Editing Enrico Berlinguer (section)

=== Eurocommunism ===
In a 1975 speech for [[Dolores Ibárruri]], Berlinguer stated: "It is necessary that with audacity and intelligence we know how to free ourselves from any scholastic application of our doctrine understood as dogma, or from orientations that are no longer adequate to current experience and historical conditions, to walk towards new ways of advancing towards socialism."<ref name="La Repubblica 2019"/> That same year also saw the joint statement of Berlinguer and [[Santiago Carrillo]] of the [[Spanish Communist Party]], which said: "The Italian and Spanish Communists solemnly declare that — in their conception of a democratic advance towards socialism in peace and freedom — what is expressed is not a tactical attitude but a strategic conviction."<ref name="Bedeschi 2022"/> Berlinguer reiterated this feeling in a 1976 meeting in Moscow, where he said: "We are fighting for a socialist society which is the highest point in the development of all democratic achievements and guarantees respect for all individual and collective freedoms, religious freedoms and freedom of culture, art and science. We think that in Italy we can and must ... build a socialist society with the contribution of political forces, organisations, different parties, and that the working class can and must affirm its historical function in a pluralistic and democratic system."<ref name="Bedeschi 2022"/>

In 1977, at a meeting in [[Madrid]] between Berlinguer, Carrillo, and [[Georges Marchais]] of the [[French Communist Party]], the fundamental lines of [[Eurocommunism]] were laid out. A few months later, Berlinguer was again in Moscow, where he gave another speech that was poorly received by his hosts and published by ''[[Pravda]]'', the PCSU's [[official newspaper]], in a censored version.<ref name="Expoitalyonline 2015"/> About [[democracy]], Berlinguer said: "The experience gained has led us to the conclusion that democracy today is not only the ground on which the class adversary is forced to retreat, but it is also the historically universal value on which to found an original socialist society."<ref name="La Repubblica 2019"/> The years after Communists first joined the [[European Parliament]] in 1969 saw a process towards [[pro-Europeanism]] that culminated, for the [[1976 Italian general election]], in the candidacy within the PCI's electoral list of [[Altiero Spinelli]], the Italian father of [[European federalism]] and one of the [[founding fathers of the European Union]]. In the words of historian Antonio Varsori, the PCI interpreted the pro-European option as "an opportunity to overcome the division of the old continent and for the birth of a socialist, neutralist, and tendentially pro-Third World Europe".<ref>{{cite thesis|last=Di Donato|first=Michele|date=2013|url=https://arcadia.sba.uniroma3.it/bitstream/2307/4227/1/Pci%20e%20socialdemocrazie%20europee%20da%20Longo%20a%20Berlinguer.pdf|title=Pci e socialdemocrazie europee da Longo a Berlinguer|degree=PhD|language=it|location=Rome|publisher=Roma Tre University|page=14|access-date=17 July 2023}}</ref>