A brief history of the Centro studi libertari / Archivio Giuseppe Pinelli

A history of the Centre for Libertarian Studies – Giuseppe Pinelli Archive (1976-2009)

by Luigi Balsamini, 2009; translation by John Bernard Wilson, 2021

The idea of setting up a research centre named after the anarchist Giuseppe Pinelli emerged during the preparation phase of a conference on Bakunin held in Venice in 1976. The members of the organizing committee, who for the most part adhered to the “Bandiera Nera” group based in Milan and to the “Nestor Machno” group based in Venice, decided to “transform the occasional into the structural”^[1], thus giving solidity and continuity to this cultural and libertarian^[2] movement. This new institute, with its headquarters in Milan, had two objectives: firstly, the creation of a historical archive that would conserve memories of anarchism and, secondly, the development of a libertarian culture able to address the problems of modern society and engage with the most advanced thinking and practices of anti-authoritarianism^[3]. The Centre came into being with the patronage of the Arcangelo and Bartolina Carocari Cultural Association. In turn, this association had been financed by the estate of an elderly libertarian militant^[4] and given a very specific mission: “To give anarchy back the cultural dignity it once deservedly held and that we still believe it deserves today, given that it constitutes the most complete and coherent theory and practice of human liberation”^[5]. In other words, it was necessary to rethink anarchism in the light of the current social context, freeing it from over-contemplation of its own roots to make it a valid and alternative reference point to mainstream hierarchical culture. Thus, not so much questioning its deepest essence, its nucleus of innermost values but, rather, renewing it with an increasingly open, although still critical, attitude towards all genuinely libertarian manifestations, emerging and developing in the stimulating contemporary scenario of the previous few decades, including social conflicts, the finest intellectual thinking, and a new view of everyday life.

In order to further understand the relationship between the specific context of anarchism and the much wider one of libertarian culture, it may be useful to refer to the bold analogy formulated by Rossella Di Leo, one of the founding members and current activist of the Centre. Her analogy with a couple relationship identifies four historical phases, beginning with the “patriarchal relationship” during which the predominant anarchist movement fails to accept the autonomy of the libertarian area and simply sees it as a recruitment pool for its militants. The second phase is labeled as the “open relationship” phase, during which the libertarian section casts aside its subordinate role and begins to search for new partners. This phase is, however, destined to failure and causes a definitive rupture, a “separation by fault”, with negative consequences for both partners. Finally, after overcoming mutual mistrust, there comes a reconciliatory phase, a “free relationship between singles” based on principles of equality and independence: “The reciprocal promise is to continue seeing each other as good friends and maybe occasional lovers”^[6]. In any case, anarchism retained a strong identity while the libertarian area was characterized as the weak partner or, at the very least, as an entity with undefined boundaries, made up of a wide variety of dissimilar elements (ecological, anti-psychiatric, and feminist movements, local action committees, grassroots unions, experiments of alternative education and urban planning, etc.) which share some common values, but sometimes struggle to recognize themselves as parts of a larger set. But in a way, as Di Leo wrote: “It is precisely by taking this indeterminacy as a starting point [...] that we may venture to speculate that it is the anarchic eye that defines and acknowledges the libertarian area, rather than being the variegated elements of the libertarian area to recognize themselves as a coherent whole”^[7].

Finally, according to the vision on which the Centre’s cultural project was built, the present and future of anarchism depend on its ability to break out of isolation and to interact with the vitality of the libertarian world. A renewal and a challenge that it will accomplish on two conditions:

“If it manages to rid itself of its own ‘vulgata’ – in other words of that veritable vulgarization and sclerotic oversimplification in the theories of classic anarchism, which are repurposed through a quasi-religious de-contextualized orthodoxy – and if it manages to re-define itself as a movement with different traits compared to the ones that are currently prevailing – meaning a community of active anarchists (in various domains, forms and levels of intensity) rather than simply being a militants’ political party”^[8].

The Federated Anarchist Groups and the Milanese anarchist movement

The establishment of the Centro Studi Libertari in 1976 may be traced back to a series of initiatives set up by the Gruppi Anarchici Federati (Federated Anarchist Groups, GAF), which formed, together with the Federazione Anarchica Italiana (FAI) and the Gruppi di Iniziativa Anarchica (GIA), one of the three organized components of Italian anarchism. Born at the end of 1969 out of the ashes of the pre-existing Gruppi Giovanili Anarchici Federati (Federated Anarchist Youth Groups, GGAF), this new federation’s objective was to enable anarchism to be considered as an ethics, a science and a project for revolution, more incisive in the contemporary social and political arena compared to what it had been in the previous decades^[9]. They used a pluralistic structure based on affinity as an organisational model, an aggregation of groups sharing the same political vision, with the freedom to act autonomously within a framework of existing agreements, as elements of a coordinated network that had no central body or federal assignment^[10].

The need for a libertarian affirmation in the elaboration of contemporary thought, as well as the development of anti-authoritarian social struggles were at the forefront of the GAF’s project, so as to recover the terrain anarchism had lost to the prevailing Marxist culture and to become not only a coherent critic of domination but also a valid alternative:

“Nowadays [beginning of the 70’s] a libertarian cultural presence is almost non-existent on all levels, among intellectuals, the populace or even rebel minorities. Because of this absence, even fundamentally anti-authoritarian acquisitions have been translated into a Marxist (i.e., paradoxically, authoritarian) key, thereby neutralizing its revolutionary potential. Therefore it seems necessary to strengthen libertarian culture on all levels by means of a qualitative and quantitative enhancement of the anarchist press and publishing and through the proliferation of cultural initiatives, but, even before this, by means of a continuous effort to update and enrich the basic themes within anarchist thought, which incidentally are also the great themes concerned with human liberation”^[11].

The GAF militants, who decided to dissolve the federation in January 1978 to merge as autonomous groups in the anarchist movement (which was to be rebuilt wholly on new foundations)^[12], set up various initiatives like the Crocenera Anarchica (Anarchist Black Cross), an organization that between 1969 and 1972 was active in counter-information and legal defence of political victims, the Comitato Spagna Libertaria (Libertarian Spain Committee), established in 1974 to support anarchists under Franco’s regime, and the Centro di Documentazione Anarchica (Anarchist Documentation Centre) founded in Turin in 1976.

All the following initiatives were run by the same Milanese group: the monthly periodical “A” (from 1971), the Italian editorial collective of “Interrogations” (between 1976 and 1979), the quarterly “Volontà” (from 1980 to 1996), Antistato publishing (between 1975 and 1985) and, after 1976, the Centro Studi Libertari.

