tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66538137956813702442024-03-19T01:32:18.364+01:00Istria, Fiume and Dalmatia<center><b><i>“The Italian lands of Istria, Fiume and Dalmatia; neither Slovenia, nor Croatia, but only Italy.”</i></b></center>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger152125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6653813795681370244.post-29740759861783972432024-03-19T01:30:00.000+01:002024-03-19T01:30:48.209+01:00Why Italy and Dalmatia Must be United: Arguments at the Paris Peace Conference (1919)<div>The following document was presented at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and is conserved in “<i>Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, The Paris Peace Conference, 1919, Volume I</i>”, published in 1942 by the U.S. Department of State (DOS).</div><div><br /></div><br />
<br /><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Preface</span></b></div>
<br />
<br />The many arguments which have been put forward in favor of Italy's right to extend its sovereignty over some strips of the eastern coast of the Adriatic are, by now, generally known. These arguments were an inducement for Italy to enter into the huge fight, which has raged over Europe for four years, and if, at the time they were the very objects of the war, their fulfillment ought to be today the reward for the tremendous sufferings which the country has undergone.
<br />
<br />These arguments may be roughly divided in two classes: some of them appeal to sentiment, others are based upon facts. This distinction makes it clear that whilst some of our claims (those based on sentiment) although quite legitimate and fair could not, by themselves be strong enough as a deciding argument at the peace conference; others (those based on facts) represent such indispensable needs that failure to get these recognized would deprive Italy of the fruits of her great victory, would cripple her prospects, and definitely prejudice the possibility of a quiet and prosperous future, such as the new destinies indicated by this war offer to our race. This is why Italy cannot but insist on them.<br />
<br /><br />
<br /><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Part I: Sentimental Reasons</span></b></div>
<br /><b>Historical Reasons</b><br />
<br />Danielli in his book “<i>Dalmatia</i>” has thus epitomized the Italian character of Dalmatia at the end of his chapter on Dalmatian history:<br /><blockquote>“Already in the third century before Christ, did the Romans, then at war with the Carthaginians, understand how necessary it was to them to rule the Adriatic, and that in order to do so they needed to dominate its Eastern Coast. It was thus that after the end of the first Punic War they started in 229 B. C. the first of these ten Illyrian wars which in the year 78 B.C. brought the entire region East of the Adriatic under their rule.<br />
<br />The whole of Dalmatia belonged to Rome for nearly six centuries without interruption: it went then to the Italian Kingdom of Odoacre and to the Italian Kingdom of the Ostrogoths: and finally to the Empire of the East when Italy was reconquered. Venice had possession of the whole of it from the end of the XV century to the end of the XVIII century except for such temporary and partial losses which occurred in her struggles with the Turcs. Venice never gave up the islands and the towns on the Dalmatian coast not even during those short periods during which Dalmatia was partially Croat or Hungarian.<br />
<br />Only at the end of the XVIII century Dalmatia came under the rule of the Austrian Monarchy and only in as much as it was made an heir to the territory of the Venetian Republic. Dalmatia remained therefore even then all one with Italy. It was included in Napoleon's ephemeral Kingdom of Italy, from which it was only temporarily severed to form the provinces of Illyria. It then was restored unto Austria together with Venice and it is only from 1866 until today that it has existed politically severed from the Italian peninsula.<br />
<br />Therefore not only by nature art and civilisation, but also through its history, Dalmatia essentially pertains to Italy.”</blockquote>
<br />
<br /><b>Geographical Reasons</b><br />
<br />To summarize all the conditions orographical, hydrographical, geological, climatic, etc., which determine the geographical characteristics of Dalmatia would be beyond the scope of a short article. Such a study would involve a lengthy reference to numerous books dealing with the various aspects of this question and its consequences would be to show that even the Austrian and German geographical experts admit that indisputably Dalmatia belongs to Italy.<br /><br />In this connection, a reference to Danielli's great book is of interest. On page 8 he thus expresses himself:<br />
<br />“Now Dalmatia both as regards its mainland and neighbouring isles consists of a low lying territory at the foot of the slopes descending from a high plateau. Thus its clearly defined characteristics which differentiate it from those of the interior of the continent have impelled all authorities, ancient and modern, Italian or alien, to affirm that Dalmatia is geographically a unit completely divorced from the remainder of the Balkan peninsula in spite of territorial continuity.”<br />
<br /><br /><b>Ethnical Reasons</b><br />
<br />Venetian Domination ended by the inclusion of these provinces in the “Serenissima” (i.e. Venetian Republic) of which they became the most solid bulwark containing the most loyal population. Language, religion, dress, buildings, all have testified during past centuries as they do today, to the fact that Dalmatia has become, as she is at present, absolutely Italian. Latin civilization spread itself from that country as far as Croatian, Hungarian and Turkish barbarism permitted; but none of these has ever been able to establish themselves on the Adriatic, which remained notwithstanding an Italian lake.<br />
<br />Then came on the scene Austria after the Treaty of Campoformio (1797). The moving episodes of this period, the profound grief of the population of Dalmatia, when the sacred Winged Lion of St. Mark was forced to yield to the two-headed eagle of the Hapsburgs, are related in history. But if the lion disappeared from the flags it remained imprinted in the monuments and hearts of the people! Dalmatia remained fundamentally and faithfully Italian.<br />
