On March 11, 1977, the Communist-led government of Bologna sent the police into the city’s university to quell student protests, breaking a centuries-old protocol that granted autonomy to the ancient institution. Francesco Lorusso, a student and member of the far-left extra-parliamentary group Lotta Continua, was murdered in the ensuing violence, shot in the back by police.

Leftists from across Italy flocked to Bologna in support of the movement. Yet the Italian Communist Party (PCI), in power in Bologna since the end of the war, refused to back the students. At this crucial moment the party chose to side with the establishment rather than harness a youthful movement at the height of its power.

It marked the turning point in Bologna’s decades-long experiment in participatory democracy — which, up until then, had marked the PCI as a leading force of democratization among the Western European communist parties.