¹ More objective, post-cold war efforts to assess the role of the communist functionary since the death of Stalin are Faenza, Liliano, Partito e apparato (Bologna, 1965)Google Scholar, and Bonazzi, Giuseppe, “Problemi politici e condizione umana dei funzionari del Pci,” Tempi Moderni, VIII, (July-September, 1965), 43–77.Google Scholar

² Political Parties (New York, 1959), esp. 86, 98, 104–6, 164–78, and 210.

³ For the pci's figure, see Italiano, CentroDocumentazione, Richerchee (cird), “Modificazioni strutturali e politiche del Partito communista italiano al suo 9° Congresso,” Tempi Moderni, III (April-June, 1960), 4.Google ScholarSartori, Giovanni estimates 12,000 functionaries in “European Political Parties: The Case of Polarized Pluralism,” in Political Parties and Political Development, ed. Lapalombara, Joseph and Weiner, Myron (Princeton, NJ, 1966), 146.Google Scholar My own observations for north-central Italy suggest a ratio of at least one functionary for every thousand members of the pci.

⁴ Galli, Giorgio, Il bipartitismo imperfetto (Bologna, 1966), 74–83.Google ScholarL'Organizzazione partitica del PCI e delta DC, ed. Poggi, Gianfranco (Bologna, 1968), 193–6, 306–8.Google Scholar

⁵ The research reported here is part of a larger study carried out in 1969 and reported in my Organization and Ideology in Four Italian Communist Federations (Yale University phd dissertation, 1973).

⁶ Tarrow, Sidney G., Peasant Communism in Southern Italy (New Haven, Conn., 1967), 224.Google Scholar

⁷ This restricted sample purposely avoids those high-ranking local pci leaders – especially in strong federations – who occupy elective positions (for example, the mayor of an important city) or posts in important mass organizations (such as the secretary of the Chamber of Labour or of the cooperative movement). This'exclusionary strategy was designed to insure as “pure” a sample as possible of the party bureaucracy, rather than a more generic “local party elite.” This avoids flooding the sample with politicians from pci strongholds who have no counterparts in areas where the pci is weak. For more details, see my Organization and Ideology in Four Italian Communist Federations, chap. 1. Thirty-seven functionaries were interviewed in the four federations.

⁸ Not significant at .05, calculating chi square (χ²) with one degree of freedom. So small a sample cannot justify sophisticated statistical inferences. Where the data require a statement about statistical significance, χ² has been calculated. In cases requiring some associational measure, Gamma has been reported.

⁹ The time between the functionaries' initial enrolment in the ranks of the pci and their assumption as full-time operatives averaged five years for all age groups.

¹⁰ There are compelling historical, as well as logical, reasons to probe beyond first militant experiences. The fgci only came into being at the end of the 1940s, making it impossible for the older leaders to have had their first experiences in it.

¹¹ A selection of articles which gives a contemporary history of the pci's relation with extra-parliamentary groups, the student movement, and the fgci in several important cities is “Inchiesta sui gruppi estremisti,” Rinascita (25 February 1972), 13–26.

¹² The most complete statement of the via italiana remains the pci's “Programmatic Declaration” of 1956, even though the strategy has undergone a number of minor alterations in the past 18 years. See “Elementi par una dichiarazione programmatica approvati dell'viii Congresso del pci,” in La Dichiarazione programmatica e le Tesi dell'VIII Congresso del PCI (Rome, 1957), 7–54.

¹³ A good analysis in English of these disputes is Halliday, Jon, “Structural Reform in Italy – Theory and Practice,” New Left Review, 50 (July-August, 1968), 73–92.Google Scholar For more detail and historical background, see my Organization and Ideology in Four Italian Communist Federations, chap. 4.

¹⁴ Gamma = .54; not significant at .05.

¹⁵ Gamma = .82; x² = 7.581 with 1dF (p < .01). In spite of this apparent lack of dedication to sheer numbers by numerous party leaders, the pci in 1969 reversed the steady decline in its membership evident since 1954, and has continued to do so every year since then. Membership in 1968 was 1,502,862; the figure in 1973, with the recruitment drive not quite finished, was 1,587,295. L'Unit`, 17 June 1973, 8.

