Pietro Ingrao

Pietro Ingrao (30 March 1915 – 27 September 2015) was an Italian politician and journalist who participated in the Italian resistance movement. For many years, he was a senior figure in the Italian Communist Party (PCI).

Biography
Ingrao was born at Lenola, Lazio, in the province of Latina. As a student, he was a member of GUF (Gruppo Universitario Fascista) and won a "Littoriale" of culture and art. Ingrao joined the PCI in 1940 and took part in the anti-fascist resistance during World War II. After the war, he led the Marxist–Leninist tendency in the party, representing its left wing. This led him to frequent political differences with Giorgio Amendola, leader of the social democratic tendency.

Ingrao was a member of the Italian Parliament continuously from 1950 to 1992. In 1947–1957, he was editor-in-chief of the party newspaper L'Unità. He was the first Communist to become president of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, a position he held from 1976 to 1979. After PCI's then-secretary Achille Occhetto, in what was called the Svolta della Bolognina, decided to change the party's name, Ingrao become his main internal opponent. In the PCI's 20th Congress of 1991, he joined the reformist majority in its successor, the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS), but soon left the group. After the 2004 European Parliament election in Italy, he abandoned the PDS and adhered as an independent to the more hardline successor to the old PCI, the Communist Refoundation Party.

Ingrao wrote a number of poems and political essays. His most important work is Appuntamenti di fine secolo ("Rendez-Vous at the End of the Century"), which was published in 1995 in collaboration with Rossana Rossanda. He was an atheist. He married Laura Lombardo Radice, who died in 2003. Ingrao died on 27 September 2015, at the age of 100.