The Red Brigades and communist Czechoslovakia: a troubling legacy full of ambiguities

Abstract

This article examines alleged Czechoslovak assistance to the Italian extreme-left terrorist organisation, the Red Brigades, and how the case has been investigated in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic. The authors present the sources of information on the issue and analyse the course of the investigation undertaken by the Office for the Documentation and Investigation of the Crimes of Communism. In the absence of a complete archival record, given that important documents were shredded, the full truth about the fact and nature of any Czechoslovak assistance may never be known. Yet there are some grounds for speculation that assistance was granted by elements within the Czechoslovak secret services, and that these elements failed to inform the Communist Party leadership about their actions. However, it is not possible to confirm this on the basis of available documents.