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'West European Communism, Proletarian Internationalism and the Czechoslovak Crisis of 1968-1969'
'West European Communism, Proletarian Internationalism and the Czechoslovak Crisis of 1968-1969: A Comparative Study of the Italian and French Communist Parties'
This Phd thesis was successfully completed at the European University Institute, Florence in March 2004
The thesis analyses the impact of the Czechoslovak crisis of 1968-1969 (the Prague Spring, the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops in August 1968, and the subsequent 'normalisation' of the country and re-alignment of the Soviet-dominated communist world throughout 1969) on the Italian and French communist parties (Partito comunista italiano, PCI, and Parti communiste francais, PCF). By offering a detailed analysis of the responses of both parties to these events, and by inquiring into the debates which these events provoked among the party leadership, a view on the theory and practices of 'proletarian internationalism' is developed. I address the changes which internationalism underwent in 1968-1969, and offer an interpretation of this, viewed in the longer-term history of these parties between 1956 (a defining moment of destalinisation) and 1979 (the end of eurocommunism).
The thesis engages in debates regarding continuity and change in the histories of the PCI, PCF and west european communism more generally in the second half of the twentieth century. In a broader perspective, it aims, on the one hand, to contribute to a more developed understanding of the ideology and identity of communism and of 'proletarian internationalism', and, on the other hand, to engage with recent debates on the nature of the Cold War and détente in europe in the 1960s and 1970s.
Internationalism has, in its various expressions, not received the theoretical and analytical attention it deserves, beyond the vivid political and intellectual polemics it has aroused. In the thesis, I analyse one specific historical form of internationalism, namely Soviet-aligned internationalism of west european communist parties during the Cold War. Through the comparison of the PCI and the PCF, I aim to offer a complex way of understanding internationalism, by differentiating between various aspects and by contextualising it. On a theoretical level, I propose a working definition of internationalism, which involves its various aspects such as identity, ideology, global and domestic strategy, sources of legitimacy on the domestic level, various forms of dependence on the Soviet Union . I develop a method for the systematic contextualising of the phenomenon in three contexts: firstly, the situation in the so-called 'world communist movement', secondly, the domestic political situation and strategy of these parties and especially their relations to other forces of the left, and thirdly the situation of the Cold War and détente in Europe.
This conceptual and theoretical framework is applied to the study of continuities and changes in the internationalism of the PCI and PCF between 1956 — the strategic changes introduced by Khrushchev in the Soviet Union and the world communist movement — and 1979 — the end of eurocommunism. The comparison enables a new appreciation of the histories of these parties in this era, and sheds light especially on the impact of European détente and the very different positions of Italy and France in this respect. It also sheds light on the different structure of the two parties' domestic sources of legitimacy, and the transformation of these sources in contexts of rapid cultural, economic and political change.
The core of the thesis provides with a detailed, chronological analysis of a moment of crisis: the responses of these parties to the Prague Spring, to the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, and to the intensive re-alignment of the Soviet-led communist world and the 'normalisation' in Czechoslovakia itself, up to August 1969. The research is based on a large collection of primary sources. These are, foremost, the internal records of the PCI and the PCF for the period at hand, correspondence of these parties with other communist parties including the communist party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and of Czechoslovakia (CPCS), and personal papers of some of the main leaders of the PCI and PCF. Furthermore, I have consulted the internal records of the East German communist party (the SED or Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands), a party which in the context of the 'world communist movement' played a key role in relations between the nongovernmental communist parties in the west and the ruling parties of eastern europe. The SED archive has so far not been consulted systematically with regard to the west european communist parties for the period, and it offers new evidence as to the roles played by these parties in conflicts inside the communist world. I have furthermore exhaustively consulted the publications and press of the PCI and PCF, and the contemporary Italian and French press for the more generally.
The thesis fills in a gap in the literature in three ways. It does so, firstly, by narrating the internal debates taking place in the PCI and PCF in 1968-9, which has henceforth not been studied systematically and in a comparative perspective. Secondly, it proposes a working concept of 'proletarian internationalism' which explores such diverse elements as communist identity and ideology, and the interplay between dependency on the Soviet Union and the determinants of domestic strategy. Thirdly, it points at the close interconnections between the developments of these parties and the development of the Cold War and the shift to détente from the 1960s onwards. Unlike the literature on west european communism in the 1940s and 1950s, the analyses covering the 1960s and 1970s have either disregarded the Cold War as an explanatory factor, focusing instead on the domestic developments of these parties, or have understood the shift to détente as largely positive to the domestic and international position of these parties. This thesis, by contrast, points at the negative implications of east-west détente to west european communism: as after 1968, the concern of both the Soviet Union and the United States was to ease tension on the european continent by engaging in disarmament talks and by resolving the 'German problem', radical regime shifts were not welcomed. While détente, understood as the multiplication of diplomatic, economic and cultural contacts on the european continent across the Iron Curtain, and as a Soviet strategy for dealing with western europe, had positive effects on the west european communist parties in a first instance during the 1960s, the negative implications of it became clear from the invasion of Czechoslovakia.
This understanding led the west european communist parties to transform their internationalism and to re-set it on specific points. After 1968, the PCI chose to deal with this, paradoxically, by highlighting its support for east-west détente as a dynamic development which created the conditions in which socialism in the west could come about, and by seeking alliances for its (domestic and international) strategy outside the Soviet-led communist world, without however abandoning its strategic alliance with the latter. The PCF in the 1970s attempted at dealing with the negative implications of détente by focusing on its domestic strategy for government, hereby largely ignoring the international context in which it operated. Neither party succeeded in escaping the basic contradiction of their continued alliance with the Soviet Union, which remained, at its core, the impasse of revolution in the west in a bipolar world.