<br />To overcome this resistance but one course was open to Austria; this was to denationalize Dalmatia. The long odyssey of the Italians persecuted by officials in their homes, in their churches by a new semi-barbaric race, which urged on and favourised by Austria violently infiltrated itself and pushed aside the Italian elements, has been consecrated in literature.<br />
<br />And it should be emphasized that in Dalmatia, since the time of the Venetian Republic the Italians have retained control of the public offices, municipalities, learned professions, commerce and industry, in one word, they have been the dominating element in the intellectual life and commerce of the community, while manual and agricultural labour has always been left to a great extent to the Croatian and Slav elements, in a broad spirit of conciliation, civilization and colonization.<br /><br />Under the astute Austrian policy artificial Slavo-Croat immigration, which was started towards 1848 and reached its maximum after 1860, was encouraged by every means available, while an underhand contest was conducted aiming at the exclusion of the Italians from public positions and from the moral and intellectual status which they had held during centuries past.<br />
<br />Such a policy necessarily resulted in an increase of the number of the Slavs and a diminution in that of the Italians. Austrian statistics are falsified and ingeniously exaggerated to the detriment of Italian interest. According to what they quote in 1865 there were 384,000 Serbo-Croats as against 55,000 Italians, while according to the last Austro-Hungarian official statistics the total Dalmatian population would be of about 627,000 inhabitants of whom only about 20,000 Italians.<br /><br />In the Dalmatian “capitanati” included within the armistice line the total population is of 294,900 inhabitants, which includes 280,900 Slavs or Slav-speaking folk, viz. the Morlacchi <span style="font-size: x-small;">[1]</span> amounting to about 93,000 and 14,000 Italians. In the “capitanati” not comprised within the same line on a total population of 333,000 inhabitants, 329,000 would be Slavs or Slav-speaking people (viz. the 100,000 Morlacchi) and 4,000 Italians.<br />
<br /><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">[1] Note 1: These Morlacchi are of purely Romanic and Latin race, like the Kutzo-Walachians of Pindus, who have such a pronounced national physiognomy. The most rigorous impartial ethnological studies demonstrate that this population is not Slav, as the Slavs themselves differentiate them from themselves and from the Italians.</span><br />
<br />The arbitrary proceedings and the systematic falsification of the official statistics at the disadvantage of the Italian element are well known; it is likewise notorious that the latter element, following the most recent and accredited demographic investigations, is composed of over 80,000 inhabitants. The official figures ought to be accordingly rectified as follows:<br />
<br />In the Dalmatian “capitanati” included within the armistice line there would be about 93,000 Morlacchi and 56,000 Italians against 145,000 Slavs; in the “capitanati” not included within the above mentioned line there would be about 100,000 Morlacchi and 29,000 Italians against 204,000 Slavs properly speaking.<br />
<br />
Besides, even if we admit the diminution of the Italian elements in the population shown by the Austro-Hungarian statistics, we should still ask ourselves this question: Does immigration, when, in a given region, it results in a majority over the pre-existing population necessarily confer the rights of sovereignty on the new-comers? The answer is, yes, perhaps when the case involves countries sparsely inhabitated by barbaric races, or belonging to a civilisation definitely inferior, that is, when immigration presents the characteristics of a real and effective colonization, but certainly not if the case is one of a race of a civilization inferior to that of the population of the territory in question, even if the latter is in the minority; certainly not if the said minority keeps all its own national characteristics and finds itself strong enough to infuse these in the majority, by process of assimilation; when it keeps and spreads its own language and control of its industry, its commerce, retains its civil powers and carries on nearly exclusively learned professions.<br />
<br />
Far less should such an immigration confer rights, when it is the result not of a natural and necessary expansion but is the outcome of political phenomena and of the policy of an unnatural government.<br />
<br />The nature of the very recent proceedings, which are causing the Italians to renounce their nationality may be gathered from the reports received of the action taken against our compatriots at Spalato, at Sebenico and at other places by the newly appointed successors to the sovereignty of Austria.<br />
<br />
<br /><b>Moral Reasons</b>
<br />
<br />Is it possible that Europe will agree to denying to victorious Italy the fruits of their great victory? Is it possible that after so much blood has been freely shed that the reward for which she so valiantly staked her existence should be taken away from her? Is it possible that, in compliance with the principles set forth by Wilson, a formula could be found to condemn a race, even if numerically reduced, to be subject to the rule of a civilization still semi-barbaric, while that race claims a millenium of Latin civilization?<br />
<br />The Italian minority is merely a fruit of methodical coercion carried on by means of prisons and gallows, of systematic expropriation, of unending persecution conducted with bureaucratic methods zealously applied by a brutal police.<br />
<br />After the enforcement of the notorious Language Ordinance, which in 1912 eliminated the Italian Language from public offices in Dalmatia, nothing remained to complete the political destruction of the Italians.<br />
<br />In conclusion we feel confident that in the case of Dalmatia, the questions of this artificial and enforced immigration of Slavs and of the violent methods adopted towards the Italians, will receive the same consideration as will the analogous problems of Alsace-Lorraine.<br /><br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Part II: Arguments Based on Facts</span></b></div>
<br />
<b>Military Geographical Arguments</b><br />
<br />
In order thoroughly to understand the extremely poor strategical and tactical situation which nature has provided for Italy on the western coast of the Adriatic, it is useful to recall some geographical features which cannot be modified by art, craftsmanship or human will.
