Soviet, guardie rosse e rivoluzione nell’Italia del primo dopoguerra

This paper examines the internal dynamics of the protest mobilization of the first post-war period, paying particular attention to the geography of the riots, to the aims,languages, repertoires of action, and organization of movements that were led by women and men who had experienced the total mobilization at the war front or in the cities and countryside away from the war front, and had to face the dismantling of the New Moral Economy established during the war. By analysing trial proceedings, police documents, correspondence and decrees from a number of archives, as well as official documents, periodicals and memoirs, the paper focuses on food riots: this phenomenon was not confined to Italy, but in Italy was accompanied by the emergence of “red guards” and “soviets”, or committees of public safety, as part of an uprising movement that was influenced by the Russian revolution in its repertoires of action, watchwords, and claims and renewed protest forms and languages of long tradition.