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A tragic but instructive story about the "lead seventies" in Italy, or about what happens when the state does not want to hear educated youth.
The 1968 student revolution changed the Western world beyond recognition. The conflict between the last European generation of materialists and the first generation of post-materialists became apparent. The "Phenomenon 1968" opened an abscess on the body of Western society, and the bubble of social contradictions that had been ripening for a long time burst.
Protesting youth created revolutionary art and fought the police on the streets of European and American cities. A new center of political passion, a new constructive and destructive impulse found itself on the campuses of Europe, and it was impossible not to reckon with it.
The consequences of these events were very different. On the one hand, the older ruling generation finally heard the youth and began to take steps forward. Frontline politicians realized that their conservative vision of the world, based on tradition, economic growth and stability, was hopelessly outdated. Charles de Gaulle resigned, political, social and educational reforms began in many countries.
On the other hand, 1968 generated a lot of senseless violence. If the student revolution in France, which is considered the central event of 1968, was relatively peaceful and successful, then the Czechoslovak one was suppressed by Soviet tanks, and the Mexican one - by a police boot.
But if in Czechoslovakia and Mexico the state used violence against students, in Italy it was the opposite - there radical groups of ultra-right and ultra-left students unleashed real terror against the state and each other.
Hungry howl of the well-fed
Building of the University of La Sapienza in Rome
Post-war Italy tried to develop as a social democratic state. The people gradually grew richer, the middle class grew. Young people born in post-war satiety were not at all like their fathers and mothers. The older generation did not understand them and did not want to understand, the democracy of the old people inspired disgust in the new generation. And deservedly so - the Italian politics of the late 60s was terribly corrupt, sometimes people did not see the border between politicians and mafiosi.
Italian paramultarism denigrated all adequate political currents - from communism to liberalism. But the standard of living was still growing, so the elders rejoiced and clapped their hands.
What delighted people who saw the war, hunger and fascism, the youth caused only contempt.
At the same time, the most archaic part of the Italian state turned out to be the higher education system, which has not undergone reforms since 1923. The workload on traditional Italian universities increased dramatically in 1962, when a compulsory eight-year school system was legislated, after which the student could choose between a lyceum and a vocational technical school. Lyceum graduates were given the opportunity to study at universities, and this gave a chance for a large number of young people from the lower and middle class to study at universities.
At the same time, the universities themselves worked very badly, and the state did not intend to make changes in the educational system: in 1923, there were 40,000 students for every 2,000 lecturers; in 1967 the ratio was 3,000 to 450,000. In the mid-1970s, only 2% of graduates could get a job based on their education.
Alex Aspdin, a contemporary researcher of the Italian labor and student movement, describes the state of Italian higher education between 1962 and 1969:
In 1968, the government of Aldo Moro initiated a new educational reform, which was supposed to make higher education more elite and closed, as well as tighten disciplinary rules. This bill became the last straw in the bowl of student discontent.
Romanticism of violence
In such a situation, the students felt like predators cornered. The conservative society did not give them the opportunity to express themselves. Italian democracy seemed like a mafia farce, infinitely far removed from the interests of educated young people. But the most offensive for them was that the education system itself, their natural habitat, was the weakest, most archaic part of the state. And the government not only did not want to change something, but only lazily escalated the situation, preparing to return Italian universities to the 19th century with its reform in the pragmatic interests of economy. Disgruntled youth had no choice but to radicalize.
In addition, radicalism was banally fashionable among the youth - it was stylish to be a fascist or anarchist, to read heartfelt speeches about the nation or the class struggle from the parapet, to throw the names of disgraced American and European philosophers into style. In France and Germany, the overwhelming majority of radical youth were represented by the so-called "new left" (supporters of the Frankfurt school of neo-Marxism and other anti-authoritarian left movements), and neo-fascism was also popular in Italy.
It should be understood that the attitude of Italians towards fascism is more like the attitude of Russians towards Stalinism than the attitude of the Germans towards Nazism. Neo-fascist parties periodically receive several parliamentary mandates in parliament from 1946 to the present day. By the way, one of the leaders of the Italian neo-fascists today is Alessandra Mussolini, the granddaughter of the Duce.
