In the 1980s, for the first time since 1945, two governments were led by non-Christian Democrat Premiers: the republican
Giovanni Spadolini and the socialist
Bettino Craxi; the Christian Democracy remained however the main force supporting the government. With the end of the
Years of Lead, the
Italian Communist Party gradually increased their votes under the leadership of
Enrico Berlinguer. The
Socialist party (PSI), led by Craxi, became more and more critical of the communists and of the
Soviet Union; Craxi himself pushed in favour of US president
Ronald Reagan's positioning of
Pershing II missiles in Italy, a move the communists hotly contested. In June 1984 Berlinguer, the charismatic Communist leader, suddenly left the stage during a speech at a public meeting in
Padua: he had suffered a brain haemorrhage, and died three days later. More than a million citizens attended his funeral, one of the biggest in Italy's history.
Alessandro Natta was appointed as new party's secretary. The public emotion caused by Berlinguer's death resulted in an extraordinary strength for the
Communist Party in the
1984 European election: for the first time in
Western Europe since the
French election of 1956, and for the first time ever in Italian history, a
Communist party received a
plurality by a democratic vote. In 1984, the Craxi government revised the 1927
Lateran Pacts with the Vatican, which concluded the role of
Catholicism as Italy's state religion. During this period, Italy became the fifth-largest industrial nation and gained entry into the
G7. ==Parties and leaders==