<br />
<br />On the eastern coast there is a wonderful advanced barrier of reefs and islands which, like an impassable screen, protect the mainland and the lines of communication along the coast. On the western coast there is a low beach undefended and exposed to aggression and invasion of every kind. On the east navigation in still waters is possible no matter from what quarter the wind blows; on the west there is no shelter and sailing becomes difficult and risky as soon as ever the sea gets rough. On the east, harbours, wide recesses and good anchorage are to be found anywhere; on the west, landing is generally impossible and it is difficult for ships to find a haven or a shelter.<br />
<br />On the east, the coast rises in cliffs each of which is a splendid observation post dominating a wide surface; on the west, the land (with the exception of Gargano and Conero) lies absolutely flat and low and any far-reaching observation on the sea is impossible except through aviation, which, however, can only be active under favourable weather conditions.<br />
<br />On the east, the sea is clear and deep and mines can be used with difficulty; on the west, the waters are muddy and shallow and seem made on purpose to favour the terribly insidious work of submarine weapons.<br />
<br />On the east, there is every favourable condition for torpedo boats and submarines to lie in ambush, while on the west, the coast is so flat and straight as to exclude even the possibility of any stealth. Even marine currents are favourable to the Dalmatian coast, since they move from south to north along the eastern coast of the Adriatic; on reaching the Ancona parallel they turn from east to west and wind again southwards along our coast. Consequently, any mine which is torn from its anchorage or thrown into the current on the eastern coast is automatically brought to us to cause death and destruction.<br />
<br />At daybreak when the light dawns on a fleet which may have crossed the Adriatic in the dark with a view to attacking the opposite coast, any ships coming from the west would be blinded by the rising sun and find the high eastern coast still entirely clad in darkness, whilst a fleet coming from the east would have the sun at its back and thus be in an ideal position as far as the light is concerned, while the Italian coast would lie helpless before her under the rising sun. An eastern fleet, always screened by islands, unseen and protected from any attack, can transfer her ships from north to south or viceversa from Pola to Cattaro, i.e. along the greater part of the Adriatic coast, sheltered from mines and submarines, whilst the Italian fleet, on leaving Brindisi, is immediately sighted and can be chased, completely unsheltered, up to Venice.<br />
<br /><b>Military Strategical Arguments</b><br />
<br />1) Italy possess only two naval harbours in the Adriatic, i.e. Brindisi in the south and Venice in the north; they are 750 kilometres apart, and neither of them could hold a large fleet. The geographical structure of the coast between those two points prevents the building of a large central naval harbour.<br />
<br />It is consequently impossible for the Italian fleet in the Adriatic to keep together in one anchorage according to sound strategical principles (as for instance in the case of the British Fleet at Scapa Flow, or the French Fleet at Corfu) but her fleet must be divided between Brindisi and Venice, with some ships even at the outside port of Taranto which is not in the Adriatic at all.<br />
<br />This is not entirely due to lack of space at the naval bases in the Adriatic above referred to, but also to the fact that if the whole of the fleet were gathered at Brindisi, it could not, on account of the distance, reach the northern Adriatic in time to prevent an enemy attack against the coast, and likewise, if it were gathered in Venice, it would be impossible to reach the southern coast in time. In both cases a fleet belonging to the nation possessing the eastern coast of the Adriatic could always have a free choice both of time and place for an attack; this could be carried out and the fleet could then retire in good time behind the splendid barrier of Dalmatian reefs and isles before the Italian fleet could reach the spot and deliver battle.<br />
<br />2) The Italian Fleet being necessarily split up between Brindisi and Venice, the enemy in possession of the central part of the Dalmatian shore from Zara to Spalato, including Sebenico's splendid naval harbour, could at any time come out into the open sea to deliver battle. The Italian Fleet coming partly from Venice and partly from Brindisi would then necessarily be compelled to meet with only one part of its forces the whole of the enemy's ships, and would be obliged to accept battle before being able tactically to join the rest of its forces.<br />
<br />Hence ensues the absolute naval submission of the western coast fleet to the fleet from the east coast. Such submission could be expressed as follows: “it would be impossible to attack the eastern fleet on the open sea under equal conditions” or else: “it would be impossible to avoid the strategical and tactical superiority of the enemy even if, on the whole, he were numerically inferior.”<br />
<br />
3) Even if, at the expense of many milliards, Italy should decide to make Venice and Brindisi into naval bases, each roomy enough to harbour a large fleet, and if after having done so, she should decide to develop her Adriatic Fleet and make it double the enemy's fleet in the same sea, even then, she would have no possibility of forcing the enemy to battle on equal conditions. In fact, whilst the enemy's fleet, on reaching the Italian coast is at any time in a condition to bombard thickly-peopled cities, to break up railways and roads, telegraphic, telephonic and optical connections, to prevent movement of troops towards the north during mobilisation, possibly to land small bodies of troops, and having done so, to retire to its base; on the contrary, the Italian fleet, on reaching the eastern coast would meet a barrier of reefs, isles and mined channels which form an inviolable line of defence of the enemy's mainland, and which screen and protect any shifting of the enemy's fleet northwards or southwards, thus enabling him either to avoid the battle or to issue from the North or South from behind the defensive barrier, attacking the Italian fleet from the back on the open sea, cutting it off from its base and keeping up the battle long enough to bring it near to exhaustion. That is to say, it would be impossible to reach by an attack either the enemy's coast or the enemy's fleet, and it would also be impossible to get back in time to our bases if the enemy should decide to prevent it.
