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- Title
The Portuguese communist party and the cold war: "sectarism", "rightward shift", "towards victory" (1949-1965).
- Authors
MADEIRA, João Manuel Martins
- Abstract
Between 1949, when Álvaro Cunhal was imprisoned, and 1965, in the 6thCongress of the Portuguese Communist Party, when the formal prevalence of his thesis materialised, the party lived hard years and drifts of political lines, characterised by intense debate as well as internal crises. The fierce supporter of the early 1950s, Álvaro Cunhal - after the strong influence of the 20th Congress of the Soviet Union Communist Party as well as of old, very firm political concepts - became a rightward shift, who slowly had substituted the doctrinal foundations he, himself had conceived: of an independent working class both as the main basis of a policy of alliances and the way to the national rebellion to overthrow the regime. After his audacious escape from prison at the beginning of the year 1960, Álvaro Cunhal would proceed to rectify that "deviation": he would recover the "national rebellion line", as it is synthesized into principles and theories in "Rumo à Vitória"(Towards Victory), a fundamental document which is the basis of the program approved in the Congress in 1965.If it is a fact that the international alliance of the Portuguese Communist Party and the Soviet system - one of subordination in an international climate of 'Cold War', with impetus, decreases and recoveries - had a deep impact upon the party's orientation, there simultaneously existed a national principle - under major or minor tension, but always present -, both radical and based upon the conviction of development, which had been absorbed in a republican cultural tradition. However, the Portuguese Communist Party, irrespective of its drifts, conjunctions and cultural heritage, would never lose sight of the idea that its policies to overthrow the regime were subordinated to the dispute for the hegemony of positions, in order not to be excluded from any solution after toppling the regime. During all those years, the Portuguese Communist Party was the result of all these tense forces, on the one hand, which, on the other hand, would frequently collide with the pulse of the more radical party political and social sectors. In this chain of very complex and contradictory processes, and after conquering its intolerant, hard factions, as well as their bases, the Portuguese Communist Party has always agreed to gather opposing tendencies rather than exclude them or use political harassment. But, actually, the Portuguese Communist Party has never significantly abandoned its Stalinist tradition which was its framework since the party was restructured in 1940-41 and which allowed it - supported by a group of procedures of a centralised, hierarchised and compartmentalised character and bound to a thorough and strict culture of clandestine existence - to resist, the most appropriately they could, but resist, the continuous and constant police assaults.
- Subjects
PARTIDO Comunista Portugues (Political party : Portugal); DEMOCRATIC centralism; DEMOCRATIZATION
- Publication
E-Journal of Portuguese History, 2019, Vol 17, Issue 2, p391
- ISSN
1645-6432
- Publication type
Abstract