Alessandra Mussolini - the face of parliamentary neo-fascism in Italy
It is wrong to believe that the young neo-fascists were such Italian Aleksandrs Borovikovs and Maxims Martsinkevichs. These were freedom-loving and organized young men and women, most often from wealthy families, who tried to create a new discourse based on the three main values of Mussolini's fascism: corporatism (the idea of a society built of professional castes and professional representation instead of party), anti-communism and nationalism. ... This discourse was not canonical and closed - the ultra-right environment in Italy sometimes gave rise to such exotic and ugly trends as anarcho-fascism and national Maoism.
"Hitler and Mao are united in the fight!" - the slogan of the ultra-right organization "New Order".
Neo-fascist ideas were popular among the student community, and the ultra-right often dominated student government bodies. The main organization of Italy's ultra-right students was the University Front for National Action (FUAN), which was an autonomous youth organization of the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement (ISD) party. This party was founded by veterans of Mussolini's fascist regime, many of whom were war criminals.
In the 1960s, the ISD began to drift towards a more moderate, conservative stance. This transformation caused a sharply negative reaction among ultra-right youth, who supported the ISD precisely because of its radical position. Now they are just as respectable. Many of the neo-fascist student groups then severed official ties with the party. This independence untied their hands and allowed them to commit violence without looking back at anyone.
Funeral of the secretary of the ISD in 1969
The ultra-left movement in Italy was almost a mirror image of the ultra-right. The students were already mainly from working-class families, united in radical groups, revising the Marxist theory. Leftists organized themselves around ideological samizdat circles organized at universities.
Until 1968, the leftist students of Italy were mainly in the loyal shadow of the Communist Party, but then, following the neo-fascists, they began to actively sever ties with respectable parliamentary structures and get free for the sake of violence.
The leftists in Italy were divided into 4 main groups: Operators, Emmellists, Trotskyists, and Anarchists. Operators engaged in squatting and revolutionary robbery, tried to agitate the workers to organize strikes (but the workers, of course, were not going to listen to the students). The Emmellists are Marxist-Leninists, although the main icon for them was Mao Tse Tung, they were inspired by the Chinese "Cultural Revolution" and the terror of the hungweipings.
We who know the true history of Mao's Cultural Revolution must understand that at that time the brutal truth about these bloody events reached much worse than the dashing Chinese propaganda. Even Jean-Luc Godard in those years said that he would like to be "a Chinese director at the rate, and not a French director in Paris." The most important for the history of Italy is the organization "Red Brigades", created in 1970 by a student of the University of Trento Renato Curcio.
Both forces had powerful sponsors. The neo-fascists were informally supported by the Americans, who funded far-right movements in democracies where communist influence was strong. The ultra-right also often collaborated with the mafia - this was not only in Reggio di Calabria, it was a general trend for the entire movement. The communists also had their sponsors, such as the eccentric millionaire and the communist
Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. This man was the first publisher of Doctor Zhivago, he personally knew Ho Chi Minh, was friends with Che Guevara and tried to save him from Bolivian captivity. Well, he sponsored a number of left-wing terrorist organizations in his homeland.
Feltrinelli and Castro.
First shots
It is believed that the "Lead Seventies" began in February 1968 (that is, even before the events in Paris and the Federal Republic of Germany) at the University of La Sapienza in Rome. Then the protest of radical students of both directions against the university reform ended with the seizure of university buildings.
This event went down in history as the "Battle of Valle Julia". The neo-fascists from the National Avant-garde took over the faculty of law, and the leftists - the philological one. For the first time, the police could not do anything and tactically lost to the radical youth. At first, the radicals on both sides acted together and, perhaps, could get the government to comply with their demands. But the Nazis began to attack the left, which gave the police a chance to divide the protesters and restore order.
An interesting poem by Pietro Paolo Pasolini "The Communist Party - to the Youth!" dedicated to the role of leftist students in these events. In it, the great Italian director and the most honest critic of Italian society and the state of that era, accuses students of violence for the sake of violence, apolitical and bourgeois.