In 1961, in the Lombard capital, Milan, Amedeo Bertolo and other young anarchists, together with Eliane Vincileoni and Giovanni Corradini, had established the Gruppo giovanile libertario (Libertarian Youth Group), which subsequently became known as Gioventù libertaria (Libertarian Youth). Soon after, Bertolo and others, among whom Aimone Fornaciari, Luigi Gerli and Gianfranco Pedron, all in their early twenties, rose to prominence in the news reports for their kidnapping without bloodshed of the Spanish vice consul Isu Elías, accomplished in the space of a few days with the objective of raising public awareness of the merciless repression by Franco’s regime of three militants who were part of the Federación Ibérica de Juventudes Libertarias (FIJL). The trial against the kidnappers was held in Varese in November 1962 and rapidly turned into a denunciation of the regime, to the extent that those involved were given a light sentence and soon were free again^[13]. The theoretical considerations derived from their early experience led the young Milanese anarchists to open a public debate through the pages of a periodical – “Materialismo e libertà” (only three issues published) – particularly critical towards the idealistic vision of anarchism widespread at the time^[14]. After a couple of years on the premises of the Circolo Sacco and Vanzetti in Viale Murillo, at the end of 1967 a new space in Piazzale Lugano, in the working class neighborhood of Bovisa, became the new headquarters of Libertarian Youth and of the city’s other anarchists. Among these were a few elderly militants that Bertolo recalls seeing immersed in the Sunday reading of the anarchist press and reminiscing over old times. This new space, inaugurated on May 1st 1968, took the name of the nearby Ghisolfa bridge (Ponte della Ghisolfa), “so as not to give it the name of one of our saints or martyrs”^[15]. Pinelli, who was the youngest of the senior group and subsequently the oldest in the junior group, was among the main protagonists of this phase, together with Bertolo, Fausta Bizzozzero, Umberto Del Grande, Luciano Lanza, Cesare Vurchio, Paolo Finzi and others militants active in “Bandiera Nera”^[16].

Soon after, in order to contain the “struggle outburst” of 1968 and 1969, the era of “State massacres” began: a secret alliance between State apparatus and neo-fascist groups, a truth proven historically but never at the judicial level. On 25 April 1969, in Milan, two terrorist attacks were made on the Central Station and on the Trade Fair, and on 12 December in that same year a bomb exploded in the National Agricultural Bank in Piazza Fontana, Milan, causing seventeen deaths and dozens of injuries. Another unexploded bombing device was recovered at the Italian Commercial Bank, and three others exploded in Rome, causing injuries but no victims. The investigations and media campaign seemed to focus solely on criminalization of left wing extremism and particularly on the anarchist movement; Valpreda, an innocent man, was arrested and charged with perpetrating the massacre and Pinelli, also innocent, was detained at the police station as were many other anarchists.

On the night between 15 and 16 December 1969, his body flew out of a window of the offices of the political division, headed by police commissioner Luigi Calabresi, and crashed to the ground in the courtyard. The slogan “Valpreda is innocent, Pinelli was murdered, this is a State massacre” resounded with the outrage of an ever-growing movement of protest and counter-information^[17].

The Milanese group, that a few years later would set up the Centre in Pinelli’s memory, established the Editrice A Cooperative in 1971 (officially under this name only from 1977) in order to give an independent anarchist voice to counter-information. In fact, the first achievement of this publishing project was the monthly magazine “A” which, up until its closure in 2020, remained the most popular publication of the Italian anarchist movement. Its founding members and main contributors were Amedeo Bertolo, Fausta Bizzozzero, Rossella Di Leo, Paolo Finzi and Luciano Lanza. Roberto Ambrosoli (Turin) and Giampietro Berti (Vicenza) participated as permanent contributors, while Marcello Baraghini [a journalist of the Radical Party] was the legal representative for the first year of publication^[18].

“Interrogations” was another highly important publication for the development of anti-dogmatic anarchism, not interested in constantly re-publishing the usual classic works, open to analysis of contemporary problems and able to ask the right questions rather than lean on easy conventional answers. This publication could be described as an international workshop of ideas. In fact, it published articles in French, English, Italian or Spanish followed by summaries in the other three languages. The promoters had established that the editorial and administrative staff were to rotate every two years, but, following the 1974 – 1976 two-year period in France, and the shift to the Italian group under the Editrice A Cooperative, the editorial collectives in Spain and Great Britain withdrew. “Interrogations” remained in Italy and  a final issue [in Italian] was published in June 1979.

The “Interrogations” years were marked by the regular participation of Charles Cortvrint, also known as Louis Mercier Vega, a libertarian militant and thinker of Belgian origins, who escaped in the 1930s, lived in Paris under the name Charles Ridel, and subsequently fought with the Spanish “Durruti” column in 1936. Considered as one of the greatest and most original innovators of contemporary anarchism, he died, deciding to take his own life, in 1977^[19]. The Antistato publishing, which was started in Cesena around 1950 and then managed by the Milanese group “Bandiera Nera” after 1975, published many essays by Mercier Vega. Among these The Practice of Utopia, a collection of five essays, previously published in French and titled L’increvable anarchisme^[20]. The archive of the Centro Studi Libertari has a section dedicated to Mercier containing ten dossiers of correspondence, notes and rough drafts of his works.

Building up the library

The first headquarters of the Centro Studi Libertari was in Viale Monza 255 in Milan, a municipal property with a low rental, where also had moved in 1976 the Milanese division of the FAI and the Ponte della Ghisolfa group (which a few years later will be run by a different group of young militants). The Centre already had a fair amount of technical equipment (a microfilm viewer, a photocopier and video recorder) and was open between 16.00 and 20.00 on weekdays. Its library was conceived, firstly, in relation to the cultural activities offered by the Centre and therefore focused on the following four areas of interest:

1. History and philosophy of the anarchist and libertarian movements.

2. Contemporary anti-authoritarian ferment in the human sciences.

3. Anti-authoritarian tendencies in contemporary social conflict.

4. Contemporary socio-economic dynamics, in particular in relation to the “new masters” (technobureaucracy).

For each of these topics, the levels of bibliographical and linguistic coverage to be pursued were then specified:

a) all texts relating to points 1 and 4, in Italian;

b) the most interesting texts relating to points 1 and 4, in English, French, and Spanish when not available in Italian;

c) the most interesting texts in Italian, French and Spanish, relating to points 2 and 3^[21].

