Giorgio Amendola

Who was Giorgio Amendola?

Giorgio Amendola was an Italian writer and politician.

Born in Rome in 1907, he was the son of Lithuanian intellectual Eva Kuhn and Giovanni Amendola, a liberal anti-fascist who died in 1926 in Cannes after having been attacked by killers hired by Benito Mussolini. As a result, Amendola secretly joined the Italian Communist Party in 1929 and, after graduating in law, started to propagandize opposition to the Mussolini regime.

Arrested and brought in exile in France, and successively banished to Santo Stefano Island in the Pontine archipelago, he was freed in 1943 by the resistance troops, which he then joined.

After World War II, Amendola served as deputy for the Italian Communist Party from 1948 until his death in 1980. He became known as one of the leaders of the party's right wing, which espoused gradual removal of the ideas of Soviet Communism and Leninism and supported alliances with the more moderate parties, especially the Italian Socialist Party, a concept later called Eurocommunism. One of his main allies was a member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies called Giorgio Napolitano, who was also to become the 11th President of Italy.