¹⁶ There were 35 responses in this case, 17 younger and 18 older.

¹⁷ N = 34.

¹⁸ One of the earliest, and most succinct, criticisms of this type came from a leading communist unionist. Trentin, Bruno, “Le dottrine neo-capitalistiche e l'ideologia delle forze dominanti nella politica economica italiana,” Tendenze del capitalismo italiano: Atti del convegno economico dell'Instituto Gramsci (Rome, 1962), Vol. I, 141 ff.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Dichotomizing, Gamma = .68; x² = 4.636 with 1dF, p < .05.

²⁰ The major statements of the party's position prior to and immediately following the invasion are in Longo, Luigi, Sui fatti di Cecoslovacchia (Rome, 1968), 7–130.Google Scholar

²¹ See for example the conclusions of party leader Berlinguer, Enrico at the 1969 Twelfth National Congress, XII Congresso del PCI: Atti e risoluzioni (Rome, 1969), 749–54.Google Scholar

²² For an incisive description and analysis of the pci's relation to the ussr, see Blackmer, Donald L.M., Unity in Diversity (Cambridge, Mass., 1967).Google Scholar

²³ The only major item used in the construction of the scale which has not been reported here asked the functionaries, in two separate questions, what they felt were the pci's greatest success and its greatest shortcoming. Those responses which discussed the party's internal structure, and particularly its lack of internal democracy, as its major weakness or fault were considered to be leftist, since this has been a main point made by the internal Left since 1956. Those responses which discussed either strengths or weaknesses exclusively in terms of 1956 and the pci's viii Congress (for example, “Our greatest limit is to have presented a just line in 1956 but not yet to have translated that line into reality”) were classified as rightist, given the strong association of this view with that position. All other responses were given a neutral score.

²⁴ Their ages, in 1969, were 39 and 34.

²⁵ The size of each group was: lower class, 21; lower-middle, 8; middle, 5.

²⁶ The average score of all functionaries with university backgrounds and/or middle class origins was —2.4. The ideological distance between the youngest and oldest generations remains great even when we eliminate entirely those educated in university or from middleclass families. The average score for the youngest group is —3.1 without representatives of the middle class, and it drops to —2.6 when we cut both middle-class and university backgrounds. The oldest group stays basically as it is (moving from +1.2 to +1.3) under these conditions, which is not surprising given its lower-class origins and more modest education. Most importantly, ideological distance remains great under all these conditions, varying from 4.3 to 3.9.

²⁷ The only other study, to my knowledge, with data on the age of pci federal functionaries was carried out five years earlier than the study reported in this article. Adjustments show that in the federation of Turin, in 1964, the group that would be in its early forties five years later accounted for just over half of all functionaries. See Bonazzi, “Problemi politici,” 51.

²⁸ Material for two of the federations studied was kindly provided by party leaders in mimeo-graphed form. Material from four additional federations was calculated from XII Congresso Nazionale del PCI: Documenti dei Congressi delle federazioni comuniste del Veneto (Venice, mimeograph, 1969).

²⁹ pci, Dati sulla organizzazione del Partito (Rome, 1968), 87. Even if these 1875 secretaries – the ones who attended a conference for section secretaries – are not perfectly representative of the approximately 8900 section secretaries in the pci in 1967, the high proportion of 30-year-olds in the sample makes it difficult to imagine a missing generation of this age group.

³⁰ Ibid., 11. The age breakdown for 1,012,971 members, just over two-thirds of the total 1967 membership, was: 19.5 per cent 30 and younger; 24.4 per cent between 31 and 40; 25.2 per cent between 41 and 50; 30.9 per cent over 50.

³¹ For an interesting discussion of political generations defined in a societal, rather than a single organization's, context, see Heberle, Rudolph, Social Movements (New York, 1951), chap. 6.Google Scholar

³² Michels, Political Parties, 80–6.