The periodicals collection was also subject to strict criteria of specialization:

a) up to 1968, all anarchist and libertarian periodicals and single issues in Italian;

b) after 1968, all periodicals started previously or subsequently that are regular and of non-local and/or sectorial interest;

c) specific periodicals in English, French and Spanish that hold special interest for the history and philosophy of the anarchist and libertarian movements^[22].

Compliance with these criteria in the process of building the library was also a necessity imposed by the scarcity of financial means, which prevented the Centre from acquiring all the relevant books. To remedy this shortage, the commitment was to urge specific donations:

“For the most part we are talking about a multitude of quantitatively modest donations that were often however qualitatively significant, sometimes because we were given very rare documents and other times because we were given small fragments of the personal stories, memories and important relationships of our donors. Some of these donations were extremely important, both qualitatively and quantitatively, and made a strong contribution to the fundamental composition of the Archive”^[23].

The Centre’s very first donation of books was made by the very same promoters of the initiative itself, the Ponte della Ghisolfa/Bandiera Nera group, by other militants and by a few publishing companies that were part of, or close to, the anarchist movement. Among the latter, which often would exchange copies with Antistato, were Altamurgia of Ivrea, Campo Abierto of Madrid, CDA of Turin, La Fiaccola of Ragusa, Noir of Geneva, RL of Pistoia, Salamandra of Milan and Vulcano of Bergamo. As regards individual donations, mention must be made of those made by Giampietro Berti, Amedeo Bertolo, Paolo Finzi, Aline Frigerio, Luciano Lanza, Corrado Perissimo, Luis Tibiletti and Galileo Tobia.

Two important collections were added to this already vast array of publications but, unfortunately, they were not kept separate from the rest and became part of the general collection; however these books are stamped so it is possible to identify their provenance. They consist of around a thousand volumes relating to the history and philosophy of the anarchist and libertarian movements donated by the heirs of Michele Damiano toward the end of the 1970s and, especially, the Pio Turroni collection, a real cornerstone of the Centre’s library.

Turroni, born in 1906, emigrated first to Belgium and then to France, in order to escape fascist repression, and there participated in antifascist activities organized by exiles. In 1936 he fought in Spain with the Italian division of the Ascaso column; he then escaped to Marseille where he was arrested just as the second world war broke out, subsequently escaped and sought refuge in Mexico. He returned to Italy in 1943 and actively participated in the revival of the anarchist movement: he was legally responsible for the periodical “Volontà” from its first issue in 1946, established in the early 1950s L’Antistato publishing group in Romagna, and was among the promoters of Anarchist Initiative Groups (GIA). From the time of “Materialismo e libertà”, he had established connections with the young Milanese libertarians and, subsequently, supported and followed the activities of the Centro Studi Libertari with great interest, acting as an intermediary for the acquisition of many important donations. As recalled by Amedeo Bertolo:

“He presents himself with his laborer’s beret, his mason’s face, and his ‘old-fashioned’ anarchist wisdom. He is initially a bit wary of these enterprising anarchist youngsters, but soon afterwards demonstrates a great openness toward us”^[24].

Even before his death in 1982, Turroni had gifted the Centre his library of around a thousand books relating to anarchism and other political doctrines that he had collected during the postwar years. Later his private archive was added, consisting of ten portfolios containing more than one hundred dossiers, recently catalogued by Lorenzo Pezzica using the Mens application.

The collection comprises the “Documents” series, relating to cultural and political activities, and the “Correspondents” series, which contains the dense network of epistolary exchanges with exponents of the Italian and international anarchist movement, particularly with the Italo-American militants connected with the periodical “L’Adunata dei Refrattari”. Another integral part of the archive are the documents compiled by GIA, the editorial staff of “Volontà”, “L’Antistato” editorial group, writings by Raffaele Schiavina, letters by Luigi Fabbri to Gigi Damiani, and from Sébastien Faure to Armando Borghi. All of this material was personally gathered and kept by Turroni, thus probably avoiding dispersion^[25].

The first series of a “Bollettino” (Bulletin) published by the Centro Studi Libertari between 1979 and 1981 contained the complete list of books, pamphlets, newspapers and single issues owned by the library at that time^[26].

In the third issue, two interesting testimonies held at the Centre were presented: a lengthy memoir by Ugo Fedeli on Anarchists in the fight against fascism, a type-written manuscript found among the papers donated by his partner Clelia^[27], and “L’Antistato” antifascist propaganda booklets, handwritten and clandestinely circulated by Vincenzo Toccafondo on a monthly basis between 1929 and June 1940^[28]. The fourth issue of the bulletin announced the new acquisitions for 1979-1980 and reported on the project for a biographical dictionary of the Italian anarchist movement that was to be structured according to the following guidelines:

a) about a thousand entries that would constitute 2 volumes of circa 400 to 500 pages;

b) biographies of not just the best-known militants but also those secondary figures who nonetheless had an important role in the movement’s struggles and organization;

c) the period of reference ranging from the First International to current times;

d) inclusion of the various movements based on the criterion of self-definition^[29].

A scientific and technical committee composed by Maurizio Antonioli, Nico Berti, Gino Cerrito, Vincenzo Mantovani and Claudio Venza, was chosen to work on the dictionary. The project was strongly backed by Leonardo Bettini. However, his death in 1982 prevented any further progress. The project was taken up again with different parameters over twenty years later, and brought to completion with more than two thousand entries, thanks to the efforts of around a hundred coordinated researchers from the Franco Serantini Library in Pisa^[30]. Before his voluntary death, Bettini himself donated to te Centre a collection of around 600 microfilms of anarchist and libertarian publications in Italian, put together during his long bibliographical research.

For a libertarian culture – Venice 1984

Cultural activities to advance and expand libertarian ideals were, especially in the first few years, exceptionally intense and absorbed most of the resources of the Centre. These initiatives were numerous and diversified, covering a wide range of topics, and were developed, as the promoters stated, “both as a retelling of the historical roots of anarchism and as a constructive effort to form a contemporary libertarian body of ideas as an analysis of the present, and a fruitful projection onto the ‘here and now’ of an ‘elsewhere’ which is both ethical and aesthetical”^[31].

A series of important conferences and seminars were organized, based on an interdisciplinary approach, and set up as occasions for free discussion among militants and scholars from different methodological and political backgrounds. Particular attention was given to the international scope of the conferences; speakers from many countries were invited and their speeches were simultaneously translated, in the certainty that a fruitful interchange without borders would benefit the theoretical analysis of contemporary anarchism. Despite the silence of the mass media, these events enjoyed strong attendance. The audience was politically and culturally diverse and during the conference on Bakunin, when incidentally the establishment of the Centre was announced, the organizers were obliged to set up loudspeakers in the courtyard because the 400 available places in the Venetian Palazzo Sceriman were insufficient to accommodate all participants^[32].