<br />
<br />Without any further consideration, it appears plainly that “in regard to the naval problem the possibility of absolutely mastering the strategical situation belongs to him who possesses the eastern coast of the Adriatic.” Italy will never feel secure in the Adriatic unless she can at least obtain possession of the central part of Dalmatia and its protecting and adjoining isles.<br />
<br />Only this possession will enable her:<br />
<br />a) to protect the central part of the Italian coast from Brindisi to Venice, enabling her fleet to be on the spot in time before the enemy should reach it either from the North or from the South.<br />
<br />b) to prevent the enemy from moving freely and secretly southwards or northwards behind a barrier of isles, without emerging into the open sea, should he intend avoid a battle.<br />
<br />c) to attack the enemy on his coasts, on his line of communication, to disturb his mobilisation movements from South to North, either on sea or on land, if operations should compel him to carry his troops towards the northeastern Italian frontier.<br />
<br />d) to reverse the present naval strategical situation which enables the enemy to have his fleet all on one spot wherever he pleases, and compels Italy to have hers split up in the places apart and very far from each other; allowing Italy, therefore, to have her fleet all on one spot in the centre of the Adriatic whilst compelling the enemy to split his forces partly towards the north and partly towards the south. We need consider the possibility that owing to the latest development of modern naval warfare, large ships may disappear, thus rendering useless large fleets and large naval bases. Torpedo boats, submarines, motor boats, light ships and all else which has combined to substitute insidious naval warfare for the classical battle on the seas, have only one object, i.e. the destruction of a fleet; if big ships cease to exist all means of an attack on big ships would also automatically disappear; they would be transformed and used as weapons against the enemy's maritime trade.<br />
<br />But even if the whole problem did only consist in insidious warfare, what would ever be the position of the nation possessing a flat and low coastline, with no protection, with shallow waters readily mined, with no isles, as against the nation disposing of a wonderful maze of shelters of all kinds, of numberless channels, of first class observation points scattered all over, of deep waters, havens safe against any sea, and where sailing is possible in still waters whatever may be the weather? If insidious warfare should substitute surface warfare, more than ever would Italy's position of inferiority be obvious and unbearable as against the position of the nation possessing the eastern coast of the Adriatic.<br />
<br />Neither is it correct to consider that the heirs on the Adriatic to the Austrian Kingdom have no fleet at present, nor that they have no intention of building one in the near future. By the Campoformio and Luneville Treaties Napoleon had imposed on Austria the neutralization of the Adriatic. This did not prevent Austria from being, sixty years later, a naval power, capable of conducting a successful naval campaign. The same might happen again notwithstanding any present promise. But even if such promises were kept indefinitely, we learn through history that only groups of nations have the possibility of sustaining a war. In the event of a possible future coalition. against Italy, Austria's heirs, even if without a fleet themselves, could certainly put their wonderful coast at the disposal of the fleet of their Allies, which would amount to the same thing as far as Italy is concerned.<br />
<br />Now, it was largely for the very object of solving definitely the wretched situation which from a strategical point of view she had on the Adriatic that Italy went to war against Austria. Even if the old enemy has disappeared, the geographical conditions which are the basis of this naval problem still remain unchanged.<br />
<br />It is owing to these geographical conditions that Italy in order to be safe within her own frontiers, must possess Dalmatia from Zara to Spalato, as well as the isles in front of the coast and adjoining it, i.e. the Lussinian and Curzolan islands. In fact, the possession of these islands would be worthless if heavy enemy artillery could make the anchorage and transit along them unsafe and even impossible.<br />
<br />It is therefore clear that Italy's claims, such as are shown in the London treaty have not arisen from imperialistic claims but simply from military necessity. It is not from the desire of conquering the territory of others, but simply owing to absolute need for our own future safety that we must ask today to be guided by what has proved a historical experience from the time of ancient Rome to the time of the Venetian Republic, and thence up to the present day. That is to say, we must ask to be given the key to the strategical and military situation in the Adriatic, i.e. Dalmatia with its isles, which have always belonged to every Adriatic power which has been in a position to rule its own destiny.<br />
<br />Even if, from a general point of view, Italy's claims had not, in respect of others, a more righteous case, it is indubitable that Italy has at least won the right to priority over Austria's heirs, who up to the last moment have staunchly supported the Hapsburg cause against the Entente.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Military Legal Arguments</b><br />
<br />Let us now consider the problem in the light of recent events, which intended to revive entirely the Austrian Fleet, i.e., the fleet of the defeated enemy under a new flag, thus snatching from us the main advantage of our victory, which consisted in the wiping out of the fleet of our old enemy in the Adriatic, where there is no room for two.<br />
<br />The Austrian fleet has been passed on [to] the Jugo-Slavs through a deed which has been signed on the one side by the legal representatives of the Austro-Hungarian Navy, but on the other side by absolutely unknown individuals who had no legal right to be recognized<br />
<br />as representing a State which, up to the present time, has not been established. In fact, if we are to consider the Jugo-Slavs as forming a new State, legally established on a legal basis, we must remark that a new State cannot definitely arise either from a defeat or from a victory, and still less from an armistice. It can only be established by the final decisions of a peace treaty, and by the final settlement which the Powers will agree to give to the world at large and especially to Europe.<br /><br />It seems therefore quite obvious that as long as peace has not been concluded and the new map of Europe has not been definitely traced, there can be no doubt about the non-existence of a Jugo-Slav State, whose frontiers, territory, form of government, responsible Chief of Chiefs, laws, and all else that is essential to the existence of a State, are so far absolutely unknown.<br />
