Armando Cossutta

Armando Cossutta (2 September 1926 – 14 December 2015) was an Italian communist politician. After World War II, Cossutta became one of the leading members of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), representing the most pro-Soviet Union tendency; his belief in that country as the leading Communist state led him to criticize Enrico Berlinguer. Later in life, although he did not regret the choice he made, Cossutta considered that he was mistaken in opposing Berlinguer.

Opposed to Achille Occhetto's 1991 proposal to dissolve the PCI, Cossutta founded, together with Sergio Garavini, Nichi Vendola, and others, the Communist Refoundation Party (PRC), of which he became the president. When Fausto Bertinotti, the PRC leader, voted against a motion of confidence to the 1996 government of Romano Prodi, Cossutta opposed his stance, and left the PRC along with Oliviero Diliberto and others to found the Party of Italian Communists (PdCI). Afterwards, Cossutta was president of the PdCI and a member of the Italian Parliament. He also served as a member of the European Parliament during the Fifth European Parliament term (1999–2004).

Cossutta was targeted for decades by political opponents, including allegations that he personally received Soviet money and of being a KGB spy, both of which had been viewed with scepticism or were dismissed in two parliamentary commissions (one by the centre-right coalition in 2002, the other by the centre-left coalition in 2006) about the Mitrokhin Archive, one of the main sources of the allegations, which was also viewed with scepticism; a Supreme Court of Cassation ruling held that it was defamatory to refer to him as a Soviet spy, and awarded him damages. Cossutta never renounced communism. He never hid or regretted his role, and claimed its legitimacy in a bipolar world, in which all involved parties, from the United States to the Soviet Union, had their international lenders.