ABSTRACT
That old slogan of Mussolini's ''Vivere pericoiosamente'' still has relevance for many sectors of Italian life, and perhaps none more so than in Padua academic community. Like the solid 120-page journal Controinformazione, with its editorial address in Milan, the magazine Autonomia is available in the Padua bookshops and has a circulation of some 5,000 copies. What is especially dramatic about the events in Padua is the role of the local Communist Party, which has energetically taken up the struggle against the ''Autonomist''. Two of the victims were members of the Party and had consistently argued that Terrorism in Italy, even when it paraded itself in slogans of the Left, really was a phenomenon of the Right, part of a reactionary strategy to create confrontation and tension. But any observer who hears the radio broadcasts, reads the pamphlets and magazines, and knows a little of the personal backgrounds of the terrorist ultras can hardly accept this kind of semantic juggling.
