In July 1976 the PSI was in crisis:the party was in a state of fibrillation, the base was disheartened, the cadres lost, the leaders disputed and, in the last elections, it had dropped to 9%, well 25 percentage points behind the PCI. In this situation there was fear for the very survival of the party. Deputy Secretary Giovanni Mosca had resigned before the final result and Secretary De Martino, in his statement, seemed resigned, so much so that he was unable to hide his profound disappointment. Nenni, De Martino and Mancini were accused of this situation and the negative electoral results, as had already happened in 1968 when reunification with the PSDI was made difficult. In this situation where the base was disoriented and the leaders accused each other, the Central Committee was summoned.
In July 1976 the secretary De Martino and the group of historical leaders, after a meeting of the Central Committee in Rome at the Midas hotel, resigned and were replaced by their lieutenants who almost committed a "patricide". The lieutenants were Claudio Signorile, Antonio Landolfi, Bettino Craxi and Enrico Manca, who were the political sons of Lombardi, Mancini, Nenni and De martino respectively. The major currents of that period ("Lombardians", "Mancinians" and "Demartinians") could not find an agreement for the new secretary and therefore chose the leader of the minor group that is Craxi, who led a current that stood around 10 %.
Bettino Craxi was born in Milan on February 24, 1924, his father was of Sicilian origin; he served in university organizations such as the Italian goliardic union in the early 1950s. From the very beginning he sided with autonomist positions with respect to the PCI; this earned him numerous criticisms from the then deputy secretary of the PSI De Martino, as he tried to separate the socialist university students from the communist ones. A fact that marked Craxi's youth was the revolt in Budapest in 1956, so much so that he never held positions of a pro-Communist type. In the seventies in Milan Craxi tried to demonstrate that being anti-communist did not necessarily mean being subordinate to the DC as it had already happened in the Lombard capital, when through tenacious and underground work he had managed to overturn the center-left agreement, and give life to a red junta, even if the choice was not forced by the numbers. This fact worked in favor of Craxi's image since, at least sentimentally, the base was in favor of the alternative to the center-left.
Bettino Craxi became party secretary at the age of forty-two in 1976; when the Central Committee met at the Midas Hotel, no one thought of him as secretary, the future undisputed leader of the PSI, also because he was not well known. You did not see the qualities of a great politician in him, his was a dry rhetoric devoid of passion, typical of a bureaucrat who had climbed the internal steps of the party a little at a time, reaching the deputy secretary in 1969. The few skills he was recognized for efficiency and pragmatism. He was underestimated, so much so that it was thought of an operation orchestrated behind the scenes by Mancini, ready to oust De Martino, to avenge the 1972 defeat, with the aim of guiding the young lieutenants brought to the top. The newspapers would have preferred Antonio Giolitti instead of him; The Republic called Craxi "The German of the PSI", the Manifesto "Kissinger's American friend", was considered by Fortinbras the "Nihil, Mr. Nulla". The socialist leader Riccardo Lombardi gave a lapidary definition:"I did not vote for it - stated Lombardi - because Craxi represents a past that I do not like. But I would not be surprised at a change in him because man is intelligent. History offers several examples of people who immediately changed their policy after an investiture. Do you remember Pope Urban VIII? When he was a cardinal he protected Galileo, then as soon as the dressing took place he distanced himself. Here I believe that Craxi has this opportunity:to distance himself from a certain politics of alliances and contents that has marked his past ». In all these comments there was too much color and some naivety towards the new secretary who had to face a complex situation. Hardly anyone understood the turning point, not even important journalists like Scalfari and Pansa.
Craxi was elected by a heterogeneous and quarrelsome majority, which did not seem suitable to lead the party in a moment of crisis, dictating a new line for the renewal of the PSI. This majority, however, was made up of a leadership group that had not lived through the years of the alliance with the PCI, but the years of the center-left and therefore had developed a more secular and concrete vision of the political struggle.
The main question Craxi had to face was political strategy. The return to the center-left was impossible for a secretary who presented himself as the man of renewal. The alternative, namely the alliance with the PCI was not possible, as Berlinguer was not available on this line, and at this stage he was engaged in the strategy of the historic compromise with the DC led by President Moro, who remained the most influential leader of Italian politics in that period. The strategy of historical compromise and national solidarity left little room for the PSI, which found itself squeezed between two "giants" and therefore risked being reduced to the rank of minor vassal.
These were the first difficulties that the new PSI secretary had to face, in a context further complicated by external factors such as the years of lead, which reached their peak at that time, and the crisis of the entire Italian society.
Bibliography:
P. Mattera, History of the PSI (1892-1994), Carocci, Rome, 2010
(edited by) G. Sabbatucci, History of Italian socialism, vol. 6, Il Poligono, Rome, 1981
(edited by) S. Colarizi, M. Gervasoni, The eye of the needle, Laterza. Rome- Bari, 2005
M.Spini, Craxi, Mondadori, Milan, 2006