Red Brigades (1969–1974): An Italian Phenomenon and a Product of the Cold War

Abstract

With the removal of Khrushchev in 1964 the Soviet Union adopted—at the level of the secret service—a more aggressive policy towards western countries, with a more intensive recourse to so-called ‘covert operations’. These operations regarded even western communist parties, such as the Italian Communist Party (PCI), which were close to being viewed as ‘orthodox’ by the Soviet leadership. The so-called ‘active measures’ which resulted were realised through the infiltration of agents, the training of (usually young) extremists, and (through them) the sending of warnings to the PCI leadership about its divergence from the Soviet line. This context helps us to understand better than before three key events of the years 1968–1973: the emergence of the first terrorist groups in Italy (the Partisans Action Groups and the Red Brigades); the bombing of the electric mains line where Giangiacomo Feltrinelli lost his life; and the car crash in which Enrico Berlinguer was involved in 1973 during an official visit to Bulgaria. An analysis of the Cold War context in which Italian terrorism (and specifically the Red Brigades) developed reveals origins and patterns that are different to those usually identified in the literature.

Notes

Notes

[1] The documentation used in this article is mainly conserved in the archive of the now dissolved Parliamentary Investigation Commission on the Mitrokhin Dossier (which also held the material on the ex ‘Stragi Commission’), at the archive of the ‘Centre of Documentation on Culture and Democratic Legality’ of the Tuscan Region, and at the archive of the Instituto Fondazione Flamigni. The remainder is in the archive of the Istituto Fondazione Gramsci in Rome.

[2] Something of decided interest in this connection is the reading of the decree of absolution with which the Courts of Milan cleared ex Senator Flamigni of the charge of having libelled Francesco Marra in pages of the book Convergenze Parallele. In the book Flamigni affirms that Marra had infiltrated the Red Brigades through the Carabinieri.

[3] In all these documents, Sejna's testimony is considered totally reliable.

[4] Sejna played roles which were far from secondary in the Czech military apparatus, something which had allowed him access to a stack of confidential information as well as contacts with high-level figures from either his own or other Soviet bloc countries.

[5] In a report from the military secret service (SISMI), there is more detailed information on Czech training camps: ‘Training camps were revealed in Brno, in southern Moravia; at Doupov and Bochov, in the area around the very well known spa town of Karlovy Vary; in Malacky (the Lozomo base) a small town on the border with Austria; in Bratislava and Ceska Lipa (Base at Mimon)’ (ACM 1982).

[6] The Hungarian historian Gábor Vásárhelyi, speaking of special training camps for terrorists in Czechoslovakia, said that there was another one situated in Zastavka, a town near Brno (Vásárhelyi 2004).

[7] It is worth noting that in 1968 the PCI prepared an emergency balance sheet making provision for the possible end of the flow of cash from the Soviet Communist Party. The Soviets sent (as usual via the KGB) a quantity of counterfeit dollars to Rome. It should also be noted how, shortly after the arrival of Berlinguer to the leadership, the Soviets began specifically to finance the so-called ‘healthy forces’ within the Italian Communist Party, later the more pro-Soviet section under Armando Cossutta (Cervetti 1993; Andrew-Mitrokhin 1999; Riva 1999).

[8] Glavnoe Razvedyvatelnoe Upravleni, the USSR military secret service.

[9] Jurij Vladimirovič Andropov, ex-Secretary of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party responsible for international affairs at the beginning of the 1960s, rose to the top ranks of the KGB in September 1967, succeeding Selepin Semicastniyj.

[10] Haddad appears as an agent of the KGB under the name of Natsionalist (Andrew-Mitrokhin 2005, p. 251).

[11] Here, the words of Wolf regarding Habbash are interesting: ‘When we wanted to make a gesture of friendship without compromising ourselves too much, we offered residential study courses and other forms of scientific and cultural cooperation. For example, George Habbash's daughter went to Dresden Polytechnic and when her father came to see her, we provided him with an apartment there’ (Wolf 1997).

[12] Habbash in fact released a statement when the representative of ‘Autonomia’ in Rome was arrested on 7 November 1979, in the vicinity of Chieti, while he was transporting some Soviet manufactured ‘Strela’ missiles: Pifano was transporting the missiles on behalf of his organisation FPLP (ACS, IX legislatura, p. 131).

[13] It has been revealed that para-military training camps were attended by at least 20 members of the Red Army Faction, the best known of whom were Andreas Baader, Horst Mahler and Ulrike Meinhof. There are now no longer any doubts that the Red Army Faction terrorists were in constant contact with the secret services of the GDR.

[14] The Italian security services were aware of this logistical alliance, as was Aldo Moro, given that, in one of his first letters written during the period of his abduction, he explicitly asked for the involvement of Colonel Giovannone, the agency head in Beirut of the Italian secret services (cf: Flamigni 1997).

[15] The counterfeit dollars reached the PCI in 1969, exactly at the time of major friction with the CPSU, and again in 1972, the year of Berlinguer's election to the Secretariat (Andrew-Mitrokhin, 1999, report 122; Cf. Riva 1999).

[16] It should be noted in this respect how Feltrinelli, on the day of his death, decided to leave his castle in Carinthia to make for Milan in spite of the high fever and pneumonia which had kept him in bed for several days, since—according to the testimony of some ex-GAP members—it was of the utmost importance for him to carry out the ‘blacking out’ operation of the PCI's congress (Franceschini 2006).

[17] For a full picture of the Italian Communist Party's commitment to the struggle against the terrorist phenomenon, consult, inter alia: the Archive of the Communist Party, the ‘Fondo Bertini’, to which I have been able to gain access (even if it is not yet ordered and classified) thanks to the kind permission of the Board of the Istituto Fondazione Gramsci.

[18] In December 1975 even the Central Committee of the CPSU took the matter up with Andropov having been made known of the meeting between Salvatore Cacciapuoti and Antonin Vavrus, during which the Italian representative is said to have affirmed that one of the Red Brigades’ bases was located in Czechoslovakia and that the Czech security agencies were cooperating with it. This was able to be used against the PCI (ACS, dossier ‘Ever Sinistra’ 9/3).

[19] The PCI intervened decisively against terrorism, making its own information network available to the police, both in factories and in local residential areas, and even going so far as to have the militant members of the so-called Vigilanza Democratica apparatus carry out nightly patrols to examine the handwriting of the Red Brigades’ publicity which appeared on the walls of the city (Fasanella-Rossa 2006, p. 11).