The revolution carried by the students is just a protest against the father's conservatism. But no matter how different the ideology and real preconditions of these events were, what happened happened.
The authorities received the first alarm signal from the student environment, but did nothing.
Leader of the neo-fascist movement "National Vanguard" Adriano Tilger during the Battle of Valle Giulia
The Battle of Valle Julia shocked Italy, but these were only flowers. The next high-profile action was a real act of terrorism.
On December 12, 1969, an explosion took place in the bank building on Piazza Fontana in Milan. Almost simultaneously, 3 more explosions were made in Rome. The attacks claimed 17 lives.
This mysterious and dark case has not yet been solved. The suspects jumped out of the windows, the special services sheltered the witnesses, so it is still not known for certain who was behind this crime. The anarchist Pietro Valpreda spent almost 20 years behind bars for organizing this terrorist attack, but then he was released, and the ultra-right became the accused.
Then there was an uprising in Reggio di Calabria. This town rebelled for six months, submitting to a kind of conglomerate of fascists, anarchists and the local mafia. Yes, you read that correctly, in the land of wine and da Vinci in the early seventies, this was possible. As a result, the government made concessions to the rebellious city and returned regional privileges to it, and the ultra-right were neutralized by a military operation.
The beginning of a full-scale war
From 1971 to 1980, it was scary to go out in Italy. Ultra-left and ultra-right youth groups have unleashed a real war against each other and the state. Radical organizations have become a mass phenomenon: according to the estimates of the Italian special services, in the mid-70s, more than 30 thousand people consisted of them.
Activists killed each other in the streets, and organized shootings. At the same time, both sides were engaged in terror. The leftists and neo-fascists had different tactics of terrorist attacks: if the former organized targeted actions against government officials, police officers and the military, the latter did not disdain innocent victims among the civilian population and aimed to intimidate their compatriots.
Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro held captive by the Red Brigades
But the government did not want to hear from the youth and make concessions to them. The apogee of the "lead seventies" was two events - the kidnapping and murder of Prime Minister Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades in 1978 and the terrorist attack of the ultra-right at a train station in Bologna, which claimed 85 lives in 1980. At certain moments it seemed that the republic was on the brink of a civil war.
Reconciliation
But Italy held out. Politicians, albeit with a huge delay, costing hundreds of lives, carried out the necessary reforms. The state starts frantically trying to bring the country out of its torpor.
In 1969, graduates of vocational technical schools were allowed to study at universities. The universities themselves have to change - the almost general strike of 1969-1970 students left them no choice.
In 1974, after a long dispute with the Vatican, divorce was legalized in a referendum. In 1981, abortion was legalized in the same way. However, all these steps towards the modernization of society were not able to stop the terror, tacitly endorsed by many prominent politicians from the Communist Party and ISD. Communists and Christian Democrats enter into a strategic alliance designed to stop the dominance of the ultra-right in government bodies and finally cope with student terror, which has already begun to be recognized by everyone as a real threat to the existence of a democratic state.
By the joint forces of large coalitions at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s, the Italian government manages to somehow put the country in order and, for the most part, defeat student terrorism. In 1982-1986, several major campaigns were carried out against the ultra-right and the mafia - a hard blow to neo-fascists and their sponsors.
The threat of civil war is fading away, despite the ongoing opposition of the radicals. "Red brigades" carry out actions to this day.
Action of modern neo-fascists in Italy
The Nazi Maoists and the FUAN were replaced by new neo-fascist organizations, such as the Casa Pound. A certain part of the Italian society still supports the neo-fascists, and the ultra-right youth organizations, which, without shame, call themselves fascists, still cooperate with parliamentary parties.
But there is no new civil war, and there will not be. For 10 years of student terror and bloodshed, Italy has well understood how to prevent this from happening in the future. There will always be political outcasts and radicals, especially among the youth. The main thing is to prevent them from becoming the majority. The recipe is simple: the state should understand well the needs of its citizens, and the older generation should try to understand the values of the young.
