Hammer and Sickle at Half-Mast

Berlinguer's Communists suffer a stunning defeat

In striking contrast to the cheering and dancing of past election nights, the crowd in front of the Italian Communist Party (P.C.I.) headquarters in Rome was as somber as a cortege. As Party Boss Enrico Berlinguer stepped dejectedly out onto the balcony, there was only a desultory round of applause. His message could not have been less triumphant: Berlinguer acknowledged what he called an "appreciable variation with respect to our exceptional advances of 1976." When someone dutifully unfurled the red hammer-and-sickle flag from the balcony, a disgusted voice piped up loudly from the crowd: "Leave it at half-mast!"

"Appreciable variation" soon became the established party-line euphemism for what was actually a stunning political defeat: the loss of more than a million votes in Italy's national election last week. The setback was a dramatic reversal of the P.C.I.'s successive gains in the regional vote of 1975 and the general election of 1976, which had provoked anxiety in every Western capital about the specter of Eurocommunism coming to power in the NATO alliance. The defeat also raised the prospect of an intraparty challenge to Berlinguer's leadership, since it appeared to be a repudiation of his gradualist "historic compromise" strategy of joining the government in a national alliance with the centrist parties. Said Flaminio Piccoli, president of the Christian Democrats: "The Communist Party has lost its referendum on entering the government."

When all 42 million votes were counted, the Communists had dropped from 34.4% of the popular vote in 1976 to 30.4% and suffered a loss of 26 parliamentary seats. That reduced its strength in the 630-seat Chamber of Deputies to 201. It was the first national election setback experienced by the P.C.I, in postwar history. The Christian Democrats, who overconfidently expected to score significant gains, could hardly brag about their own performance. The party that has dominated every Italian government since 1946 slipped fractionally from 38.7% to 38.3% of the popular vote and lost one seat in the lower house for a new total of 262.

Both the major parties thus appeared to have been punished by disaffected supporters for an all-too-cozy parliamentary collaboration that had supported two successive minority Cabinets headed by Christian Democratic Premier Giulio Andreotti. The Socialist Party, the country's third largest, did not fare much better; it gained five new seats for a total of 62 in the Chamber, but failed to make the headway predicted by its vigorous but erratic leader, Bettino Craxi.

Communist leaders had expected some erosion of support because of growing rank-and-file resentment against giving political aid and comfort to the Christian Democrats. In fact, Berlinguer had tried to cut potential losses by returning his party to the opposition last January, a move that toppled the Andreotti government and eventually provoked the election two years before the scheduled date. The surprising extent of the Communists' losses, however, was also a rebuke to their stewardship in major cities with P.C.I.-led local governments. In Communist-run Rome, for instance, the P.C.I, fell back 6%; in the auto capital of Turin, 4%; in Naples, the restive hotbed of southern unemployment, a jolting 10%. Moreover, despite a consistently tough law-and-order stand aimed at disassociating the party from extreme leftist terrorism, continuing violence by the Red Brigades and other groups claiming to represent "real Communism" inescapably damaged the P.C.I.'s image among middle-class voters. Said Pundit Alberto Ronchey: "After all, they are the Red Brigades, not the White Brigades."

The backlash against the major parties gave a revitalizing dose of new support to small center parties. The Social Democrats moved up from 3.4% to 3.8% of the vote despite the recent jailing of one of its party leaders, former Defense Minister Mario Tanassi, for his involvement in the Lockheed bribery scandal. The centrist Republicans hung on to their 3% despite the death of their own influential party president, Ugo La Malfa. The right-of-center Liberals scrambled from 1.3% to 1.9% despite predictions that they might disappear from parliament altogether.

Most of all, the Communists' losses seemed to translate into gains for the aggressive Radical Party, which tripled its vote to 1.2 million and won 14 new seats for a total of 18. Led by a flamboyant maverick, Marco Pannella, 47, the Radicals have regularly tormented the Communists. They have championed civil rights and taken the lead on every contemporary social issue--from divorce and abortion to militant feminism and gay rights--with raucous demonstrations and ostentatious hunger strikes. As a result, the Radicals siphoned off youthful first-time voters, who might otherwise have supported the Communists, and working-class housewives, who are no longer content to vote the way their husbands tell them.

While the election went far toward relaxing alarm about Communist ascendancy in Italy, it may have made the task of governing the country more difficult than ever. Berlinguer declared that the Communists still wanted Cabinet seats in a "government of national unity"--a demand immediately rejected by the Christian Democrats. "I have always made a distinction between a parliamentary alliance and governing with the Communists," said Andreotti, who will probably be the first man asked by President Alessandro Pertini to form a Cabinet. "The latter is simply not possible."

Other Christian Democratic leaders were pressing for a renewed coalition with the Socialists and small center parties, like the center-left alliance that governed for a decade after 1963. But Socialist Leader Craxi has not yet agreed to go along, and would be sure to drive a hard bargain in tortuous negotiations. Thus the likely immediate prospect seemed to be a minority Christian Democratic "seaside Cabinet" for the summer interim. Certainly, disillusioned Italian voters appeared to want a holiday from wrangling, inconclusive politics: at the polls a record 1.7 million blank ballots gave birth to what wags called the new "Abstentionist Party."

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