Abstract

Using the documents of the Central State Archives in Rome (Acs), the aim of the present article is to study attitude that the central authorities (Ministry of the Interior and heads of the Armed Forces) and Milan (prefecture, police headquarters and Carabinieri) had towards the incidents of political or social violence which occurred in Italy, and in particular in Milan, starting from the end of the 1960s. An attitude aimed at criminalizing forces deemed «subversive» (the most radical sectors of the organizations of the workers’ movement) or unreliable in the division of the world between pro-Nato forces and the pro-Soviet bloc (Pci, Psiup and, in part, Psi) and to hide and use the provocative actions of the neo-fascist formations to their advantage