- Luigi Longo
Luigi Longo (
March 15 1900 —October 16 1980 ), also known as Gallo, was an Italian communist politician and secretary of theItalian Communist Party from 1964 to 1972.Early life
Luigi Longo was born in Fubine Monferrato (
province of Alessandria ,Piedmont ).As a student at the
Politecnico di Torino , he became active in the youth wing of theItalian Socialist Party (PSI), and engaged in politicalpropaganda from a Marxist perspective. He was a regular visitor to the offices of "Ordine Nuovo ", the newspaper founded byAntonio Gramsci , and became acquainted with Gramsci andPalmiro Togliatti . In 1921, at theLivorno Congress of the PSI, he was one of the instigators of the split in the party, when supporters ofVladimir Lenin 'sBolshevik line left to form the Italian Communist Party (PCI). He became a leading figure in the new PCI along with Togliatti, Gramsci and others.Longo was a fervent anti-fascist, and, when
Benito Mussolini established his Fascist regime in Italy in 1922, he emigrated toFrance where he became one of the principal leaders of the PCI. In the same year he was a member of a delegation to theComintern Congress inMoscow , where he met Lenin. He would return to Moscow several times in the following years, and was to meetJoseph Stalin and other members of theSoviet Union leadership. In 1933 he became a member of the Comintern's political commission. In 1934 he signed a joint action agreement between the PCI and the PSI.panish Civil War and Resistance
Longo took part in the
Spanish Civil War as an inspector of the Republican troops in theInternational Brigades under the leadership ofRandolfo Pacciardi , and took thenom de guerre "Gallo". After the defeat of theSecond Spanish Republic byFrancisco Franco , he returned to France.After the outbreak of
World War II and the Nazi German invasion of France, theVichy France collaborationist government was established underPhilippe Pétain . Longo was arrested and detained in aninternment camp atVernet from 1939 to 1941. There he made the acquaintance ofLeo Valiani , among others. In 1941 he was handed over to the Italian fascist authorities and interned atVentotene . After the overthrow of Mussolini onJuly 25 1943 , Longo was released. After Mussolini regained control of Northern Italy (which he led as theItalian Social Republic ), Longo took command of the Garibaldi Brigades, the communist forces in the Italian partisan resistance. He later became deputy commander of the "Gruppo volontari per la liberta"' ("Group of Volunteers for Freedom"), and a close collaborator ofFerruccio Parri ; in April 1945 Longo was one of the leading figures of the uprising in northern Italy.Post-war politics
After the war he was a member of the National Congress and in 1946 was elected to the
Constituent Assembly . He was subsequently elected, and repeatedly re-elected, to theItalian Chamber of Deputies on the PCI list and was a member of the party leadership. In 1964, after the death of Palmiro Togliatti, he became secretary of the PCI, declaring that he was "a secretary, not a boss". In this role, he continued Togliatti's line, known as the "Italian road toSocialism ", playing down the alliance between the Italian Communist Party and the Soviet Union. He reacted without hostility to the new left movements that sprung up in 1968 and, among the leaders of the PCI, was one of those most disposed to engage with the new activists, although he did not condone their excesses.Longo was the first to realise the capabilities of
Enrico Berlinguer and when in 1972, due to ill health, he resigned the position of party secretary, he supported the choice of Berlinguer as his successor. From that year until his death, he was honorary president of the PCI. In that capacity, he expressed his opposition to the "national solidarity" line the PCI was later to espouse.In 1947 he published a book entitled "A people in the Maquis".
Luigi Longo died in Rome in 1980.
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