From Professional Revolutionaries To Party Functionaries

Abstract

This article focuses on the new generation of full-time party functionaries of the Italian Communist party (PCI) in the 1970s. It is based mostly on the results of a large survey (16,000 questionnaires given out to party delegates at the latest provincial congresses). Main findings reflect the major turnover in the party apparatus and peripheral leadership which, together with increased membership and electoral consensus, characterized the PCI in the early 1970s. A new type of party cadre has come forth, with quite a different social, cultural, and political background compared to that seen in preceding generations. Nevertheless, the party organization still reproduces traditional attitudes and behavior patterns. Thus tension between continuity and change seems to characterize the youngest generation of party cadres—those in search of identities somewhere between professional revolutionaries and party bureaucrats.