³³ This is particularly true in cases, such as that of the pci, where the party in question is not in power and thus cannot utilise the formative apparatus of society to shape new cadres in its own image. But even successful revolutions often appear to continue to be led by the specific, tightly knit group which originally led the party to power. The most striking examples that come to mind are China and Yugoslavia.

³⁴ Letter of Pierlisa Bollea to Rinascita (May-June, 1956), 326.

³⁵ The pci found itself having to move very cautiously in its criticisms of past practices since groups that wanted many more changes than the “renovators” desired quickly made themselves heard in the party. The pci thus had to guard against these “revisionists” at the same time that it called for changes. The Hungarian events, coming on the heels of these developments, gave the old guard a respite, for in its defence of the Soviet Union the party temporarily fell back into old, familiar patterns.

³⁶ Rossi, Alberto Mario, “Il Partito comunista in Emilia,” Il Mulino, 12 (January, 1963), 31 ff.Google Scholar

³⁷ Conferenze Regionale del P.C.I. (Bologna, 1959), 118.

³⁸ Rossi, “Il Partito comunista,” 39.

³⁹ It can be argued with some reason that one should actually divide the current older generation into two groups, those who entered the party during the Resistance, and those who entered in the looser, optimistic period between 1945 and 1947. Were one delving extensively into the pci's internal politics since 1956, this division might be necessary, but for the purposes of this article a single grouping is sufficient.

⁴⁰ For a summary of the “Tambroni Affair,” see Kogan, Norman, A Political History of Postwar Italy (New York, 1966), 167–72.Google Scholar The topic is analysed exhaustively in Nilsson, K. Robert, Italy's “Opening to the Right”: The Tambroni Experiment of 1960 (Columbia University phd dissertation, 1964).Google Scholar

⁴¹ For a pci leader's emphasis of this point with regard to a missing generation in at least one federation, see Patacini's, Gianetto contribution to the rubric “Lo stato del partito” in Rinascita (23 January 1970), 4.Google Scholar Patacini's terminology refers to un vuoto di generazione “di mezzo”, which is very much in the spirit of my own “missing buffer generation.”

⁴² Several sources make this more than a purely speculative conclusion. Follow-up and additional fieldwork was carried out in the summer of 1973, and first-hand observations and conversations confirm the massive recruitment of young communists who are much closer to pci orthodoxy than their immediate elders. In fact, at the xix Congress of the fgci, such striking orthodoxy emerged in the Youth Federation's positions that official party spokesmen took pains to assert that this was not a reversion to pci-fgci relations of an earlier epoch. See, for example, Quercini, Giulio, “Una nuova generazione di comunisti,” Rinascita (2 April 1971), 5–6Google Scholar, and, especially, Berlinguer's, Enrico conclusions to the xix Congress in XIX Congresso nazionale delta Federazione giovanile comunista italiana (Rome, 1971), 250–1.Google Scholar A definitive explanation of why the fgci and communist youth in general since 1969 should move closer to the orthodox pci line would take us beyond the scope of our topic, but the most obvious reason is to be found in the party's relation to the extraparliamentary left since 1969. Prior to that date, as we have noted, the fgci was often itself openly critical of the pci, and many leftist groups continued to hold out the hope that the pci would not “sell out.” Ater that date, for a variety of reasons, this hope was abandoned and, as a result, attacks from various groups became constant and vituperative. It is thus obvious that anyone who entered and remained loyal to the party's Youth Federation throughout this period would be much more orthodox than the “generation of sixty,” which never underwent constant and sharp external attacks from the Left on a broad scale, and which, as we have seen, developed anything but an apologetic stance vis-à-vis the parent party. It is significant that these most recent recruits are portraying themselves as the first real generation in the pci since the “renovators,” and they go to some lengths to demonstrate that the “generation of sixty” was, in effect, not a generation at all. See Borghini, Piero, “ ‘Svolte di generazione’ e processo rivoluzionario nell'esperienza e nell'elaborazione teorica dei comunisti italiani,” Nuova generazione, Quaderno/2, (16 June, 1972), 85–6.Google Scholar