The 1968 student revolution changed the Western world beyond recognition. The conflict between the last European generation of materialists and the first generation of post-materialists became apparent. The "Phenomenon 1968" opened an abscess on the body of Western society, and the bubble of social contradictions that had been ripening for a long time burst.
Protesting youth created revolutionary art and fought the police on the streets of European and American cities. A new center of political passion, a new constructive and destructive impulse found itself on the campuses of Europe, and it was impossible not to reckon with it.
The consequences of these events were very different. On the one hand, the older ruling generation finally heard the youth and began to take steps forward. Frontline politicians realized that their conservative vision of the world, based on tradition, economic growth and stability, was hopelessly outdated. Charles de Gaulle resigned, political, social and educational reforms began in many countries.
On the other hand, 1968 generated a lot of senseless violence. If the student revolution in France, which is considered the central event of 1968, was relatively peaceful and successful, then the Czechoslovak one was suppressed by Soviet tanks, and the Mexican one - by a police boot.
But if in Czechoslovakia and Mexico the state used violence against students, in Italy it was the opposite - there radical groups of ultra-right and ultra-left students unleashed real terror against the state and each other.
Hungry howl of the well-fed
Building of the University of La Sapienza in Rome
Post-war Italy tried to develop as a social democratic state. The people gradually grew richer, the middle class grew. Young people born in post-war satiety were not at all like their fathers and mothers. The older generation did not understand them and did not want to understand, the democracy of the old people inspired disgust in the new generation. And deservedly so - the Italian politics of the late 60s was terribly corrupt, sometimes people did not see the border between politicians and mafiosi.
Italian paramultarism denigrated all adequate political currents - from communism to liberalism. But the standard of living was still growing, so the elders rejoiced and clapped their hands.
What delighted people who saw the war, hunger and fascism, the youth caused only contempt.
At the same time, the most archaic part of the Italian state turned out to be the higher education system, which has not undergone reforms since 1923. The workload on traditional Italian universities increased dramatically in 1962, when a compulsory eight-year school system was legislated, after which the student could choose between a lyceum and a vocational technical school. Lyceum graduates were given the opportunity to study at universities, and this gave a chance for a large number of young people from the lower and middle class to study at universities.
At the same time, the universities themselves worked very badly, and the state did not intend to make changes in the educational system: in 1923, there were 40,000 students for every 2,000 lecturers; in 1967 the ratio was 3,000 to 450,000. In the mid-1970s, only 2% of graduates could get a job based on their education.
Alex Aspdin, a contemporary researcher of the Italian labor and student movement, describes the state of Italian higher education between 1962 and 1969:
- Alex Aspdin, Researcher
In 1968, the government of Aldo Moro initiated a new educational reform, which was supposed to make higher education more elite and closed, as well as tighten disciplinary rules. This bill became the last straw in the bowl of student discontent.
Romanticism of violence
In such a situation, the students felt like predators cornered. The conservative society did not give them the opportunity to express themselves. Italian democracy seemed like a mafia farce, infinitely far removed from the interests of educated young people. But the most offensive for them was that the education system itself, their natural habitat, was the weakest, most archaic part of the state. And the government not only did not want to change something, but only lazily escalated the situation, preparing to return Italian universities to the 19th century with its reform in the pragmatic interests of economy. Disgruntled youth had no choice but to radicalize.
In addition, radicalism was banally fashionable among the youth - it was stylish to be a fascist or anarchist, to read heartfelt speeches about the nation or the class struggle from the parapet, to throw the names of disgraced American and European philosophers into style. In France and Germany, the overwhelming majority of radical youth were represented by the so-called "new left" (supporters of the Frankfurt school of neo-Marxism and other anti-authoritarian left movements), and neo-fascism was also popular in Italy.
It should be understood that the attitude of Italians towards fascism is more like the attitude of Russians towards Stalinism than the attitude of the Germans towards Nazism. Neo-fascist parties periodically receive several parliamentary mandates in parliament from 1946 to the present day. By the way, one of the leaders of the Italian neo-fascists today is Alessandra Mussolini, the granddaughter of the Duce.