An international conference was held in 1978, again in Venice, where the Milanese group was able to count on the support of the Dolo and “Nestor Machno” anarchist groups, and particularly of Elis Fraccaro. The conference was organized in collaboration with “Interrogations” and held in the main lecture hall of the architecture faculty; it was dedicated to the subject of the “new masters”, a central element in the political analysis of GAF^[33].

Discussion was framed in a way that sought to go beyond the bipolar conception of class conflict, in favour of a tripartite model, with a dominated class, a dominating class and a new class ascending to power. In other words, over the usual dialectic between the exploited and the exploiters overlaps another antagonism: that between those who hold power and those who aspire to conquer it, between “old” and “new” masters. The first category represents the traditional capitalist bourgeoisie, whose privilege depends on the ownership of the means of production, and the second represents the rising “technobureaucratic” class, that strives to achieve power not through property ownership but rather by means of “function”, in other words the holding of knowledge, indispensable for the management of huge political and economic systems^[34].

This interpretative approach enabled to look beyond the contrast between the Soviet system and the western model: in the first case the “new masters” reach the highest point of their dominance by monopolistically administering politics and the economy; in the second case, the technobureaucratic power, the managers’ power, is on the ascent but still remain entangled with the relations of exploitation typical of the capitalist society. The conference lasted for three days: the first two saw the usual succession of reports, speeches and debates, while the last day was dedicated to an open assembly which discussed the implications of the technobureaucratic phenomenon and its effect on the revolutionary strategy of the anarchist and libertarian movements^[35].

The Centre sponsored two other important events dedicated to collective reflection on complex topics, with many nuanced interpretative views. The first, in 1979, was on autogestion^[36], intended both as a model of libertarian society and as an organizational template needed to transition toward such a society, despite the institutions’ attempts to empty it of its anti-authoritarian potential. Rather than use the rigid structure of a conference, the organizers preferred to structure the event in five consecutive sessions, each preceded by the speaker’s brief address and an open discussion. The sessions were titled, in order, “Reformist utopia or revolutionary strategy?”, “State and anti-State”, “Small is beautiful”, “Equality and diversity”, “Here and now”^[37].

The second focused on the revolutionary value of utopia and on the subversive imagination that substantiates it, as stated by Bertolo opening the proceedings:

“In the majority of its meanings, utopia represents a positive and ineradicable part of humankind: a dimension of hope, desire for innovation and creativity. In particular, it is necessary for anarchism to critically explore and expand this dimension, dispassionately”^[38].

The Moulin d’Andé seminar (France)^[39] in 1980 had already provided an important occasion for discussion and debate on the theme of utopia. As another example of international collaboration, the Centre and the CIRA set up a theoretical research and analysis program on the role of “power” and its “denial”, which culminated in the Saignelégier seminar (Switzerland) in the summer of 1983^[40].

Between the late seventies and the early eighties, the anniversaries of certain influential figures in the anarchist movement offered the perfect opportunity to hold additional seminars on Borghi, Kropotkin and Malatesta, in order to consider how relevant their thinking is for the present rather than simply remember them^[41]. Furthermore, during these events, which attracted large numbers of speakers and attendees, the organisers felt the need to offer follow-up seminars that were necessarily open to a limited number of participants. The selected topics addressed a wide range of issues, including the connection between anarchism and law and anarchism and ethics, the theory and practice of social ecology, the analysis of totalitarianism, the fundamentals of anarchist thought, and the libertarian approaches to anthropology^[42].

Other events were organised as theoretical and practical workshops, such as the graphic design course coordinated by the Gruppo Artigiano Ricerche Visive (Visual Research Artisan Group) based in Rome. These workshops were intended to enable militants in grassroot movements to understand the proper use of visual communication in the political arena^[43]. The Milanese group had always insisted on this aspect, and its publications, above all the periodical “A”, testified to the group’s clear commitment in trying to leave behind the gray dullness of the movement’s usual publications with a significant forward leap in quality compared to the traditional approach in the postwar period.

A course that was held, a number of years later, by graphic designer Ferro Piludu and by Luciano Lanza, editor of “Volontà” and chief editor of “Il Mondo”, had similar practical implications. These lessons dealt with the particular characteristics of periodicals, examining the complexities of producing such publications, aspects such as text editing, graphic editing, layout and production technologies, in order to better promote the ideas expounded by the militant press^[44]. Another practical workshop, led by Piludu and Lucilla Salimei, explored the field of audiovisual communications and led to the creation of a presentation with synchronized slides and sound by the participants^[45].

Among the initiatives promoted by the Centre, the largest organizational effort was undoubtedly the international anarchist Gathering held in Venice in September 1984, with the collaboration of the CIRA-Lausanne and the Anarchos Institute of Montréal. For a whole week Venice was invaded by anarchists, numbering an estimated four thousand participants from about thirty countries in all five continents. The attendees mirrored the movement’s very different forms: young punks and university professors, German autonomen and Chilean exiles, Spanish anarcho-syndicalists (riven at that time by internal disputes) and common militants who had come to give testimony on the libertarian activities in their respective countries, be it Korea or New Zealand.

This week in Venice revolved around three spots: Santa Margherita square, San Polo square and the faculty of architecture. The first area housed the information centre, a large kitchen equipped to prepare twenty thousand meals accompanied by three thousand liters of excellent wine selected by enologist Luigi Veronelli, an outdoor exhibition on the anarchist publishing industry, and a stage for concerts and theatrical performances. The marquee in San Polo square was set up to show films and documentaries, and display exhibitions on “Art and anarchy” and “The history and geography of anarchism”, while the premises of the faculty of architecture hosted a conference titled “Authoritarian tendencies and libertarian tensions in contemporary societies”^[46].

Under this deliberately generic title, the conference analysed a wide range of topics, examined in detail during the numerous plenary meetings, seminars, round-table talks and discussion groups, in order to observe, from a libertarian point of view, the most recent social trends in 1984, a year symbolic of the Orwellian totalitarian nightmare^[47].

In Venice, the intention was not so much to inspire a “new foundation” of anarchism, but to see the signs of a transition. The time seemed finally ripe for a qualitative leap that would enable the anarchist movement to present itself as “a true force of social change”, after the vibrant period of the 1960s and 1970s which had been followed by a complex phase of withdrawal^[48].

