The Italian Communist Party (PCI) was a communist and democratic socialist political party in Italy, founded on 21 January 1921. The PCI was founded as the Communist Party of Italy (PCd'I), a Comintern-affiliated splintergroup of the Italian Socialist Party, and the party was outlawed by Benito Mussolini's fascist government. The party played a part in World War II as a part of the Italian resistance movement, and it became the second-largest party in Italy after the war, having 2,300,000 members in 1947 and winning 34.4% of the vote in 1976. By the 1970s-1980s, the party's views had evolved from communism to democratic socialism, and it joined the Democratic Party of the Left in 1991.
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