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Journal Articles Diplomatic History Year : 2017

Eurocommunism and the Contradictions of Superpower Détente*

Abstract

Eurocommunism and the Contradictions of Superpower De ´tente* "The dangers of de ´tente is that it makes Communism respectable and therefore adds to the drawing power of the Communist groups," Richard Nixon observed less than two months before his resignation. 1 Though he did not mention them specifically, the president was referring to the communist parties of Italy and France-later dubbed Eurocommunist-which in the 1970s came close to participating in governing coalitions in Rome and Paris. From the Truman presidency onwards, Washington had implemented the policy of containment to avert such an outcome. The NSC's very first report dealt with Italy's fragile political situation; likewise, some of the CIA's first missions focused on preventing the Communist Party of Italy (PCI) from coming to power in the 1948 general election. 2 In the immediate postwar years, France too generated concerns because of its strong communist party (PCF) and communist-dominated labor union the Confe ´de ´ration Ge ´ne ´rale du Travail (CGT). 3 Overall, containment had been successful in keeping the communists out of governing positions in both countries. Yet, as de ´tente became the new Cold War paradigm, the specter of communism haunted Western Europe again. Recent historiography has vastly improved our understanding of de ´tente. Stimulating scholarship has reassessed the origins, nature, and demise of de ´tente in a quantitative, qualitative, and truly transnational effort to write an international history of that critical episode of the Cold War. Nonetheless, with notable exceptions, only limited attention has been paid to Eurocommunism, a phenomenon that, this paper argues, emerged *I would like to thank Jussi Hanhima ¨ki, Thomas A. Schwartz, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions on earlier drafts of this article.

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hal-03811479 , version 1 (15-11-2022)

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Frédéric Heurtebize. Eurocommunism and the Contradictions of Superpower Détente*. Diplomatic History, 2017, 41 (4), pp.747 - 771. ⟨10.1093/dh/dhx036⟩. ⟨hal-03811479⟩
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