High Risks

A heretic's trip to China

For years, Italian Communist Party Chief Enrico Berlinguer has flaunted his independence from Moscow by adopting heresy upon Marxist heresy. He has embraced democratic pluralism, supported NATO and even condemned the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. This week, with boldness bordering on recklessness, Berlinguer set off on a formal eight-day visit to China, the Soviet Union's main ideological adversary. Berlinguer's colleagues insisted that his trip was merely an attempt to resume normal relations with the Chinese party, which were cut off in 1962. Nonetheless, the visit was not only a slap at the Kremlin but also a vivid demonstration of the deep schism that has been widening down the middle of the movement once called Eurocommunism.

Even as Berlinguer was exchanging toasts and handshakes in Peking, French Communist Party Chief Georges Marchais was organizing a conference of European Communist parties on "peace and disarmament," to be held in Paris at the end of the month. The conference, co-sponsored by the Polish Communist Party, was designed to rally support for Moscow's denunciation of Moscow's denunciation of proposed new NATO missiles in Western Europe. But Berlinguer joined the two other dissident Communist parties, those of Yugoslavia and Spain, in announcing that they would not attend.

Bitterness between the French and Italian Communists has flared openly at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, where Marchais has accused Italy's Communist deputies of lining up with "reactionaries" against him. That thrust was aimed at Berlinguer's determined recent campaign to seek ties with the Socialist and other moderate parties of Europe. Berlinguer has held summit-like meetings with French Socialist Leader Franc,ois Mitterrand and with Willy Brandt, chairman of the West German Social Democratic Party. Says Italian Communist Policymaker Sergio Segre, a deputy at Strasbourg: "We sometimes find ourselves voting on the same side as the Christian Democrats of West Germany or even the Conservatives of Britain."

Berlinguer has accepted high political risks at home to gain long-range influence among moderates on the Continent. Ever since the Communists' losses in last year's election, "historic compromise" of a governing alliance with established democratic parties has become elusive. For one thing, the Communists were shunted into outright opposition by the new center-left coalition government of Christian Democrats, Socialists and Republicans formed two weeks ago by Premier Francesco Cossiga. For another, the Communist Party's own vaunted internal discipline has suffered; last month, for the first time, more than 30 left-wing Communist deputies rebelled against their party whips on a foreign policy vote in Parliament. By going to China, which Italy's militant left regards as a citadel of conservatism and an ally of the imperialist U.S., Berlinguer risked further alienation of his left wing. Most of all, his independent stance could lead to "a formal disowning of the Italian Communist Party by the Soviets," as Columnist Vittorio Gorresio wrote in Turin's influential daily La Stampa. Combined with Berlinguer's other heresies, such an outright break could lead to a schism within the Italian Communist party--and a strong challenge to his leadership of it.

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