- 25 Jun 2017 22:39
#14818211
Yes, it was successful back then. Then all things come to an end and when the USSR ended the party met its inevitable doom, whatever took its "heritage" nowadays is a bunch of centrist, third wayists that make Tony Blair look like a true socialist.
De facto the party is defunct, and the parties that today try to inspire themselves to those ideals are at ridiculous percentages, likely under 2%.
A key factor that may have lead to their success in the past was their role during the final years of WW2 against nazi occupants as a partisan force. They temporarly put aside "the war against burgeois (and the monarchy)" to give full priority to the eradication of fascism in Italy, during those years, the communist party entered the provisionary Badoglio government allying with other liberal parties (something that may have been considered a heresy to the purist communist of back then, but actually this was approved by Stalin when he met Togliatti in 1944). This had a big relevance in crediting them as a democratic entity and not a revolutionary one that would later try take power with force.
Another important element of the success, of course, was the purely proportional nature of the electoral law in Italy until the 90's, had there been a "first-past-the-post" system, the communist party might not have had the success it enjoyed in terms of seats.