<br />Consequently, since a Fleet cannot but be a prominent feature of a State organization, there cannot be a fleet where there is no State. There cannot be a Jugo-Slav fleet as long as there is no Jugo-Slav State, that is to say, as long as peace is not signed.<br />
<br />The fleet which some call Jugo-Slav, is therefore both from a legal and naval standpoint [nothing] else but the defeated Austrian fleet which, in order to escape capture or surrender has arbitrarily and illegally changed its flag.<br />
<br />It is absolutely immaterial as far as the legal side is concerned whether the flag was changed before or after the armistice between Italy and Austria. If it was changed before it is still doubtless that it was Austria's fleet, (namely, the fleet of the State which was at war) which changed its flag. Now International Law forbids any belligerent to change its flag during war, and since the armistice had not been signed, we were undoubtedly still at war. No one can therefore admit as legally valid any change of flag which has taken place under such conditions. On the other hand, if the flag was changed after the armistice, it is plain Fraud since the conditions of the armistice provided explicitly that the enemy's fleet, i.e., the Austrian Fleet should be surrendered at Venice, which has absolutely not been done.<br />
<br />
Truly both the Italian Navy and the Italian Nation deserved a better reward for their heroic bravery, and this reward, as far as the Navy is concerned, has been snatched from them through a mean and illegal intrigue. The case has been quite different in regard to the defeated German fleet. In hearing of the solemn and stern ceremony of the surrender of the German fleet to the British Navy one cannot but feel heartbroken that a similar reward was denied to our Navy, which surely had gained a full right to it through sacrifice and splendid valour.<br />
<br />
Great honour is certainly due to our race which, in order to avoid conflicts and not to hamper the weary and complicated work of settling peace, has made it possible for the Italian Government not to insist on claiming this satisfaction, but in no case and for no reason must this be considered as a definite renunciation, when it simply means that Italy is patiently waiting for Justice.<br />
<br />
In fact, having completely defeated her enemy, Italy has full right to claim that the Adriatic should be cleared of the enemy fleet. If this is not effected, all the sacrifice and bloodshed of the past years will have been in vain since, after such a long and terrible war, Italy would still be faced by the former unchanged conditions. It is really inconceivable that the fruits of victory as far as the Navy is concerned should be nullified simply by adding a blue stripe to a red and white flag. This is not enough to destroy more than three years' war effort of a Nation of 40 millions, since the changing of a flag does not alter the crews; and those very men who have been fighting us bitterly up to the last, may be our bitter opponents in the future. It is therefore necessary, to ensure in the future a safe peace, both to Italy and to Europe that the fleet of the vanquished enemy should be surrendered to the victor, or failing this, that it should be destroyed. Even if this second alternative should prevail at the Peace Conference, there is one point which has to be made clear and for which we have to stand. We have lost through mean fraud and enemy treachery two of our finest ships: Leonardo da Vinci and Benedetto Brin, blown up in harbour by Austria's criminal agents. Only for Justice sake those two ships must in any case be replaced. Consequently, even if the Peace Conference should not endorse the proposal that the defeated Austrian Fleet should be delivered to Italy, (a fair and proportionate part being allotted to the Allied Navies who have fought by our side), and decides that it should merely be destroyed, it will be necessary that at least two dreadnoughts should be given to us in exchange for the two which were treacherously blown up by the enemy.
<br />
<br />Italy claims the <i>Prinz Eugen</i> and the <i>Tegetoff</i>.<br />
<br /><br /><b>Military Political Arguments</b><br />
<br />Besides, what can be the aim of this Jugo-Slav fleet which has so obstinately insisted and succeeded in remaining on the Eastern Adriatic coast, notwithstanding all clauses of the Armistice? Against whom can it be a weapon or a threat? Evidently not against France or against England, nor yet against the United States. There is therefore only one Nation left against whom under another flag and another name, the long inheritance of hatred sown by Austria on the Adriatic shores, shores which once belonged to Venice and which still bear the marks of its splendour, would be directed. This Nation is Italy.<br />
<br />Now Italy has fought this terrible war in order to break at last the long tradition of hatred. It is impossible that after having achieved victory she may agree to have in existence, under another flag, that very fleet which has been a constant menace to two generations of sailors and of patriots. Nor is it enough to take the fleet from Austria (i.e. the Jugo-Slavs); they must give up also Dalmatia and its isles and naval bases, without which this huge conflict would remain fruitless for us, leaving our future safety and prosperity in a precarious position and constantly threatened as they have been ever since Dalmatia ceased to be politically one with Italy.<br />
<br />Mere neutralisation or internationalisation of Dalmatia would also be worthless. Both these measures could only be fictitious and temporary remedies which would not solve the serious Adriatic problem and would only bear the germs of new and painful future conflicts. The question cannot be compromised. If we, who have gallantly and faithfully fought with our Allies for right and justice, are at fault, let us pay for it. But if we have brought our fair contribution to Victory, let us have the prize to which we have a full right, and let us break without quibbles and compromises, the chain which would, throughout the future, handicap our prosperity and our peaceful growth.<br />
