The Inner World of Italian Communism

Rossana Rossanda is one of the keenest and most turbulent minds womanhood has contributed to international Communism since the death of Rosa Luxemburg. A long-time militant of the Italian party (PCI), she was appointed in 1963 head of the Cultural Division: not a slight achievement in a political organization that has never suffered from want of able and ambitious male intellectuals. In 1965, however, Rossanda dared to attack in Rinascita, the official weekly of the party, the policy in cultural affairs imposed for twenty years by the late Togliatti. 1 As a consequence of this outburst, she lost her job. For a few years, Rossanda disappeared from the limelight. Then, in February 1969, she staged a comeback that could not have been more resounding.

The Twelfth Congress of the PCI was drawing to an end in the huge and crowded stadium at Bologna. The motion of the Political Committee, a long document epitomizing the middle-of-the-road line charted by old Luigi Longo, ha...