Akademik

The Manifesto

   Initially a weekly from its beginnings in June 1969, Il Manifesto became a daily newspaper in 1971 and continues to maintain a substantial readership among students and politically active workers even today. The main goal of its renegade founders, Luigi Pintor, Aldo Natoli, and Rossella Rossanda—all deputies of the Partito Comunista Italiano/Italian Communist Party (PCI)—was to press for a definitive break between Italian communism and the Soviet Union. After the fifth issue of the paper argued that the PCI’s response to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia had been insufficiently critical, the group was accused of factionalism by the central committee of the PCI and expelled. In the 1970s Il Manifesto was the newspaper of choice for the many individuals and groups who felt that the PCI had lost its revolutionary ideals and had become integrated into the political system.

   See also Lotta Continua; Press.