6 - Giorgio Amendola and a National Road to Socialism and the End of History

Summary

This chapter completes the story of Giorgio Amendola (and his wife Germaine) and his communist brothers: the independent Antonio (who died young in 1953) and the orthodox Pietro. After an account of Giorgio as a fighting partisan, or an organiser of fighting partisans, we move on to his history in the renamed Italian Communist Party after 1945. We examine his role in the establishment of the Italian Republic in 1946–7 and the concentration Togliatti then expected from him on the South. The PCI’s slow detachment from Stalinism is also reviewed. Until his death, Giorgio could never bring himself to prefer American civilisation to Soviet. Nonetheless, he actively favoured the PCI policy of a national ‘Italian road to socialism’. The automatic succession of Luigi Longo to party leadership in 1964 dashed Giorgio’s hopes in that regard. By the 1970s, he had become a (massive) party elder, with time to write his deeply humane memoirs. He died on 5 June 1980, Germaine following him to the grave within hours; she had become a well-regarded painter and the two were always thought to be engaged in their deeply romantic love story. They were given public and family burial in the Campo Verano.