Alessandra Mussolini - the face of parliamentary neo-fascism in Italy
It is wrong to believe that the young neo-fascists were such Italian Aleksandrs Borovikovs and Maxims Martsinkevichs. These were freedom-loving and organized young men and women, most often from wealthy families, who tried to create a new discourse based on the three main values of Mussolini's fascism: corporatism (the idea of a society built of professional castes and professional representation instead of party), anti-communism and nationalism. ... This discourse was not canonical and closed - the ultra-right environment in Italy sometimes gave rise to such exotic and ugly trends as anarcho-fascism and national Maoism.
"Hitler and Mao are united in the fight!" - the slogan of the ultra-right organization "New Order".
Neo-fascist ideas were popular among the student community, and the ultra-right often dominated student government bodies. The main organization of Italy's ultra-right students was the University Front for National Action (FUAN), which was an autonomous youth organization of the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement (ISD) party. This party was founded by veterans of Mussolini's fascist regime, many of whom were war criminals.
In the 1960s, the ISD began to drift towards a more moderate, conservative stance. This transformation caused a sharply negative reaction among ultra-right youth, who supported the ISD precisely because of its radical position. Now they are just as respectable. Many of the neo-fascist student groups then severed official ties with the party. This independence untied their hands and allowed them to commit violence without looking back at anyone.
Funeral of the secretary of the ISD in 1969
The ultra-left movement in Italy was almost a mirror image of the ultra-right. The students were already mainly from working-class families, united in radical groups, revising the Marxist theory. Leftists organized themselves around ideological samizdat circles organized at universities.
Until 1968, the leftist students of Italy were mainly in the loyal shadow of the Communist Party, but then, following the neo-fascists, they began to actively sever ties with respectable parliamentary structures and get free for the sake of violence.
The leftists in Italy were divided into 4 main groups: Operators, Emmellists, Trotskyists, and Anarchists. Operators engaged in squatting and revolutionary robbery, tried to agitate the workers to organize strikes (but the workers, of course, were not going to listen to the students). The Emmellists are Marxist-Leninists, although the main icon for them was Mao Tse Tung, they were inspired by the Chinese "Cultural Revolution" and the terror of the hungweipings.
We who know the true history of Mao's Cultural Revolution must understand that at that time the brutal truth about these bloody events reached much worse than the dashing Chinese propaganda. Even Jean-Luc Godard in those years said that he would like to be "a Chinese director at the rate, and not a French director in Paris." The most important for the history of Italy is the organization "Red Brigades", created in 1970 by a student of the University of Trento Renato Curcio.
Both forces had powerful sponsors. The neo-fascists were informally supported by the Americans, who funded far-right movements in democracies where communist influence was strong. The ultra-right also often collaborated with the mafia - this was not only in Reggio di Calabria, it was a general trend for the entire movement. The communists also had their sponsors, such as the eccentric millionaire and the communist
Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. This man was the first publisher of Doctor Zhivago, he personally knew Ho Chi Minh, was friends with Che Guevara and tried to save him from Bolivian captivity. Well, he sponsored a number of left-wing terrorist organizations in his homeland.
Feltrinelli and Castro.
First shots
It is believed that the "Lead Seventies" began in February 1968 (that is, even before the events in Paris and the Federal Republic of Germany) at the University of La Sapienza in Rome. Then the protest of radical students of both directions against the university reform ended with the seizure of university buildings.
This event went down in history as the "Battle of Valle Julia". The neo-fascists from the National Avant-garde took over the faculty of law, and the leftists - the philological one. For the first time, the police could not do anything and tactically lost to the radical youth. At first, the radicals on both sides acted together and, perhaps, could get the government to comply with their demands. But the Nazis began to attack the left, which gave the police a chance to divide the protesters and restore order.
An interesting poem by Pietro Paolo Pasolini "The Communist Party - to the Youth!" dedicated to the role of leftist students in these events. In it, the great Italian director and the most honest critic of Italian society and the state of that era, accuses students of violence for the sake of violence, apolitical and bourgeois.
