Alessandro Natta | |
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General Secretary of the Italian Communist Party | |
In office 24 June 1984 – 10 June 1988 | |
Preceded by | Enrico Berlinguer |
Succeeded by | Achille Occhetto |
President of the Italian Communist Party | |
In office 22 March 1989 – 11 March 1990 | |
Preceded by | Luigi Longo |
Succeeded by | Aldo Tortorella |
Member of the European Parliament | |
In office 24 July 1984 – 24 July 1989 | |
Constituency | North-East Italy |
Member of the Chamber of Deputies | |
In office 8 May 1948 – 22 April 1992 | |
Constituency | Genoa |
Personal details | |
Born | 7 January 1918 Oneglia, Italy |
Died | 23 May 2001 Imperia, Italy | (aged 83)
Political party | Italian Communist Party |
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Alessandro Natta (7 January 1918 – 23 May 2001) was an Italian politician and secretary of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) from 1984 to 1988.[1] An illuminist, Jacobin, and communist, as he used to describe himself, Natta represented the political and cultural prototype of a PCI militant and party member for over fifty years of the Italian democratic-republican history.[1] After joining the PCI in 1945, he was deputy from 1948 to 1992, a member of the PCI's central committee starting in 1956, was part of the direction from 1963 and of the secretariat, first from 1962 to 1970 and then from 1979 to 1983, and leader of the PCI parliamentary group from 1972 to 1979; he was also the director of Rinascita from 1970 to 1972.[2] After 1991, he did not join the PCI's successor parties.[2]
Described as a professor, intellectual, and grey, Natta was endowed with oratorical ability and cultural preparation. He was known for his moral rigour, loyalty to institutions, and cultural and political knowledge; he was more a reader of the classics and Benedetto Croce than Mikhail Suslov. His leadership of the PCI was marked by his oratorical ability and a partisan pride that did not fall into factionalism. As with the other PCI leaders, his private life was separated from his public life, with no compromising photos, glitz, worldliness, and in Gian Carlo Pajetta's words, never "words like horns and lover".[1]