The late Italian communist Pietro Ingrao was damned with faint praise, as the usual political-class tributes to a “Father of the Republic” streamed in after his September death. President Sergio Mattarella, himself of Christian-Democratic background, commented that Ingrao’s “passion was a piece of national heritage, his inner freedom an example to the younger generation.”

Though no one could doubt Ingrao’s importance as a leading light of postwar Italian democracy, including his service as first Italian Communist Party (PCI) president of the Chamber of Deputies from 1976–79, his true legacy lies elsewhere.

Born in 1915 before Italy even entered World War I, Ingrao’s militant career traversed a vast arc of Italian communist history, from the dissident student milieu of the late 1930s through the anti-Nazi Resistance, the foundation of the postwar republic, the 1970s “years of lead,” and the ultimate demise of the PCI in 1991.