The profound crisis that the movement had been going through in the preceding years became, paradoxically, a reason for optimism. Not only because, as Bertolo ironically wrote “pessimism must be kept for better times”, but mainly due to the fact that although classic “militancy” seemed to languish, there did not seem to be any disappearance of anarchist ideas, that is of an anarchism “that holds within itself the struggle and also life, that reflects everything that within individual and collective behaviours moves in a libertarian direction, and in them is reflected”^[49].

Thus the Venice Gathering represented an important point of reference for anarchic and libertarian culture, a new-found maturity which enabled it to disengage from the burden of belle époque anarchism and helped the movement to interpret modern society in its own way. The shift was so important that many militants, following this wave of enthusiasm, even saw a line of rupture between “pre-” and “post-” Venice anarchism, the first dying and limited, while the second was headed toward a radical renewal^[50].

The organizational approach behind the international gathering was certainly innovative, managed outside the movement’s political structure, with no voting on agendas or congressional motions, but instead creating a collective event distinguished by informality and animated by a “militant community” and not just by a “political party of militants”:

“To us ‘Venice ‘84’ was a watershed moment [wrote the Centre’s organizers twenty years later] although we only realised all the implications subsequently. This break between ‘before’ and ‘after’ was actually played out on an idealistic level: it is absolutely true that ‘before’ then our actions and worldview were undergoing a change in perspective but only ‘after’ was this shift obvious. The international anarchist meeting therefore acted as a catalyst for these changes, which were actually already part of the reasons for conceiving and organizing the event. To be precise, inviting the many faces of anarchism to a meeting that was so unlike a Congress, that was not searching for anything like a political ‘line’, was in itself a means to distance ourselves from our previous notion of militant activity”^[51].

In and around elèuthera

After ten years of activity the institute underwent a formal subdivision into two sections that continued to co-exist and interact: on one side the Centre and, on the other, the Archive, in the customary synergy which mirrored respectively the promotion and conservation of libertarian memory and culture^[52]. In 1986, the Centre/Archive changed address, moving to Via Rovetta 27, which would serve as its headquarters until 2015. A membership fee of twenty thousand lire provided access to all services, including expert bibliographical advice, copying of material at cost price and large discounts for courses and Antistato publications.

This publishing company, founded in Cesena by Turroni and L. Damiani, had moved to Milan in 1975, bringing with it a poor balance sheet and “unsellable stock and some largely non-performing loans”^[53]. The libertarian group running the Centre and the Editrice A Cooperative had developed, with Piludu, a graphic approach which was instantly recognizeable, and had reorganized the publishing work into four main collections (to which other minor ones were added as well as some “one-offs”): “Classics of anarchic thought”, whose vitality was meant to shake up contemporary development; “Anarchism today”; “Libertarian mark”, containing specifically cultural contributions of a libertarian approach, and “Against history”, a series of texts that were critical of official historiography and determined to trace the numerous attempts to achieve emancipation “within” the historical flow, but “against” the history of power^[54].

This editorial experience, certainly rich in cultural stimuli, came to an end after about ten years: in 1985 Antistato ceased publishing in order to make room for the new elèuthera publishing initiative, with Amedeo Bertolo and Rossella Di Leo once again on the front line^[55].

The chosen name, which in Greek means “free”, was inspired by the moniker given, in the 17th century, to a small island in the Bahamas (stylized in the publisher’s logo), by a group of English heretics who had escaped religious persecution, and had landed there with the intention of building a community based on “freedom and equality”. The editorial basic project follows the same line: to renew and restore anarchism, while developing thinking which can be part of contemporary cultural debate, seeking productive interchange with anti-authoritarian and libertarian cultures. The elèuthera catalogue presents clear differences compared to its predecessor Antistato, despite being a direct descendant. On the whole, the typically militant approach was abandoned. As stated by the editorial collective in a self-interview in the late 1980s:

“Antistato addressed the need (mostly but not exclusively) to regain a theoretical and historical identity that had been lost. This wasn’t just an individual need, it was the need of an entire movement that was rising again after years of stagnation. Subsequently the need to define a new anarchic identity emerged as a priority. Although tradition is always the soil in which its values and ideas are radicated, in our days this anarchic identity badly need to find new ways and means of expression. Elèuthera was born with this aim in mind”.

The new publishing company, in addition to the usual “militant” methods of distribution, also used more commercial channels^[56]. Its aim was to speak to a wider audience, by targeting readers in the libertarian cultural arena who were searching for discussion and in-depth analysis on the most various topics, and to introduce international authors and issues in the Italian anarchist culture. Today, there are more than 180 titles available [400 in 2023], with approximately fifteen new publications each year [25 in 2023], touching on subjects ranging from politics, philosophy, economics, sociology, geography, anthropology and art to a series titled “libertarian fiction”. The most popular authors are Bookchin, Camus, Chomsky, Vonnegut, Ward and especially Augé, whose anthropological analysis of western lifestyle in Non places and In the metro has been of great interest to the public. These two classics have, in fact, been reprinted several times^[57]. In 2004 the publisher set up an internet site for online sales, which seems to be fairly popular judging by the 60,000 visits recorded in the first year; from the website, it is also possible to download entire books and other smaller texts that are either not covered by copyright law or released under a copyleft license. This practice is a direct reflection of elèuthera’s libertarian aims, and its vision of the publishing industry:

“Publishers can only benefit from the free circulation of their books, it makes no sense whatsoever to equate the free replication of knowledge with a loss in revenue. If the only form of liberty we are interested in is that related to profit, it is better to remain silent”^[58].

Right from the start, elèuthera worked in synergy with the cultural direction followed by the periodical “Volontà”, which was also an integral part of the Editrice A family. The publication started out as a monthly in Naples in 1946. It was born out of the ashes of “La Rivoluzione libertaria” and “Risveglio libertario”, an initiative of Giovanna Caleffi and Cesare Zaccaria who made it the main instrument of theoretical debate for the Italian anarchist movement. In the mid 1950s, Zaccaria moved away from anarchism and returned toward the liberal area and, after Giovanna’s death in 1962, a period of withdrawal started where “Volontà” became progressively more isolated from the vibrant libertarian cultural scene. While the social battles of the 1960s and 1970s brought anti-authoritarian feelings to the forefront, the periodical’s columns seemed to ignore current events and, in 1969, it was published only once every two months. There was a rapid succession of editors: Giuseppe Rose (Cosenza), Vincenzo Di Maria (Catania), Aurelio Chessa (Pistoia) and Roberto Tronconi (Verona). Only in 1977, with the participation of the Valdobbiadene anarchist group [member of the GAF], Francesco Codello took over the direction and the magazine, with the new graphic layout implemented by Piludu, did begin a process of renovation which freed it from the marginal role it had found itself trapped in.

