D’Alema and Berlinguer in Moscow and the three laws of real Socialism

Put an evening before dinner at the Esedra gallery in Rome and already the location, which houses the Sicilian pastry shop Dagnino, evokes the glorious times of post-war Italy. And if in this improvised dehor, in front of about fifty elderly spectators and young people in Clarks, three personalities perform such as Massimo D’Alema, Luciana Castellana, protagonist of the split from the PCI in ’68 of the group that gave birth to Il Manifesto, Roberto Gualtieri, mayor as a historian of the left, the show is guaranteed.

With the surprise of seeing a “Baffino”, as D’Alema was nicknamed when he was prime minister, in the unusual guise of a humorist rather than a flogger. Dispenser of amusing anecdotes about his visit to Moscow in 1984 for Andropov’s funeral together with Enrico Berlinguer and a delegation of “comrades” and statesmen. The book reworked by the author on occasion is his “In Moscow the last time”, where D’Alema, as a young Apulian secretary of the PCI, a minor role but a member of the Management, was “invested with the role of going to Russia with Berlinguer, being able to witness pieces of history seen up close». Like Pertini’s outburst against Craxi, the appeal that Berlinguer and Andreotti find an agreement to overthrow his government. Or Berlinguer’s human and very emotional reaction to the news from Italy of the proclamation of the famous «San Valentino Decree for the abolition of the escalator, greeted by an indignant exclamation “But this way the weakest will pay!”».

What emerges is a Berlinguer who is also anthropologically distant from the sociable, who did not want the bearskin and did not leave the Muscovite hotel until they brought him his hat; that he spoke “at full speed in front of drivers who recorded what he said and he knew it”.

And when Gualtieri lets slip the Freudian slip when he recalls “the reasons that prevented the Democratic Party, ops the PCI, from proposing a real government alternative”, a link is immediately made with today’s news. With the mayor speaking of «isolation of the PCI, far from the Psi and the DC. Who tried to propose “a sort of olive tree, in the decade in which the right was in power with Reagan and Thatcher and in which the European left was weak”. Here we immediately arrive at the Pd, which – in the words of the mayor, former minister of the economy – “has lost awareness of the basic elements of a government social democracy on welfare or the need to redistribute wealth”. Gualtieri complains, without pinning blame, that the Democratic Party gave “the sensation during the election campaign of not remembering having removed the flat tax up to 100,000 euros to take a billion and give it to employees in terms of health care. Things we were almost unaware of having done», Gualtieri vents.

But there is little space for the record, occupied by the shrewd memories of Dalema. That from the archives of the 31st wing that flies the offices of state he retrieves a service order for that flight to Moscow. Where he figured last as «Mr. D’Alema», after the President of the Republic, state authority, the Vatican and the PCI, all with a title of power». And then that «dramatic problem that arose when this plane with the Italian president, the government, the Vatican and the PCI landed in Moscow, where each delegation was each awaited by a different authority… just to say the Soviet ceremonial had disposed that the Vatican should receive the Academy of Sciences…”.

In short, there is room for memories and smiles, for the praise of Luigi Longo, who to keep the party united – «otherwise it would have been torn between the Amendolians and the Ingraians» – appointed Berlinguer as secretary, who had kept aloof from the dispute . Longo himself, «who decides the dissent on Czechoslovakia. And who brought together the leaders of ’68 … I went to see him at his house in Genzano – recalls D’Alema – after a stroke and I saw that he had a naive painting. From the history of that picture you understand what men they were. He told me this story, he who was head of the resistance in Spain: “When we understood that the war was lost we decided it was the case to evacuate Madrid. I had a purse and thought I could make a good purchase, even as leader of the defeated army. And I found this painting in a second-hand shop…”. Well – continues D’Alema – Longo takes refuge in France, ends up in a concentration camp, leads the resistance in Italy, wins the war of liberation, returns to Rome and takes that painting with him…”

Finally with Berlinguer and his “complex and controversial figure, convinced that to govern the left he had to ally with the Catholics…. And that when he said “the driving force of the October revolution has run out”, he knew that this judgment put something of the foundation of his party was also under discussion because the PCI was a heretical communism, but within a church. He posed the problem of a new foundation, a modern critique of capitalism. Touching on topics such as women’s liberation, the environmental theme and technology».

It is natural that we plan on today. Which for the former prime minister and former secretary of the PDS, obliges “a serious reflection on how to reorganize a field and restore a perspective, which involves a discussion from the foundations. An enormous redistributive problem and a critical vision of capitalism without the myth of another society must be recovered, but as the ability to see its contradictions and where inequalities and the phenomena of human marginalization are generated».

And let it end with the last recollection: «At Andropov’s funeral, they had made us wait an hour, when they let us in, after having apologized with a lie, Berlinguer told me impassively, as we filed past the cameras: “So you have you understand the three general laws of real socialism: first, the leaders always lie even when there is no need to. Second, farming never works; third, the candies always have the paper attached to them”. I had to hold back the laughter under a grimace of pain, so I was photographed on that solemn occasion”.