BERLINGUER: 'FOLLOWING OUR OWN PATH'

The headquarters of the Italian Communist Party are in a building on Rome's Via delle Botteghe Oscure (Street of the Dark Shops). There, in a book-lined office dominated by a portrait of the late Palmiro Togliatti, TIME Managing Editor Henry Grunwald and Rome Bureau Chief Jordan Bonfante recently met with Party Boss Enrico Berlinguer. Excerpts from the hour-long interview:

Q. In an earlier interview with TIME (June 30, 1975), you said that you were in no hurry to gain power in Italy. Do you still feel that way?

A. From our own point of view, and from the point of view of the party, that is still true. We haven't become more impatient. It's the events--unfortunate events--that are pushing ahead faster. I say unfortunate because we are not enthusiastic about entering the government at the present time, not only because we have no particular personal ambitions, but because it would mean going into the government in a very difficult moment for Italy, with a heavy inheritance from past governments. But there is no doubt that the situation requires a change in leadership.

Q. How can you cooperate with the Christian Democrats, especially if they are reluctant to change?

A. One of the conditions for such cooperation is an end to the suffocating predominance that the Christian Democratic Party has always exercised. The Christian Democrats [must] change their vision of how to govern the country and renew themselves. The party is made up of varied forces. There are representatives of the privileged class, but there is also a broad range of working people and popular forces. If it is to change policy the D.C. has to lose votes to the left parties. Otherwise it will continue along the same road.

Q. What would you consider the ideal outcome of the elections?

A. A certain advance by the party, in order to make it clear and irrefutable that there is no way of doing without Communist participation in the leadership of the country. The political situation in Italy for the past 30 years has been characterized by a Christian Democracy that has been like a planet around which the minor parties have rotated like satellites. We would like to arrive at a political situation where there would no longer be a planet and satellites but rather a more equal relationship among all the parties.

Q. How damaging is the charge that the Italian Communists have not really changed?

A. Experience shows that this charge has increasingly less effect. The people sense that a change has taken place, and that this change represents a mass phenomenon, which is reflected in the millions of votes received by the party. Even if our leadership were not sincere --and this is not the case--it would be difficult to turn back. Suppose the leadership had non-democratic intentions: in that case, the first rebellion would come from our own ranks.

Q. Why do you still consider yourselves Communists rather than Social Democrats, say, especially since other Communist parties have not gone nearly so far in their evolution?

A. We believe that communisms, Communist parties and socialist societies can be different, within the framework of a common origin. Between Peking and Belgrade and Havana, for example, there are already great differences! As for our own experience--thanks above all to the unity policy we have always followed--the Italian Communist Party has been able to establish great strength in a country of considerable industrial and economic advancement and with a particular history and tradition. None of the present socialist countries have a democratic tradition, with the exception of Czechoslovakia.

Q. You have been compared with Alexander Dubcek of Czechoslovakia. 'We all know that Communism with a human face was not permitted to exist there. Could it happen here?

A. In Italy, who could prevent us from following our own path? The frontiers are what they are.

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