This refound theoretical depth, as the period of time between issues increased, stabilized when “Volontà” became part of the Editrice A Cooperative [with Francesco Codello in the editorial board]. In fact, having just closed down “Interrogations”, the Milanese editorial group incorporate and reshap the periodical, giving a specific role to this historical magazine (now a quarterly) in the anarchist editorial panorama:

“According to us [wrote the editors in their very first column], this means trying to create a periodical which still remains faithful to the historical-ideological heritage of anarchism, but also opens up to the contributions of contemporary libertarian thought and embraces …. the most interesting thinking in the social sciences. [...] We believe that today in Italy (and not only in Italy) there is a great need for this type of periodical. The whole anarchist movement is in need of this, not just a group of intellectuals, because as there cannot be theory without practice, there cannot be practice without theory; otherwise it would be blind, contradictory and bereft of any long term prospects”^[59].

From 1987, for a period of about 10 years, “Volontà” was presented as a series of monographic anthologies aimed at closely examining anarchic identity and the most important topics of contemporary culture^[60]. The legacy of this periodical, which ceased publication in 1996, would be further developed by “Libertaria”, also edited by Lanza. Its “original and clear-eyed” approach, aptly summarized in its subtitle (the pleasure of utopia) was aimed at discovering new interpretations of the present by accepting the suggestions of international libertarian culture^[61].

New acquisitions and new activities

In the years immediately preceding and following the move to Via Rovetta, the Archivio Pinelli received at least another four important donations that led to the establishment of the same number of documentary collections^[62].

In 1985, Raffaele Schiavina, editor of the Italo-American periodical “L’Adunata dei Refrattari” from 1927 to 1972, better known under the pseudonym Max Sartin, donated around a hundred photographs documenting Italian migration toward the United States and a series of rare leaflets in Italian published in France and other foreign countries between the 1920s and the 1970s. A library of around 400 books on political themes, most of them in French or Spanish, was donated to the Archive, and kept separately, after the death of the owner, Eliane Vincileoni. She had been a model for Christian Dior, a fashion designer and artisan, active in the Milanese anarchist milieu at the time of “Materialismo e libertà” and all through the 1960s. Another series of important documents was related to the anarchist Bartolomeo Vanzetti, an Italian immigrant in the United States, sentenced to death with Nicola Sacco after a clearly sham trial and despite an extensive international campaign on their behalf. The collection was donated by Vanzetti’s sister Vincenzina who dedicated many years of her life to the posthumous rehabilitation of the two anarchists, finally achieved in 1977 with an official statement by the governor of Massachusetts. These documents, whose originals are held at the Historical Institute of the Resistance in Cuneo and copies at the Pinelli and Berneri-Chessa Archives, comprised Vanzetti’s personal papers, newspaper clippings and over a thousand letters both from the 1920s and relating to the reopening of the case after the second world war; all in alphabetical, and then chronological, order according to the name of the sender or recipient^[63]. The fourth donation was a collection of political periodicals from the 1930s and 1940s, for the most part concerned with anarchism, received in 1992 from Luce Fabbri. Among the most interesting were the “Giustizia e Libertà” and “La Revista blanca” collections, as well as various single issues published in Parisian antifascist exile circles^[64].

Together with the archive material, the total collection at the beginning of the 1990s numbered about 5,000 volumes and 900 periodicals, of which 600 were on microfilm and 50 in publication. The Archive then housed a number of exhibitions, now dismantled, that were created by the Centre over the years, and were available to rent. Two of them, “Art and Anarchy” and “History and Geography of Anarchism”, had been exhibited at the International Gathering in Venice; the others related to Malatesta’s life with 73 black and white photos, and to the history of the Spanish civil war and revolution^[65]. Lastly, the final group of photographs mounted on panels presents a series of 28 pen drawings by the artist Camille Pissarro in 1889, inspired by the dramatic social issues and the turpitude (from the series’ title “Turpitudes sociales”) of capitalist society, with clear references not just to a generic message of protest but also to clear topics of anarchic propaganda^[66].

As regards the work of cataloguing, the improvised method first employed was abandoned in favour of more professional methods in the early 1990s. The bibliographical data was entered into the File Maker Pro program, on Macintosh computers, while the cards, separated into monographs and periodicals, were ordered alphabetically according to author and title. The curators and those in charge at the institute in this period were Amedeo Bertolo, Rossella Di Leo and Luciano Lanza, with the help of Furio Biagini for the cataloguing, Ornella Buti for the Bulletin, first published in 1992, Roberto Gimmi for the images archive, and Marina Padovese for exhibitions.

Meanwhile the Centre’s cultural activities continued uninterrupted. New seminars were organized on topics such as architecture, urban planning, libertarian municipalism, and the historical origins of anarchism, these latter identifiable in illuminist thought or, in a more unorthodox fashion, in other cultural traditions such as heretical Christianity or lay Judaism^[67].

In addition, for a number of months, an actual theatre and art workshop was set up under the supervision of Enrico Baj. During these sessions participants created wooden figures of “ordinary and extraordinary monsters” which came alive in a performance at the Milan Faculty of Architecture^[68].

As regards international projects, the Centro Studi Libertari participated in the conference in Lyon in 1987, promoted by the Atelier de Création Libertaire, and focused on the “crisis” of feminism and specifically on some drifts of the feminist movement that cannot be shared by those who refer to libertarian values:

“To get over the obstacle [declared the conference’s promoters] which the feminist movement is faced with is one of the main objectives of this meeting, which proposes to begin from sexual inequality in order to achieve a more detailed and global critique of hierarchy, thus broadening the narrow space of interest toward which a certain type of feminist culture has pushed analysis of sexual inequality”^[69].

Some years later the milanesi were involved in organizing the International Anarchist Exposition of Barcelona, a cultural happening promoted by the Ateneu Enciclopèdic Popular as well as other Spanish libertarian institutes, thus filling the ten-year void left since the last similar occasion for meeting and discussion had occurred (“Venice ‘84”) within the international anarchist movement. During the two weeks, numerous initiatives revolved around the central debate on “Anarchism in the face of the crisis of ideologies” together with four documentary exhibitions: “The International Presence of Anarchism”, “Francisco Ferrer and the Modern School”, “Art and Anarchy”, “Iberian Anarchism”^[70].

