Leadership change in the P.C.I. cannot be explained by Comintern influence alone.

Evidence

It was at about this time that the Comintern began to make serious probings with respect to the possibility of changing the P.C.I. leadership—although as early as the autumn of 1921 overtures had been made to Gramsol to join the party executive in order to act as a counter-balancing influence vis-a-vis Bordiga. Now Rakosi (Rakosi, Kuusinen and Humbert-Droz were the three Secretaries to the Executive Committee of the Communist International in this period) offered Gramsci the leadership directly, with what Gramsci described sarcastically as “the diplomatic delicacy which was characteristic of him”; Gramsci’s response was to reject in embarrassment the notion that the problems of the P.C.I. could be solved by such manipulative means. Indeed, it cannot be stressed too strongly that it is quite impossible to understand the transition from the Bordiga leadership of 1921-3 to the Gramsci leadership of 1924-6 simply by reference to Comintern influence. It is necessary also to consider the actual history of the party’s political experience in Italy, and the context within which it had to operate. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 130

Categorization

• XREF: This methodological warning—party/cultural change traced through national experience and context, not just international institutional pressure—parallels how scholars argue Islamophobia must be read through national political histories rather than only global discourses.