"Will there ever be a shared history"

Abstract: The monograph of prof. Angelo Ventura, currently emeritus professor of contemporary history at the University of Padua, Per una storia del terrorismo italiano (A history of Italian terrorism) collects in one volume some researches and historical analyses carried out on the subject during the 1970s and 1980s. He directly experienced the dramatic season of the student protests in Italy. A part of the political groups involved in the protests – both from student and labour origin – went very rapidly through a subversive ideological deviation. The Paduan historian, taking the time and distance necessary for a detailed study of the matter, tackles some of the structural traits of leftist terrorism. He also defines the principal elements of the so-called “terrorismo nero”, originated from extreme right-wing political elements and deviated components of the State’s apparatus; and takes on the subject of the responsibility a part of the intellectuals had in supporting terrorism, or in influencing its historical memory, in order to somehow justify it. The last essay reconstructs the judiciary’s work, which uncovered the different “souls” of the terrorist groups and opened a season of trials against those who had been responsible for the political violence that bathed Italy in blood.