In the one-party system of the “New State” there was no opposition as an institution. The Socialist Party was created in exile only in 1973. The Communist Party was underground, but it alone had an extensive political structure, with significant influence among the working class, the new political elites and, crucially, numerous representatives of the army. After the fall of the dictatorship, all other political parties were hastily created so that they could take part in the discussion about the transition to a democratic system.
In those days, the public sphere was dominated by communists and far-left movements that advocated the creation of a Soviet-style regime or various forms of “direct” or “people’s” democracy as opposed to “bourgeois” electoral democracy, which was considered fundamentally anti-revolutionary. There were rumors that representatives of the Portuguese Communist Party, appointed to the commission for the liquidation of the political police of the PIDE, allegedly handed over secret documents to the KGB. Although the Communist Party still denies any links to the Soviet intelligence services, a significant amount of confidential information from the PIDE archives was subsequently discovered in the “Mitrokhin Archive”, organized by the former senior KGB archivist Vasily Mitrokhin, who defected to the UK in 1992. The Cold War was played out in Portugal, and, importantly, the fate of its former colonies was being decided.
The struggle for power during the transition period had other consequences. In 1975, the provisional government nationalized major sectors of the economy, from finance to industry, effectively decapitating the old economic oligarchy and establishing a series of state monopolies. Political parties initiated land grab movements, which essentially led to the collectivization of agricultural production, especially in the south of the country, where huge estates had long belonged to members of the privileged classes. In just two years, Portugal has changed radically.
European democracy
The transition period in Portugal was a struggle between moderate political parties and more radical leftist movements over the shape and structure of the new regime. Each of these parties had their allies in the armed forces, which immediately after the revolution retained serious power in the country.
The nation was split. The first free elections to the Constitutional Assembly took place on the first anniversary of the revolution, in 1975. The moderate parties won – the socialists and social democrats, who adhered to left-of-center views (modern social democrats have since shifted to the center-right). The constitution adopted a year later, in 1976, declared Portugal to be a country “on the path of socialism”, but its political model was very similar to Western-style multi-party democracy. By that time, power in Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau and other former Portuguese colonies had also passed into the hands of liberation movements. The old myth of the “intercontinental nation” was dead.
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