Well, the Communists at that moment were very strong in Italy and the Italian Communist Party was the biggest Communist Party outside Soviet Union, there's no doubt about that.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The Communists at that moment were very strong in Italy, and the Italian Communist Party was the biggest Communist Party outside the Soviet Union.
Italy remained attached to conservatism. It had a political class that lived in the past and didn't build the future. The past is our strength, but it risks becoming our ruin if we walk with our heads turned backwards.
But Italy can only have any real influence on world affairs if it carries weight in Europe.
The Italian economy is certainly the weakest of the big European countries.
And also they were absolutely brilliant in one way, you know: they knew how effective is not to punish somebody who is guilty; what Communist Party members could afford to do was mind-boggling: they could do practically anything they wanted - steal, you know, lie, whatever.
There isn't much in the way of pure communist spirit, because the whole nation seems to be engaged in capitalistic enterprises. Much of the country still operates under government control.
I think that communism was a major force for violence for more than 100 years, because it was built into its ideology - that progress comes through class struggle, often violent.
We seem to be a long way off from the kind of Fascism which we behold in Italy today, but we are not so far from the kind of Fascism which Mussolini preached in Italy before he assumed power, and we are slowly approaching the conditions which made Fascism there possible.
Italy needed structural reforms to become more competitive.
Hungarian communists were the most talented. They convinced everybody that reforming the communist party was better than making a new party.