In 1992, as mentioned above, the first issue of a six-monthly Bulletin edited by the Archivio Pinelli was sent to press and, already by the second issue, had a new graphic layout with the added value of numerous illustrations and photographs. This publication would be progressively enriched over the years with special content, information on the institute’s research activity, rare or unreleased material held in the archive, publishing news and interesting events for the libertarian reader, biographies, reviews, bibliographies and essays. In short, the bulletin mirrored the institute’s objectives: it strove to publicize knowledge of the material it held and to publish research on that same material or, at least, connected to the history of anarchism and all the themes that were dear to libertarian culture. In its pages, both stories and history could find their place, with an eye to the past but without ever forgetting the present:

“We will obviously talk about History with a capital H, its well-known protagonists and sensational events, but also about less-known individual stories, people and episodes that few know about which, however, have made up the connecting tissue of History. This is, therefore, a retracing of our distant past with a few digressions into the present, that at the same time manages to go beyond traditional cultural barriers in order to investigate the manifold faces of contemporary anarchism with the help of the rich interrelation between all the libertarian movements which have sprung up everywhere in the last fifty years”^[71].

Another important feature of the Bulletin, which is difficult to find in other similar publications, is its ability to overcome the narrow boundaries of its institute and connect with a network of libraries, archives and study centres of the international and Italian anarchist movement. It started from a basic but much-needed review of this area which was carried out in the early 1990s by “A”, solely in the Italian domain but never further updated^[72]. An initial and very promising line of collaboration called “Mutual Aid” was, unfortunately, only developed in outline and subsequently abandoned: the main idea was to establish an exchange of information and bibliographical materials which could be useful in order to complete collections or further develop current research^[73].

On the 50th anniversary of Italy’s liberation, in April 1995, the Centro Studi Libertari collaborated with the Anna Kuliscioff Foundation to organize a day-long conference to reflect on the contribution made by anarchists and libertarians to the Resistance struggle, mainly focusing on the Bruzzi-Malatesta Brigades which were part of the Matteotti socialist Brigades. The speakers managed to give for the first time a general overview of the anarchist contribution to the antifascist struggle, which did not begin in 1943 but at least 20 years earlier, when the Arditi del popolo (workers and war veterans) first began to resist fascism. At this time, only the anarchist movement strove to encourage this form of proletarian self-defence, while the left-wing political parties, for various reasons, tried to stifle it. This antifascist struggle continued underground, in exile or prison, re-emerged with the participation of volunteers in the Spanish civil war, and then in the decision to take up arms after 8 September 1943: in some areas where the anarchist movement had strong roots, like Carrara, Pistoia, Lombardy and Liguria, partisan groupings were almost exclusively made up of libertarian militants; in other areas, anarchists joined the communist Garibaldi Brigades, the socialist Matteotti Brigades or those of Giustizia e Libertà^[74].

The Archivio Pinelli dedicated the entire fifth issue of its bulletin to the anarchist Resistance. It contained long excerpts from an unpublished memoir by Ugo Fedeli, in addition to documents about the activities of the Bruzzi-Malatesta Brigades, including the list of partisans, brief biographical notes on those who fell in battle and excerpts from two interviews, published by the Centre in 1977, with Mario Mantovani and Mario Orazio Perelli, respectively commander and vice-commander of the Brigades active around Milan (Germinal Concordia and Antonio Pietropaolo were other Bruzzi-Malatesta leaders)^[75]. This precious collection of oral testimonies also permitted the production of the video-documentary Gli anarchici nella Resistenza^[76], a collective account providing a rigorous historical reconstruction, and giving voice to the last living protagonists of this story:

“The anarchists who were part of the Resistance are in fact part of the same generation that opposed fascism at the start of the 1920s. This is the reason for the late beginning of this research effort: many memories of that period died with the anarchists who passed away between 1960 and 1980”^[77].

After this research on the Resistance, came a year of many anniversaries: 1996 was exactly 20 years after the founding of the Centre and, as regards the Editrice A Cooperative, there was the fiftieth anniversary of “Volontà”, twenty-fifth anniversary of the periodical “A”, and tenth anniversary of elèuthera. All the same the Centre decided to concentrate its efforts on the Spanish civil war and revolution between 1936 and 1939 rather than dwell on the symbolic significance of these anniversaries. The historical reconstruction of that period had, in fact, been given a decisive turn by the making of Ken Loach’s film Land and Freedom, that succeeded in examining antifascist internal conflicts and contradictions, revealing the social revolution that was under way, with all its libertarian drive, opposed by the pro-Soviet and authoritarian political line of the communist party: “The break in terms of historiography and imagination caused by that film made it possible to re-examine events, situations and characters that until recently had been expunged from memory by the left.”^[78]

The Centre/Archive dedicated – to the memory of the Spanish utopia – a day of debate^[79], most of the eighth issue of the Bulletin, as well as a new edition of a historic video-documentary with images filmed between 1936 and 1937 by the operators of the Sindicato de la Industria del Espectaculo (branch of the CNT, in Barcelona). The film, originally titled Fury over Spain, was made to urge international antifascist solidarity. In the mid 1970s it was re-circulated by the Comitato Spagna Libertaria (Milan) with a new soundtrack; the same frames with Pino Cacucci’s new commentary were then re-presented by the Archivio Pinelli with the subtitle: l’utopia si fa storia [utopia becomes history]^[80].

Due to financial restrictions, however, it was not possible to complete the production of an additional documentary organized around a series of video-interviews with French anarchists who were among the protagonists of May ‘68. The audio recordings (collected in November 1997) have nonetheless been conserved and are currently available in the Archive^[81].

An ongoing story

The effort to increase the collection of documents continued constantly over the years. There were also some chance acquisitions, for instance the first Italian edition of The Political Capacity of the Working Class by Proudhon, spotted and recovered from a paper recycling bin^[82]. A significant donation, one of the largest that the Archive was ever to receive, came from Ancona in 1995 when Luciano Farinelli died. Forty boxes, received through Fernanda Bonivento, Farinelli’s partner, contained documents and correspondence concerning Farinelli’s political activity, and also material from the “Casa Malatesta”, an important anarchist centre in Ancona, as well as the periodical “L’Internazionale”, established in 1966 as the organ of the Anarchist Initiative Groups and continuously edited by Farinelli for almost a quarter century. Pezzica did what he could with the boxes which arrived in poor condition, replacing them when necessary. At the same time, he physically subdivided the material into five distinct categories: correspondence, newspapers and periodicals, books, leaflets, and images. Further work is planned to restore and iron out the papers, before putting them in order and preparing an inventory.

