Luigi Longo

Luigi Longo (born March 15, 1900, Fubine Monferrato, Piedmont, Italy—died October 16, 1980, Rome) was an Italian communist leader, who served as general secretary (1964–72) of the Italian Communist Party (PCI).

A founding member of the PCI, Longo struggled against Italian fascism until Benito Mussolini’s ban on political parties forced him into exile. He gained valuable organizing experience during the Spanish Civil War but was arrested in France in 1939 and sent back to Italy, where he was imprisoned. Released in 1943, he became deputy commander of the Italian partisan military corps, winning the U.S. Bronze Star for his contribution to the Allied war effort. After the war, he was made deputy secretary of the PCI.

Longo’s loyalty to the Soviet Union was well known, and many were surprised when in 1964 he was chosen to succeed Palmiro Togliatti as general secretary of the strongest and most independent of the European communist parties. But he showed a firm commitment to the "Italian road to socialism" and took sole responsibility for his party’s denunciation of the 1968 Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia. After his retirement in 1972, he became party president and continued to support the diversity of roads to socialism. He expressed misgivings, however, concerning the policy of “historic compromise” with noncommunist political parties that was pursued by his successor, Enrico Berlinguer.