Memory and Power in Post-War Europe: Studies in the Presence of ...

234 Ilaria Poggiolini
sector, were the central characteristics of this change. Indeed, a parasitic,
state-controlled industrial sector grew out of all proportion during
these years. Political nepotism, which had been the expression of agrarian
power during the nineteenth century, now evolved into the creation of a
bloc protecting the interests of public capital and of the various layers of
clienteles around it. 13
In the early 1960s, with Federico Fellini’s La dolce vita and 8 1 /2 , Dino
Risi’s I mostri and Il sorpasso and, even more, Michelangelo Antonioni’s
early productions, the most perverted aspects of the economic boom
and the loss of values which was felt to go hand in hand with it, were
taken up by Italian cinema. The rosy, happy but naive image of previous
films was now abandoned in order to describe the costs of living in a
much more complex and less reassuring society. Along with this sense
of disillusion grew an increasingly strong feeling of detachment from the
implications of the opening to the left in politics. It was felt that the system
of power created by the DC had not been challenged but accepted – and
reproduced – by the socialists and even by the PCI at local level. 14
A ‘historic compromise of memories’?
Enrico Berlinguer launched the idea of ‘a historic compromise’ with the
moderate forces in 1973. By 1975 the Fourteenth Congress of the PCI
had accepted Italy’s membership of NATO. The general election of June
1976 sanctioned the approval of the electorate for Berlinguer’s line and
for the DC’s willingness to move in the same direction. The Socialist
Party (PSI) and the PCI abstained when the new Andreotti government,
composed only of Christian Democrats, was presented in parliament.
For the PCI, to abstain was supposed to be the first step towards the
goal of sharing the responsibility of government, a goal supported by
large sectors of society, including Confindustria, the association of Italian
private entrepreneurs. 15
Aldo Moro, one of the leading figures in the Christian Democratic
Party, had given an interview to Eugenio Scalfari, the editor of the new
progressive daily La Repubblica in February 1978. The interview was
released only in October, after the Red Brigades had murdered Moro.
The substance of the interview centred on the necessity of working out
some form of collaboration with the PCI, but appeared very obscure when
it came to the basis of this collaboration. A government negotiated with
the PCI and led by Andreotti was ready to be presented in parliament on
13 G. De Rosa, Da Sturzo ad Aldo Moro (Brescia: Morcelliana 1988), 39–42.
14 G. Galli, L’Italia sotterranea: Storia, politica, scandali (Bari: Laterza, 1983).
15 P. Craveri, La Repubblica dal 1958 al 1992 (Rome: UTET, 1995).