Abstract

Our editorial board reconstructs the events that brought to the beginning of the first Centre-Left Government, in the December 1963. The participation to the discussion of protagonists of that period let us analyze problems that led to a change in the parliamentary balances. First of all, the relationship between Christian Democracy and Church, closing of which against Left Parties represented an ideological and cultural obstacle hard to overcome. Then, the necessity for the Socialist Party to break every link with the Pci and to seek for an own independent way to join the "buttons' room", to revise the grounds of its own ideology. Finally, the necessity to face the important changes that over-turned Italian society of those years, changes to which young intellectuals and university students were particularly susceptible. The Centre-Left started, therefore, as a consequence of a series of events, about internal and international policy, engraved inevitably also on the Italian policy, modifying its characteristics.