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Italy's center-left domestic politics did not prevent ties with other countries, especially its NATO allies. Above, United States President Richard Nixon welcomes Giulio Andreotti, President of the Council of Ministers of the Italian Republic, in April 1973. Photo: National Archives.
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The next decades of politics in Italy were characterized by frequent changes in premiers and administrations, factional struggles between the country's political parties, and the prominence of the Christian Democrat party. After Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's acknowledgement, in 1956, of the brutal atrocities of Joseph Stalin's regime, the Communist Party began to lose ground in Italy. In 1958, Amintore Fanfani was elected to head a coalition of Christian Democrats and centrist Socialists, leaving the Communists relatively marginalized in the years to come.
Though Italy's rise to become a strong manufacturing nation brought a measure of prosperity to the nation during the 1950s, the 1960s and 1970s witnessed an era of social upheaval in the country. During this period, a series of short-lived coalition governments struggled to deal with unemployment, inflation, and rising national debt. Though Italy's political parties were becoming polarized, the mid-1960s saw a coalition form under the Christian Democrat Aldo Moro in order to address the nation's economic downturn. However, large student demonstrations and labor strikes during the "hot autumn" of 1969 revealed the growing sense of disharmony at the base of Italian society. Public support for left-leaning ideologies rose during the early 1970s as a spate of political violence joined Italy's continuing economic woes. This violence culminated in 1978 with the kidnapping and murder of Moro, the former prime minister, by the left-wing extremist group the Red Brigades.
The fractures in Italy's voting public eventually revealed a weakness in the Christian Democrats' political dominance. In 1981, the Republican Giovanni Spadolini became Italy's first premier since the war who was not a Christian Democrat. The Socialist Bettino Craxi soon followed him in 1983. At almost three consecutive years, Craxi's government lasted longer than that of any post-war leader up to that time. In 1991, as European communism was collapsing, the Italian Communist party renamed itself the Party of the Democratic Left in an effort to soften its perception in the public eye. In a similar move, the Socialists became the Party of Socialist Unity. But in the April 1992 elections, all of the major parties received lower returns as voters showed their disapproval both for the government's policies as well as the widespread corruption that was being revealed within the system.
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