Communist Party of Italy - Name

Name

The Comintern, at that time, was structured as a single world party according to Vladimir Lenin's vision. Therefore, its official name was the Communist Party of Italy, Section of the Communist International. This official name remained until 1943 when Communist International was dropped, and the party simply became the Italian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano, or PCI).

This change was not surprising as PCI started being used as the party's acronym around 1924–1925. This name change also reflected a change in the Comintern's role: it increasingly became a federation of national Communist parties. This trend accelerated after Lenin’s death. The Italian Communist party's new name emphasized the party's shifting from an international focus to an Italian one. At the time, it was a hotly contested issue for the two major factions of the party. On one side, the Leninist preferred the single world party as it was internationalist and strongly centralized; on the other side, the Italians wanted a party more tailored to their nation's peculiarities and wanted more autonomy.