in 1974 Pajetta was born in a working-class district of
Turin to Carlo, a bank employee, and Elvira Berrini, an elementary school teacher. He attended
Liceo Classico Massimo d'Azeglio for his high school studies and joined the
Communist Party of Italy during this time. In 1927 he was sentenced to two years of imprisonment for subversive propaganda, after having distributed anti-fascist leaflets to the workers at the Saroglia typographical workshops. In 1931, he went into exile in
France. While in exile he travelled to
Moscow several times as a representative of the
Italian Communist Youth Federation to the
Communist International. He took up the pseudonym
Nullo, after 19th century Italian patriot
Francesco Nullo. In 1933, Pajetta returned to Italy in secret, but was arrested and sentenced to 21 years of imprisonment by the
Special Tribunal for the Defense of the State. He was freed on 23 August 1943, after the
fall of Fascism. He subsequently took part in the early phase of the
partisan resistance with the
Garibaldi Brigades, of which he was
de facto deputy commander. In February 1944, together with
Ferruccio Parri and
Alfredo Pizzoni, he was part of the delegation of the
National Liberation Committee (CLN) that sought recognition from the Allies as the legitimate government authority in occupied Italy. After this, he remained in the Allied-controlled South. Pajetta was elected to the
Constituent Assembly in 1946 and then was a deputy in the
lower house of the Italian Parliament from 1948 until his death. He was also elected to the
European Parliament in
1979 and
1984. From 1948 to 1985 he was a member of the National Secretariat of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), at first with responsibility for international relationships. He was briefly director of the party newspaper ''
L'Unità, in 1947 and from 1969 to 1970, and of the Marxist periodical Rinascita'', from 1964 to 1966. In 1947, Pajetta took part in the armed occupation of the prefecture of Milan, in protest for the removal of prefect
Ettore Troilo. Pajetta was one of the most respected Communist politicians after World War II. Following the death of secretary
Enrico Berlinguer in 1984, Pajetta was considered too old to succeed him. He later opposed
Achille Occhetto's project of transforming the PCI into a social-democratic party. Pajetta died suddenly in Rome in September 1990, before the dissolution of the PCI. His funeral ceremony was attended by 200,000 people. ==Bibliography==