Enrico
Berlinguer:
the centenary
of his birth
PORTRAITS OF ETTORE VIOLA
Rome, May 25, 2022
Enrico Berlinguer, secretary of the PCI from 1972 to 1984 would have turned one hundred today (he was born in Sassari on 25 May 1922). Ettore Viola remembers him with two portraits for the Manifesto and for the Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno.
Berlinguer was probably the most loved politician of the last century. He knew how to lead the largest communist party in the West keeping it on the ground of democracy without canceling the idea and the dream of a better and just society.
People loved his serious face, rare smiles and absolute honesty. Even when he spoke of austerity he was able to give a positive meaning to this word. With him a generation of Communists was formed who believed in democracy and change and for a while the hypothesis of a non-Soviet and non-totalitarian Eurocommunism even seemed feasible. He posed a “moral question” to the country and to politics which ten years after his death led to the end of the first Republic.
He died in Padua with a stroke at the end of a rally for the European elections. It was the evening of June 7, 1984. His agony lasted a few days until June 11. The President of the Republic, Sandro Pertini spent the last hours with Berlinguer. Then he took his body back to Rome. The funeral on June 13 saw a huge crowd from all over the country pay him a sincere homage. His absence from the political landscape was immediately felt as the PCI overtook the DC in the European elections. But in those days the end of the largest Communist Party in Europe began.