<br /><br /><b>Economical Arguments</b><br /><br />Free business intercourse and trade, as well as industrial and maritime expansion will be the essential factors of this growth.<br />
<br />Let us see what the conditions in regard to this provided for Italy by the Treaty of London, i.e. by the compromise which was made in 1915 between the Italian and the Russian Governments.<br />
<br />Whilst Italy obtained recognition of her rights only to one commercially and economically important port, the Slavs were granted possession of at least seven ports of economic importance, since they are the outlets of wide hinterlands. They were thus practically given all the commercial outlets on the East coast of the Adriatic except Trieste.<br />
<br />These ports are Fiume, Spalato, Metcovich, Cattaro, Ragusa, Antivari, Dulcigno. Trieste is not a port whose sphere of action does particularly extend to the Western Balkans.<br />
<br />The ports of Istria and those of Zara and Sebenico have, on account of geographic conditions, merely a local function. Zara and Sebenico cannot compete in any way with Spalato. On the contrary, from every one of the above mentioned seven ports important lines of penetration diverge and every one of them is the natural outlet to wide Balkan territories.<br />
<br />An absolute and substantial economic predominance has thus been ensured to the Slavs.<br />
<br /><br /><b>Conclusion</b><br />
<br />This memorandum, which has been prepared by the General Staff of the Navy, only deals with the Adriatic problem from a naval point of view and does not consider the military side of the question, nor any of the many other points which are all equally essential to Italy's growth.<br />
<br />Its object is to show that for historical, geographical, ethnical, moral and legal reasons, as well as on account of urgent naval necessity, our Nation cannot but claim at the Peace Conference the full and uncontested control of Dalmatia as an indispensable condition of the country's peaceful and prosperous development in all fields. The Treaty of London is a minimum below which it is impossible to fall, whilst it admits of higher claims proportionate to the function which Italy has had in the League of civilized nations which were associated in the strife against the Central Powers. This function has proved to be so much above any expectation of our Allies that it opens new horizons for our Nation which cannot escape notice by our statesmen, who would certainly not willingly renounce the duty of setting them forth and insisting on them at the right moment.<br />
<br />The Navy willingly repeats Attilio Tamaro's fine words:<br /><blockquote>“No imperialism nor any wish for military domination pushes us towards Dalmatia, but seek her in order to eliminate any possibility of future enemy threats to us, and to assert the predominance of our own civilisation which will make the Adriatic into a lake on which trade intercourse will grow peaceful, active and uninterrupted even should war ever break out elsewhere. Any man who is willing to attain this object ought to support an Adriatic programme in harmony with Italy's supreme interests, since any man who has a clear conception of geography, history and of the real conditions of the peoples who at present are aiming towards the Adriatic must be intimately and firmly convinced, that as long as the Adriatic problem has not been fully solved so as to exclude the possibility of any naval threat to Italy, our country will necessarily have a new Adriatic problem to solve whenever international difficulties arise in Europe.”</blockquote></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6653813795681370244.post-6020338635216913712024-03-04T17:46:00.000+01:002024-03-04T17:46:16.974+01:00Dalmatia and Alsace-Lorraine: A Striking Parallel<div>(<i>Taken from the journal “Modern Italy”, Volume 1, Issue 1, 1919</i>.)</div><div><br /></div><div>While the Peace Conference is assembling in Paris with the main object of ensuring a Peace of Justice for the sake of mankind, we submit to fair-minded people the following rather striking parallel between Alsace-Lorraine and Dalmatia.</div><div><br /></div><div>The two questions are substantially alike, with an undeniable advantage on Italy's side.</div><div><br /></div><div>From an historical point of view Alsace-Lorraine had been French for little over three centuries when she was forcibly detached from France in 1871. Dalmatia, even not considering the Roman period of her history, had been Venetian for eight centuries when she handed over to Austria by Napoleon in 1797. Alsace-Lorraine's deputies solemnly protested in 1871 against the annexation of that province to the German Empire. There were neither Dalmatian Parliament nor deputies in 1797; yet Italian-Dalmatians never ceased protesting energetically in all possible forms, from private individual action to official declarations made by Italian-Dalmatian deputies before the Parliament in Vienna.</div><div><br /></div><div>From an ethnological point of view the French population in Alsace-Lorraine represents 2 percent of the total, according to most reliable statistics. The Italians in Dalmatia and in the archipelagos represent 12 percent of the whole, according to Austrian statistics which have been acknowledged as unreliable the world over, on account of their having been altered to Italy's disadvantage.</div><div><br /></div><div>From a political point of view Alsace-Lorraine and Dalmatia are both typical examples of territories which have been forcibly detached from the States to which they had legitimately belonged for centuries. Therefore, as Alsace-Lorraine shall be definitely returned to France, Dalmatia should be returned to Italy, the legitimate heir of the Venetian Republic. This comparison, though schematic, is utterly eloquent, and we need nothing more to feel sure that fair-minded people will agree with our conclusions. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.</div><div><br /></div><div><div>“<i>Italy's war cannot be victorious unless it closes in the Trentino, on the Venetian Alps, at Trieste and at Fiume</i>.” — Mazzini, in 1856.</div><div><br /></div><div>“<i>All great military authorities, up to Napoleon himself, have held that for Italy the only strong frontier is that line which Nature herself has traced along the summits of the mountains, dividing the waters that flow into the Black Sea from those that discharge themselves into the Adriatic basin</i>.” — Mazzini, in 1866.</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6653813795681370244.post-73665634745813952522024-02-27T19:14:00.001+01:002024-02-27T19:36:03.513+01:00Redemption, Not Conquest (<i>Taken from the journal “Italy Today: A Fortnightly Bulletin”, Volume 2, Issue 2, 1919</i>.)