Reinventing the Left: Interview with Massimo D’Alema

Reinventing the Left: Interview with Massimo D’Alema

Massimo D’Alema became the secretary of Italy’s Democratic Party of the Left (PDS) in 1994, when he replaced Achille Occhetto, the party leader who, five years earlier, began the transformation that led to the dissolution of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and the establishment in 1991 of this new political organization. In 1994 the PDS ran in national elections at the head of a coalition of “progressives,” but was defeated by an alliance led by the television tycoon Silvio Berlusconi. Berlusconi’s government fell in 1995. In the subsequent elections, D’Alema fashioned a new center-left alliance known as the “Olive Tree,” including the Catholic People’s Party (born from the dissolution of the Christian Democrats), ...