Recent researches on the year 1977 have focused mostly on mass movements and political violence. Based on the Prefects’ reports at the Archive of the Ministry of the Interior, this article will focus instead on public opinion’s trends. The research reveals that Italy was a contradictory scenario, in which only three towns were involved in the protest movement: Rome, Milan and Bologna, while the rest of the country was not affected by the new wave of violence. A sense of tiredness and discouragement, however, grew in Italian society, laying the ground for further social transformation of the 1980s.
Keywords: 1977 protest movement, Prefects records, public opinion, social conflict