Pajetta, Giancarlo

Born June 24, 1911, in Turin. Leader in the Italian labor movement; journalist.

Pajetta joined the Federation of Communist Youth in 1925. He spent the years 1927–29 in prison, subsequently engaging in underground work in Italy and abroad. In 1930 he joined the Italian Communist Party (ICP), and in 1931 he represented the Italian Federation of Communist Youth in the Executive Committee of the Communist Youth International. He returned in 1933 to Italy, where he was arrested and sentenced to 21 years in prison. He was freed in 1943, after the fall of Mussolini’s fascist dictatorship. During the Italian people’s war of national liberation (1943–45) against the fascist German invaders and their fascist Italian accomplices, he organized a partisan movement in Piedmont and was a member of the Committee of National Liberation of Northern Italy and the general staff of the Garibaldi brigades.

Pajetta became a member of the Central Committee and of the governing body of the ICP in 1945. From 1954 to 1966 he was a member of the ICP’s Secretariat, resuming the position in 1972, and from 1966 to 1974, a member of the Politburo. He has been a parliamentary deputy since the founding of the Italian republic. From 1945 to 1947 he was editor in chief of the Milan edition of the ICP’s central organ, the newspaper L’Unità, and in 1969–70 he served as editor in chief of the central edition of L’Unità in Rome. From 1964 to 1966 he was director of Rinascita, the Communist Party’s theoretical organ.