Any historian who may have browsed Bologna marzo ‘77… fatti nostri, a counterinformative text published by the protest movement of 1977, will have been struck by its opening lines: ‘Non esisterà uno storico, non tollereremo che esista uno storico, che […] ricostruisca i fatti.’ This admonishment did not deter Luca Falciola from the publication of Il movimento del 1977 in Italia, an impressive piece of work that deconstructs the ‘mosaic’ of 1977 and reassembles the pieces through the analysis of a wealth of documents held at various Italian archives. In addition, the author was able to consult the extraordinary collection of the Beinecke rare book library and literary archive at Yale University.

At a distance of 40 years, the experience of 1977 continues to linger in a grey zone suspended between personal accounts and attempts at historical analysis, between militant memories and nostalgic retrospectives that accompany every major anniversary. Falciola tackles this problem by leaving aside the numerous autobiographical and often emotional reconstructions of 1977 in favour of a solid, empirical examination based almost exclusively on a wide range of original sources; this enables him to recreate the political, economic and social context in which the 1977 movement developed, to uncover (trans)national connections and local characteristics, and to investigate delicate issues such as violence and state repression.

Falciola’s thorough archival research and detailed reading of figures and facts best come to the fore in the first five chapters, where he skilfully describes the impact of the economic and political crises of the 1970s on the changing social identity of the 1977 generation, the move away from the traditional left (in particular the Italian Communist Party) and towards a more radical, ‘post-political’ idea of revolution. This is explored, among other things, through a rich analysis of the movement’s newly found attention to existential issues and its recourse to artistic codes and linguistic subversion.

It is unfortunate that Falciola fails to maintain his scientific rigour in the remaining two chapters on violence and repression. Here he challenges existing theories about the impact of state repression on social movements in those years, arguing instead that the recourse to violence by sections of the movement occurred independently from any repressive measures taken by the state. Thus he claims that the movement had a ‘predisposizione violenta’, and gives the impression that state repression was no more than a figment of the movement’s imagination. Moreover, he suggests that there is a chronological overlap between the movement’s ‘extension’ and the ‘expansion’ of violent groups – which seem to refer to clandestine armed groups such as the Brigate Rosse – throughout 1977. Although Falciola never explicitly links the 1977 movement to left-wing terrorism, his ideas about the movement’s disposition towards violence – which ‘encouraged’ and ‘accelerated’ violence because of the ‘partecipazione combattiva di un intero movimento’ (p. 259) – come across as impulsive and somewhat in contrast with the social, economic and political contextualisation presented earlier in the book. Moreover, the claims ignore the different political stances and internal conflicts that existed within the movement.

In fact, while Falciola can be credited for his overall careful analyses and extensive documentation, the interpretations and sources presented in these last chapters are rather limited; most notably, in his description of incidents of violence and public disorder, the author draws extensively on police documents held in the state archive of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Although merit can be found in the choice to use this type of documentation, which offers an original perspective on matters that have often been narrated through personal memories, to base one’s analysis predominantly on these sources carries a similar risk of presenting only a part of the story. When talking about such complex topics, a combination of sources would be more appropriate.

What is more troubling is the occasionally subjective manner in which Falciola narrates and even underestimates certain facts regarding the impact of state repression. Thus as an illustration of his thesis that the repression of the movement was never really such, he observes how a group of Padua university teachers led by Toni Negri, managed to slip through the net of public prosecutor Pietro Calogero. His claim loses force, however, if we think about the major anti-terrorist operation led by the same Calogero only two years later, the so-called ‘processo 7 aprile’; the latter saw many members and sympathisers of radical left-wing groups in the Veneto region arrested and prosecuted. Similarly, in his description of the incidents in Bologna, where a police officer killed a student under circumstances that were never clarified, Falciola fails to acknowledge the fact that the public prosecutor discarded various important eyewitness accounts which suggested that the police officer in question fired at body height and without being in imminent danger. The only reference to the dubious police investigations – which strongly conditioned the course of events in Bologna – can be found in a brief footnote where the author mentions a different ‘version’ promoted by the movement, thus taking for granted the official account of the incident. An attentive reading of different types of sources and existing literature on Bologna would have brought this section more in line with the overall level of detail exhibited in earlier parts of the book.

All in all Il movimento del 1977 in Italia is a well-documented and important contribution to scholarship on the 1977 movement, which offers a solid and in-depth analysis of the political, social and cultural origins and development of the movement. Regrettably this is put aside in the discussion of the theme of violence. Without dismissing the movement as a simple emanation of the infamous ‘anni di piombo’, the author nevertheless evokes the controversial image of an essentially violent movement, an image reinforced by Enrico Scuro’s (unaccredited) photograph chosen for the book cover – the walls of the occupied university of Bologna displaying the slogan ‘il delitto paga’. While acknowledging the author’s otherwise excellent research and archival work, we must take stock of the fact that the question of political violence remains challenging and in need of more in-depth analysis, and that a truly comprehensive history of the 1977 movement necessitates a more integrative and comparative approach to sources.