My name is Mikuláš Pešta, I am a PhD candidate at the Institute of World History at Charles University in Prague. I am currently studying as an exchange student at the University of Hamburg. During my undergraduate years, I studied one semester at the University of Bologna, where I have researched the subject of Italian Left-Wing terrorism. I also took part in the short-term exchange program at the University of Cologne and University of Regensburg.

My thesis deals with the European Left-wing terrorism in the 1970s and the 1980s, especially with its origins within the New Left movement, with specifics of the development in Germany and Italy and with the positions of the most influential terrorists organizations. My goal is to find and define common features of the European terrorism and its ideological background – reinterpretation of the Socialist and Anarchist thinkers, methods of the fight of the Latin American and Vietnamese guerrilla units, and disillusion of the Soviet way of fighting the capitalism.
The project focuses on the comparison of the terrorist movements in Germany and Italy, where the violent organizations were strongest. The goal is satisfyingly mapping the extent of the cooperation (or even the coordination of the plans) of the anti-state movements in Italy and the Federal Republic of Germany. The thesis will also include a comparison of the origins, structure, and functioning of the clandestine groups, as well as the analysis of their language, methods, aims, or the relations to the “Old Left”. I will try to answer the question to what extent the terrorists were directly influenced by a student-worker movement and if the escalation of the violence was inevitable consequence of it.

Studying the terrorist organizations brings many complications; as the illegal formations, they do not archive the documents concerning their functioning. The analysis will have to be carried out indirectly, especially from the governmental and police documents which relate to the terrorism, newspaper articles and other contemporary reflections of their functioning, and subjective sources, such as the memoirs or interviews with the terrorists themselves.

I would like to contribute to the GRAINES Summer School with the mechanics of the transnational influence and cooperation of the clandestine organizations and their role in the European New Left movement. My motivation to participate is mainly to deepen the general knowledge about the processes of transnational networks, especially the about the transfers of ideas and know-how.

Selected bibliography:

1968 in Europe. History of protest and activism 1956-1977, KLIMKE, M., SCHAROTH, J. (eds.), New York 2008

STERLING, C., The terror network. The secret war of internaional terrorism, New York 1981

ALEXANDER, Y., PLUCHINSKY, D., Europe’ Red Terrorists. The fighting communist organizations, London 1992

COLVIN, S., Ulrike Meinhof and West German Terrorism: language, violence and identity, New York 2009

TERHOEVEN, P., Deutscher Herbst in Europa. Der Linsterrorismus der siebziger Jahre als transnationales Phänomen, München 2014