The new Constitution of the Italian Republic came into force on 1 January 1948, replacing the old Constitution of the Kingdom of Italy, i.e. the Statuto Albertino of 1848. Its content was largely the result of a compromise and cooperation between three main political groups: the Christian Democracy (DC), the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) and the Italian Communist Party (PCI). In the legislative elections of April 1948, influenced by the Cold War and amidst interference from the US Department of State and the Central Intelligence Agency, the DC obtained a large victory against a PCI-PSI coalition. Alcide De Gasperi, one of the founders of the DC, who had been Prime Minister since December 1945, remained in power until August 1953 with the support of the Social Democrats, the Republicans and the Liberals. He led the reconstruction of the country and signed economic and military agreements with the United States, including the Marshall Plan (effective in April 1948) and the North Atlantic Alliance (April 1949). Despite the political hegemony of the DC, the PCI – one of the founders of the Cominform in 1947 – gradually established itself as the country’s second largest party, as well as the largest communist political group in the Western world. It exerted considerable influence on the working class and intellectual circles, attracting the support of about a fourth (or even a third) of the vote share from the late 1940s to the late 1980s; much more in the so-called regioni rosse (‘red regions’) of central-northern Italy. The division produced by the Cold War thus increasingly influenced Italian cultural and political life. In July 1948, in particular, an attempt on the life of PCI leader Togliatti sparked a wave of insurrectionary strikes, but the communists, divided between revolutionary and loyalist wings, were not ready to take up arms in a coup d’état. The silence of the communist leaders enabled the Catholics to impose their vision of the attack and retrospectively construct the legend of the cyclist Gino Bartali acting as a peacemaker. Indeed, according to a generally accepted presupposition, Bartali’s victories in the 1948 Tour de France helped to calm the waters and avoid a new civil war.