Following the end of
World War II in 1945, the
Sammarinese Fascist Party was removed from power and the
1945 general election was held. The Committee of Freedom, a
left-wing coalition of the
Sammarinese Socialist Party and
Sammarinese Communist Party, won 40 of the 60 seats in the Grand and General Council. It was the first ever democratically-elected
Communist government, and made San Marino the only Communist-ruled state in Western Europe. Both the
middle class and
working class supported the Committee of Freedom out of fear that San Marino would return to being ruled by an
oligarchy of local
patrician families. The government instituted several reforms; of the industries of San Marino, the government only
nationalized three drugstores. Additionally, the United States put pressure on Italy to not respect any agreements made with the country. This made San Marino extremely poor, but the Communist Party continued to receive a significant enough amount of the public vote to remain in power. The Committee for Freedom won 35 seats in the
1949 general election and 31 seats in the
1951 general election, nearly losing its
majority. The Committee for Freedom returned to 35 seats in the
1955 general election, but five
moderate Socialist councilmen (Alvaro Casali, Domenico Forcellini, Giuseppe Forcellini, Federico Micheloni, and Pio Galassi) wanted to break the alliance with the Communists in the aftermath of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. The Sammarinese Communist Party, who were close to the
Soviet Union, did not condemn the Soviets' violent suppression in Hungary; this led to international condemnation and strained the image of
Soviet-style Communism, even among Western European
Communist parties. The Socialist leadership was itself split between those who condemned Soviet actions in Hungary and those who did not. In April 1957, the five Socialists left to form a new party, the
Sammarinese Independent Democratic Socialist Party (PSDIS). This left a perfect 30–30 split in the council, with the Committee of Freedom losing their majority and paralyzing the government. The Captains-Regent, given the
deadlock, avoided convening the council until the mandatory 19 September regency election to choose their replacements. ==Crisis==