<div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfy5MPnrIbNT0l71JWaMV4LgycjmX7pX_y-1Fqrppk9JptpPZrVST4-5Qykec1GlAMTUWM_t3X0Uev-nkmTOislm5KXGGG9NNP0RLISs0RC2dv9XcYoH-MCG3IZR8YR_2YetLErRCkHdi5649J0jQj0MxUFh9G5CTABtDyatpd7C4jwncZAvF9uoRE8-c/s1998/Pace%20di%20Lodi%20(1454).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1998" data-original-width="1639" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfy5MPnrIbNT0l71JWaMV4LgycjmX7pX_y-1Fqrppk9JptpPZrVST4-5Qykec1GlAMTUWM_t3X0Uev-nkmTOislm5KXGGG9NNP0RLISs0RC2dv9XcYoH-MCG3IZR8YR_2YetLErRCkHdi5649J0jQj0MxUFh9G5CTABtDyatpd7C4jwncZAvF9uoRE8-c/s320/Pace%20di%20Lodi%20(1454).jpg" width="263" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Italian States in 1454<br />Istria and Dalmatia were linked to Italy</b></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>Certain organs of public opinion in this and other countries have on several occasions taken Italy to task for an alleged tendency to imperialism and for infringing upon the rights of the newly created Jugoslav nation. They allege that the Italians are animated by a spirit of conquest and that the Italian nation, before entering the war, wanted the other great powers of Europe to pledge themselves to give to her, in case of victory, certain lands that belonged to other nationalities. But the lands claimed by Italy are, in the eyes of every Italian, in the light of historical and geographical reasons, just as Italian as Lombardy and Venetia, redeemed from Austrian domination respectively in 1859 and 1866. The annexation of Istria, Trentino and part of Dalmatia is the completion of Italian unity, of that unity for which the Italians struggled for four long years, with perfect faith in the justice of their cause.</div><div><div><br /></div><div>If — as it is advanced by Italy's adversaries and critics — there are many Slavs who inhabit the eastern coast of the Adriatic, it is no less true that the history of this coastal land is Italian in spite of the showing of census returns. It is no less true that the Italian element has always been predominant. It is no less true that the history of Dalmatia, its most notable monuments and its whole culture are products of either Roman or Venetian influence. It is no less true that the cities in particular still remain strongholds of Italian thought. It is no less true that in spite of numerical inferiority in some parts of the redeemed lands, the language, the customs, the civilization of those lands are purely Italian.</div><div><br /></div><div>To redeem, not to conquer, those lands, the Italians have fought and bled and suffered. They are not annexing new land, they are joining to the common motherland parts that were detached from it.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is not imperialism, it is not conquering — it is redemption.</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6653813795681370244.post-26727502334958632212024-02-25T12:21:00.001+01:002024-02-25T12:21:25.549+01:00Documents on Austrian and Slav Oppression of Italians(<i>Written by Felice Ferrero, taken from the journal “Italy Today: A Fortnightly Bulletin”, Volume 2, Issue 2, 1919</i>.)<br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>TRIESTE</b></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Population Statistics of Trieste</b></div><div><br /></div><div>The usual Austrian practice is to consider a person as belonging to the nationality of which he speaks the language. For Trieste, instead, the principle was adopted that the language of his parents should be considered. In spite of this, the results not being satisfactory to the authorities, a revision of the census was ordered and entrusted to a committee composed of Slavs and Germans, with no Italian representatives.</div><div><br /></div><div>[...]</div><div><br /></div><div>The Austrian Central Commission on Statistics in Vienna, with regard to the census of December 31, 1910 (Vol. II, No. 1) states the “Slav immigration during the last two years tends to diminish,” and “it would seem that at Trieste the numerical data on the language in use does not correspond to the facts.”</div>
<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Police Oppression</b></div><div><br /></div>
<div>(It is significant to note that the following are incidents typical of the treatment given by Austrian officials to Italians in times of peace.)</div><div><br /></div><div>In 1910 six lectures by Italians on scientific subjects were forbidden by the government in Trieste within three months.</div><div><br /></div><div>In November, 1910, all the Sunday lectures of the Extension University were forbidden. Among the forbidden lectures were one by D'Annunzio on Aviation and two by Orsi on Cavour and Bismarck. The Chief of Police of Trieste, in the case of Orsi, who was an Italian citizen, insisted that he should go to police headquarters and dictate his lectures to two policemen, so that the police officer in charge of the lecture room could control exactly his words. Orsi of course refused to give the lectures.</div><div><br /></div><div>The [Austrian] police of Trieste forbade the playing of the <i>Inno di Garibaldi</i> and of the <i>Marcia Reale</i>.</div><div><br /></div>
<div>In December, 1911, Antonio Visentini in Monfalcone received the order of destroying the winged lion of Venice which he had put on his house, as that “was to be considered as a political demonstration.“</div><div><br /></div>
<div>The Bach police regulations, dated April 20, 1854, gave the police almost absolute power over the destinies and comfort of the citizens. The police can arrest any person for any act committed on the street or in public places which the police deem objectionable. The arrested person is taken to the police station, and by the high police officials can be sentenced without any formal proceedings, without right of defense, without even an explanation of the sentence, to light prison sentences which are sufficient to exclude that person from all public offices for the rest of his life. Moreover, the state attorney can. hold people in state of arrest for an indefinite time pending investigations. The most serious part of this is that the police of Trieste, as we saw, is almost totally made up of Slovene officers.</div><div><br /></div>
<div>An Italian newspaper vendor was standing before a moving picture theatre in San Giacomo, one of the suburbs of Trieste, one Sunday, when two Slovenes passed him; they jeered at him, one struck him, saying, “You Italian swine,” the other planted a knife in his heart and killed him. When the two were arrested, they gave no excuse for their act, except this: he was an Italian. The murderer was sentenced to four months in prison.</div><div><br /></div>
