ITALIAN COMMUNIST PERCEPTIONS OF SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY

The study addressed two problems relating to the Italian Communist Party's (PCI) perceptions of Soviet foreign policy. It examined them in the context of the party's domestic political strategy and its ongoing process of deradicalization (Part I). The first problem was to analyze (Part II) the PCI's evolving (1979-82) global critique of Soviet foreign policy as Soviet acts or threats of force negatively affected the international context for PCI strategy. The second problem was to examine (Part III) the relationship between the foreign affairs elite's sense of nearness to power and the persistence of its critique of Soviet foreign policy. The research methodology for the first problem consisted of detailed examination of key documents and articles indicated by PCI sources as especially significant; thorough search of the PCI press for 1979-82; and a review of analyses done by Italian, American, German, British, and French scholars. Interviews with thirty PCI officials in early 1985 provided the research material for the second problem with the focus on ten individuals selected for current full time foreign affairs responsibility. The interview schedule covered attitudes toward domestic strategy, priorities in Western Europe, and perceptions of Soviet policy. The documentary research showed the official PCI critique of Soviet foreign policy becoming global, rather than episodic, in 1980-81. The PCI blamed for Soviets for taking advantage of the US "Vietnam syndrome" after 1975 and contributing to the deterioration of detente. Despite their expectation in 1985 of remaining in an opposition role domestically, the interview sample continued to support the apportionment of responsibility to the USSR for the deterioration of detente expressed in the global critique and to favor an orientation toward the European left rather than Moscow. The foreign affairs elite's commitment to the party's critique was further confirmed by its disinclination to open up the party's decision-making process too broadly, evidently aware that the critique of Soviet foreign policy had been imposed from above by forceful party leadership. The majority of its members had become, as foreign affairs elites frequently do, guardians of acquired perceptions but uncertain as to the solidity of the constituency behind them.