Memoria e oblio del passato comunista, dal Pci al Pd.

This essay analyses the relationship that the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in the last years of its existence and its heirs maintained in respect to their communist past. The author identifies two major phases in this dynamics: the first, which stretches from the eve of the Bolognina turning point to the creation of the Democrats of the Left (1988-1998), is marked by an attempt to confront with this past and a certain recurrence, albeit strategic, of it; the second (from 1998 onwards) is distinguished by a progressive removal that in many ways turns into outright amnesia with regard to this past. He concludes by linking this process to the political and cultural crisis that the left has experienced, not only in Italy, since the end of the 20th century. [Publisher's text]