow by thedictatorship of the proletariat. He also stated that the Soviet Union's refusal to rejectPalmiro Togliatti'stheory ofpolycentrism encouraged the variouspro-Soviet communist parties to moderate their views in order to joincabinets which in turn forced them to abandonMarxism–Leninism as their leading ideology.
Henry Kissinger opposed the idea that communist parties in power in western Europe could be acceptable for the United States if they are independent from Moscow stating how "Tito is not under Moscow's control, yet his influence is felt all over the world" warning how a West European, communist ruled country, may potentially lead to "total redefinition" of the post-World War II order.[31]
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