Eugenio Reale

Eugenio Reale (Naples, 8 June 1905 – Rome, 9 May 1986) was an Italian politician.

Early life and activism Born into a bourgeois family, very close to the Neapolitan aristocracy, Eugenio Reale graduated during the period when Fascism began to take hold of Italy’s institutions. In 1926 he approached the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and in 1931, after the exile of Giorgio Amendola, he became one of the main party leaders in the city of Naples. On January 27, 1932 he was sentenced by a special court to 10 years in prison for Communist activity but a 1937 pardon allowed him to be released from prison before the expiry of the sentence; he thus resumed the clandestine activity of anti-fascist propaganda and in October of the same year he moved to France, where he became editor of the newspaper La Voce degli Italiani. Togliatti became a personal friend and political adviser. The secretary of the PCI gave him sensitive him delicate assignments such as commercial relations with the countries of Eastern Europe in order to finance the party through commissions on each deal.

Political career Reale was elected a member of the High Court of Justice in September 1944. Member of the National Council from 25 September 1945 to 24 June 1946, he was appointed Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs during the Bonomi II government, the Parri government and the De Gasperi I government.

In June 1946 he was elected to the Constituent Assembly for the PCI from the district of Naples. During the De Gasperi III government he was again Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs from 6 February 1947 to 31 May 1947. In 1948 he was elected to the Senate of the Republic and remained a senator until 1953.

After leaving the PCI Reale left the PCI controversially in 1956 because of the support that the party gave to the Soviet invasion of Hungary. The provincial secretariat of the Neapolitan Communist Party denounced him for bourgeois deviationism and expelled him.

Reale believed that the party's priorities were no longer the fight against fascism or for freedom, but mere loyalty to the USSR. His sympathies therefore came to lie more with socialist and social democratic tendencies, and as a result he joined the Italian Democratic Socialist Party (PSDI). In reality however, Reale never met Edgardo Sogno: on the contrary, he abhorred his "coup" project.

Decorations Commander’s Cross with Star, Order of Polonia Restituta (26 November 1946, by resolution of the Presidium of the State National Council)