Italy remains persistently self-effacing in inter-
national affairs. The Italian people have with relief
turned their back on the ‘glorious’ years of the
bombastic duce. Two decades of fascist rule and
two bloody European wars brought Italy to a
point in its history in 1945 where it seemed
unlikely again to exert a major influence.
Italy emerged with Britain, France, the Federal
Republic of Germany and Spain as one of the
big five democracies in Western Europe, with a
population comparable in size and a large
economy to match, which in 1987 generated
about one-fifth of the gross national product
of the European Community. The Italians have
concentrated their talents on their own welfare.
The post-war years were in many respects decades
of achievement and success, of rising standards
of living, though they were also years beset by
problems.
The fortunes of war decided Italy’s future in
the first place. It was the Allied armies of the West
that liberated the Italian peninsula in 1944 and- Italy thus found itself on the Western ‘free
nation’ side of the great post-war divide of
Europe. This determined not only its inter-
national position after the conclusion of the peace
treaty on to February 1947, but also its internal
politics and social developments. Italy’s relations
with the East (and its markets there) were cut off;
economically its future lay in close relations with
the West. Liberal economics, the abandonment of
fascist autarchy or self-sufficiency, the Italian
version of a more socially responsible capitalism,
all set Italy on a fundamentally Western path of
political and economic development. The politics
of post-war Italy were dominated by the Christian
Democratic Party, firmly committed to a parlia-
mentary system. In the post-war world Italy
moreover occupied a crucial strategic position in
the Mediterranean and Adriatic, and was seen as
a bulwark against communist south-east Europe.
Yet impoverished Italy in the early post-war
years, in the aftermath of the destruction and dis-
location of the war, facing dire poverty in many
regions and with an industrial proletariat in the
north, did not appear secure against a communist
takeover from within. The resistance had attracted
the working masses to communism, especially in
the north. The Italian Communist Party now
numbered 2 million, the largest in the Western
world. According to Cold War ideology, a com-
munist anywhere had but one purpose, to subvert
democracy and to seize power violently when
the moment was ripe, following the successful
model Lenin had created in 1917; it was believed,
moreover, that all communists were totally sub-
servient to Stalin and followed the dictates of the
Kremlin. In 1945 the partisans in the north of
Italy were strong and there were many commu-
nists among them who believed that the hour of
revolution had indeed struck, but, disciplined and
obedient to their leadership, they took care to
avoid any direct challenge to the anti-communist
Anglo-American forces.(^1) Chapter 50
THE TRIBULATIONS AND SUCCESSES OF
ITALIAN DEMOCRACY