Enrico Berlinguer

Enrico Berlinguer (15 May 1922 – 11 June 1984) was an Italian politician.

Considered the most popular leader of the Italian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano or PCI), which he led as the national secretary from 1972 until his death during a tense period in Italy's history, marked by the Years of Lead and social conflicts such as the Hot Autumn of 1969–1970. He distanced the party from the influence of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and pursued a moderate line, repositioning the party within Italian politics and advocating accommodation and national unity. This strategy came to be termed Eurocommunism and he was seen as its main spokesperson. It would come to be adopted by Western Europe's other significant communist parties, in Spain, Portugal and later France, its significance as a political force cemented by a 1977 meeting in Madrid between Berlinguer, Georges Marchais and Santiago Carrillo. Berlinguer himself described his "alternative" model of socialism, distinct from both the Soviet bloc and the capitalism practiced by Western countries during the Cold War, as the terza via or "third way", although his usage of the term has no relation to the more centrist Third Way practiced by subsequent Prime Ministers Romano Prodi and Matteo Renzi.