The revolution carried by the students is just a protest against the father's conservatism. But no matter how different the ideology and real preconditions of these events were, what happened happened.
The authorities received the first alarm signal from the student environment, but did nothing.
Leader of the neo-fascist movement "National Vanguard" Adriano Tilger during the Battle of Valle Giulia
The Battle of Valle Julia shocked Italy, but these were only flowers. The next high-profile action was a real act of terrorism.
On December 12, 1969, an explosion took place in the bank building on Piazza Fontana in Milan. Almost simultaneously, 3 more explosions were made in Rome. The attacks claimed 17 lives.
This mysterious and dark case has not yet been solved. The suspects jumped out of the windows, the special services sheltered the witnesses, so it is still not known for certain who was behind this crime. The anarchist Pietro Valpreda spent almost 20 years behind bars for organizing this terrorist attack, but then he was released, and the ultra-right became the accused.
Then there was an uprising in Reggio di Calabria. This town rebelled for six months, submitting to a kind of conglomerate of fascists, anarchists and the local mafia. Yes, you read that correctly, in the land of wine and da Vinci in the early seventies, this was possible. As a result, the government made concessions to the rebellious city and returned regional privileges to it, and the ultra-right were neutralized by a military operation.
The beginning of a full-scale war
From 1971 to 1980, it was scary to go out in Italy. Ultra-left and ultra-right youth groups have unleashed a real war against each other and the state. Radical organizations have become a mass phenomenon: according to the estimates of the Italian special services, in the mid-70s, more than 30 thousand people consisted of them.
Activists killed each other in the streets, and organized shootings. At the same time, both sides were engaged in terror. The leftists and neo-fascists had different tactics of terrorist attacks: if the former organized targeted actions against government officials, police officers and the military, the latter did not disdain innocent victims among the civilian population and aimed to intimidate their compatriots.
Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro held captive by the Red Brigades
But the government did not want to hear from the youth and make concessions to them. The apogee of the "lead seventies" was two events - the kidnapping and murder of Prime Minister Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades in 1978 and the terrorist attack of the ultra-right at a train station in Bologna, which claimed 85 lives in 1980. At certain moments it seemed that the republic was on the brink of a civil war.
Reconciliation
But Italy held out. Politicians, albeit with a huge delay, costing hundreds of lives, carried out the necessary reforms. The state starts frantically trying to bring the country out of its torpor.
In 1969, graduates of vocational technical schools were allowed to study at universities. The universities themselves have to change - the almost general strike of 1969-1970 students left them no choice.
In 1974, after a long dispute with the Vatican, divorce was legalized in a referendum. In 1981, abortion was legalized in the same way. However, all these steps towards the modernization of society were not able to stop the terror, tacitly endorsed by many prominent politicians from the Communist Party and ISD. Communists and Christian Democrats enter into a strategic alliance designed to stop the dominance of the ultra-right in government bodies and finally cope with student terror, which has already begun to be recognized by everyone as a real threat to the existence of a democratic state.
By the joint forces of large coalitions at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s, the Italian government manages to somehow put the country in order and, for the most part, defeat student terrorism. In 1982-1986, several major campaigns were carried out against the ultra-right and the mafia - a hard blow to neo-fascists and their sponsors.
The threat of civil war is fading away, despite the ongoing opposition of the radicals. "Red brigades" carry out actions to this day.
Action of modern neo-fascists in Italy
The Nazi Maoists and the FUAN were replaced by new neo-fascist organizations, such as the Casa Pound. A certain part of the Italian society still supports the neo-fascists, and the ultra-right youth organizations, which, without shame, call themselves fascists, still cooperate with parliamentary parties.
But there is no new civil war, and there will not be. For 10 years of student terror and bloodshed, Italy has well understood how to prevent this from happening in the future. There will always be political outcasts and radicals, especially among the youth. The main thing is to prevent them from becoming the majority. The recipe is simple: the state should understand well the needs of its citizens, and the older generation should try to understand the values of the young.
