The Last Emperor

Today marks the 35th anniversary of the death of Enrico Berlinguer, General Secretary of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) from 1972 to 1984, a man who took over the TIME cover without the help of anyone, and, in fact, the leader of the largest communist party in Western Europe — just keep in mind he always earned his votes in free elections. With respect to his political heirs, he was a giant. Among his countless merits, in 1976, in a historic speech before 5,000 Communist delegates at the 25th CPSU Congress in Moscow, Berlinguer passionately vindicated the autonomy and dignity of the Italian Communist Party as a “pluralistic” outpost towards Eurocommunism, an alternative model of socialism distinct from both the Soviet Bloc and the capitalism practiced by Western countries. In the early ’80s, the Italian Communist Party’s split with the Soviet Communist Party became definitive and irrevocable. Over a million people — including world’s conductors such as the eighth and last leader of the Soviet Union Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev and the third Premier of the People’s Republic of China 赵紫阳 (Zhào Zǐyáng) — attended Berlinguer’s funeral in Rome on June 13, 1984 making it one of the biggest funerals in Italy’s history.