Eurocommunism
Eurocommunism was an attempt in the 1970s by various European communist parties, notably the Italian Communist Party, to widen their appeal by embracing middle-class themes and rejecting unquestioning support of the Soviet Union.
A Trotskyist criticism of eurocommunism
Ernest Mandel in From Stalinism to Eurocommunism: The Bitter Fruits of 'Socialism in One Country' views eurocommunism as a subsequent development of the mistaken, from the Trotskyist point of view, decision taken by the Soviet Union in 1924 to abandon the goal of world revolution and concentrate on social and economic development of the Soviet Union, the so-called "Socialism in One Country". Thus the eurocommunists of the Italian and French Communist parties are considered as nationalist movements who together with the Soviet Union have abandoned internationalism, as did the social democrat parties of the Second International, during the First World War, when they supported their national governments in prosecution of the war.
Critics of eurocommunism, like French historian François Furet, see in eurocommunism a attempt to absolve communism from Soviet crimes (Wikinfo article, "Eurocommunism, the Trotskyist criticism"http://www.wikinfo.org/wiki.phtml?title=Eurocommunism%2C_the_Trotskyist_criticism