In the following years, the arrival of other archive and library materials were recorded: a collection of books and correspondence that belonged to Otello Menchi, who was active on the Milanese anarchist scene from immediately after the second world war; part of Michele Corsentino’s extensive collection, which came from London where the anarchist writer and activist had moved in 1958, unfortunately missing the most interesting papers relating to Paolo Schicchi and Sicilian anarchism^[83]; Agostino Raimo’s documentation on the anarchist movement in Puglia together with a collection of book; Bruna Casata’s donation consisting of a couple of hundred monographs on anarchist and libertarian topics as well as a number of issues of periodicals like “Fede!” (Rome, 1923-1926), “Il Libertario” (Milan, 1945-1961) and “Il Martello” (New York, 1916-1946); fourteen folders of correspondence going back to the 1950s between Giuseppe Mascii and the individualists E. Armand e Tito Eschini^[84].

In parallel to these generous donations, the Archive also had to deal with less pleasant occurrences. At the end of the 1980s, for example, the anarchist militant and theater aficionado Augusto Micelli, who founded the periodical “Theatralia” in 1924 (suppressed by the fascist regime in 1927), and now aged over a hundred, had given his heirs the task of donating his private library to the Archivio Pinelli, also making available an accurate list of items. However, with no written will, his wishes were ignored by his son-in-law who preferred to sell the collection to an antique bookshop:

“We tell this story [wrote the curators of the archive] so that the comrades can learn from this occurrence since, moreover, it is not the first episode of this kind. Furthermore it seems that neither anarchist ethics nor basic honesty seem to always be bestowed on the heirs. Alas, the inevitable conclusion seems to be that it is better to write down a bourgeois will. In sadness”^[85].

Another cause for bitterness is the painful problem of pilfering, perpetrated, here as elsewhere, for financial gain, for the pleasure of unscrupulous collectors or out of plain personal interest:

“All libraries are well-known to be places where thefts take place. We had fondly imagined that an anarchist library would be immune from this and in our naivety we had long managed the library in an open and cooperative fashion. Then we began to notice missing titles, missing microfilms, missing periodical issues… We locked the cabinets, we reduced the number of available items, we found ourselves having to take on a role that we had not envisaged: that of policemen. Custodians of the cultural heritage of anarchism sure, but policemen no. [...] It should be said that we are not referring to an extreme phenomenon, but solely to a decidedly limited one, yet nonetheless unacceptable: there is the fellow with money problems who pinches the rare antique in order to sell it on to the highest bidder, the bibliophile who nicks the rare item to gloat over in his personal library, the student who literally cuts out the photo or newspaper article he needs for his dissertation (in an era in which reproductions of text and images are readily available), only then to throw the cutting in the bin when the job is done… basically the typologies are infinite but the result is the same: something is lost to the community for petty personal gain”^[86].

In the last ten years the pace of cultural promotion and research has continued unabated, maintaining a high level of quality. Among the scheduled seminars, we must mention the day dedicated to Malatesta’s clear thinking, that inspired its title: “The common sense of revolution”^[87], the seminars on historiographic methodology regarding the use of police sources and oral sources aimed at reconstructing the history of anarchism, whose proceedings are contained in the first issue of the “Quaderni del Centro”^[88], or the round-table talks celebrating the 90th anniversary of the Unione Sindacale Italiana (Italian Syndicalist Union, USI)^[89]. Furthermore, the Centro Studi Libertari has recently resumed its former tradition of organizing major international events with two conferences on the relationships between anarchism and Judaism^[90], and on the scientist Élisée Reclus^[91]. The first convention, jointly organized with the CIRA-Lausanne in the year 2000, was dedicated to the rapprochement between anarchists and Jews, or rather between the radicalism of the anarchist movement and Jewish spirituality, which was imbued with messianic aspirations of redemption. This affinity, still not fully understood, was born out of Yiddish culture in eastern Europe and followed Jewish emigration toward France, England, the United States and later Argentina where the nascent Jewish labour movement was mainly organized by anarchists. In Europe no such phenomenon can be discerned due to the greater role played by Jews in social and economic affairs, while the communist libertarian tradition, self-help associations, and federalism are all aspects that would re-emerge in the organizational structures of Israeli kibbutzim^[92]. The second convention, organized in 2005 by the Institute of Geography of the University of Milan-Bicocca and strongly promoted by Marcella Schmidt di Friedberg, availed itself of the valuable contribution of the Centro Studi Libertari. It explored the work of the anarchist geographer Élisée Reclus, a forerunner of an approach to geography which was not exclusively descriptive and particularly focused on the borders of nation States, but which was also open to investigating relations between mankind, society and the natural world, together with their sociological, cultural, ecological and political implications^[93].

The first website for the Centro Studi Libertari was created in 1998 by Umberto Montefameglio and renewed two years later by Alex Steiner and Edy Zarro^[94]. Since 2003 the Pinelli internet page can be reached via two links: <http://www.centrostudilibertari.it> and <http://www.archiviopinelli.it>. In 2008 the site’s graphics were restyled and new content was added. Among other things, as well as the Bulletin being accessible in its entirety, two intriguing articles on two symbols of anarchist iconography can be read. The first is the satirical character Anarchik, with his broad brimmed hat and black cape, created by Roberto Ambrosoli. The second is the Circled-A symbol. This symbol made its first appearance in 1964 in the Parisian journal “Jeunesses Libertaires” but it only acquired its current status as a direct symbol of anarchism in 1966 when, at the suggestion of Amedeo Bertolo, it began to be used regularly by Milan’s libertarian youth.

In 2018 the Archivio Pinelli website underwent another major overhaul, both in its layout and structure. Following these changes, a wealth of new material from the archives is periodically made available. Of particular note are the so-called “digital projects”, which provide digitized collections of documents, images, videos etc., structured around a specific theme or narrative. Examples range from projects dedicated to the thought and action of specific anarchist (and left-libertarian) thinkers and militants, to broader digital archives such as those dedicated to the “Venice ‘84” Gathering and to Giuseppe Pinelli and the “strategy of tension” in Italy.

The Archivio Pinelli currently holds 24 archival collections, a photo and image archive consisting of about 10000 documents, 410 recordings of interviews, conventions and public debates; the archive’s library, included in the “Catalogue of Italian libraries” ^[95], conserves about 1200 periodical titles, roughly catalogued on paper, and more than 10000 monographs, of which 7500 are bibliographically described in an online catalogue accessible via the archive’s website.