<div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Banks</b></div>
<div><br /></div><div>Italian banks have not been allowed by the Austrian Government to open branches in Trieste. The main banks remain the German-Austrian banks, with which the Italians transact all business. These German banks are run quite impartially as purely business enterprises, and have almost entirely Italian staffs. The Slavic banks, however, are very powerful, much more so than would require the rather indifferent business activities of the Slovenes in Trieste.</div><div><br /></div><div>Some strange facts are to be noticed in this Slavic bank world.</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>The most important of these banks is a branch of the <i>Zivnostenska Banka</i> of Prague, that is, Czecho-Slovak, which is the main backbone of all the Slavic activities-business and otherwise of Trieste.</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>Among the purely Slovene banks comes first the <i>Jadranska Banka</i>, with 8,000,000 kronen capital; the <i>Lubianska Kreditna Banka</i>, which has a slender budget of 28,000 kronen; the <i>Trzaska Posojlnica in Hranilnica</i>, which has a capital of 133,000 kronen and yet a movement of eleven million kronen of business. Besides this, there are two or three small banks with a capital of 8000 kronen which do business amounting many hundred thousands a year. There is no real business to keep these banks going and the Czecho-Slovak bank is called upon very often to save them from trouble with the money, which the Slovak bank draws from unknown sources.</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>The chief activities of these banks seem to be to buy Italian property and Italian business wherever they can get it and at any price, provided their position is such that it affords an opening for the Slav invasion.</div><div><br /></div>
<div>Some curious examples of the business transactions of these banks are the following:</div><div><br /></div>
<div>Grignano is a small town not very far from Trieste. The <i>Trzaska Posojlnica in Hranilnica</i> has bought large holdings of land on the shore of this town, built hotels and bath establishments and created from nothing a summer resort for Slavs, excluding from it all Italian traders and all Italian signs. The town had a small dock on the shore at which the small steamers of an Italian company from Trieste used to tie up. Now the bank has excluded from the use of the public dock, in a town in which many Italians pay taxes, the steamers of this company, reserving its use for the steamers of a Slovene company. An Italian peasant nearby, having had a barge full of bricks. sent to him, was not allowed to use the dock for unloading, and had to build a temporary dock and piles for himself. The Austrian Government, which has control of all the seashore rights, never made a move.</div><div><br /></div>
<div>The <i>Jadarska Banka</i> financed lavishly a large Italian lumber firm; then with the threat of foreclosure of the mortgage imposed its own Slovene manager, then Slovene employees, and finally Slovene workmen. Similarly the bank has succeeded in getting control of an Italian brewery; and in the case of a merchant, a certain Gustavo Marco, lent him 240,000 kronen for a glass factory, gradually imposed on him managers and workmen Slovenes, Slavs, Croatians and finally reduced the owner to the rank of a nominal superintendent with a salary of fifty kronen a week to begin with, reduced later to thirty kronen.</div><div><br /></div><div>A bank of Gorizia, the <i>Trgovsko-obrtna Zadruga</i>, with 5000 kronen capital, has 21/2 millions of deposits, and invests the whole of its holdings in the building of a national house in Gorizia and in the purchase of a hotel of the <i>Süd-Bahn</i>—the first an enterprise with no returns, and the second an enterprise with no profits. The Government, which has the supervision of the banks, did not interfere.</div><div><br /></div>
<div>In Zara a small Croatian bank was discovered, during a suit for bankruptcy, to have lent money without any mortgage instruments, had a board of directors who were paid ten kronen for every session, and never had any sign of activities. A government inspector made a report, but the government ignored it until the crash came.</div>
<div><br /></div><div>Yet most of these banks manage to go through almost all crises, thanks to help from the Czecho-Slovak bank or other secret sources, which are known to have been Russian to the point that in Trieste the Russian ruble was circulated almost as freely as the Austrian kronen.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;"><b>Slav Invasion</b></div><div><br /></div><div>The center of Slavic agitation in Trieste is the Narodni Dom, a huge building right in the middle of Trieste, which directs all the campaigns of attack against the Italian population. The expenses for the building were borne by the Slovene Bank of Deposits and Loans and Loans (<i>Trzaska Posojlnica in Hranilnica</i>). The house, however, always shows a deficit, which is paid from secret sources. Connected with the house there is a Hotel Balkan. The Austrian Government, in a circular to the army, has advised the officers passing through Trieste to use the Hotel Balkan, “to increase its revenue and spite the Triestans.”</div><div><br /></div><div>The central organization of the Slovenes is the Edinost Union, which is a political association and has its seat in the Narodni Dom. It spreads all through the districts of the mixed population of the Friuli.</div>
<div><br /></div><div>One of the chief purposes of the Edinost seems to be the directing to Trieste of the largest possible emigration of Slovene workmen, which it it does by means of an employment office that supplies strike breakers when necessary or useful.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Edinost has also founded two primary schools in Trieste with 1722 pupils in 1912, and a trade school with 79 students in 1913. One of the two primary schools cost 500,000 kronen, the origin of which is unknown.</div>
<div><br /></div><div>It is at the suggestion of the then president of the Edinost, Dr. Rybar, a Slovene, that the Governor of Trieste, Prince Hohenlohe, published four decrees in 1910 excluding from the employment of the municipality of Trieste all the Italians of Italy.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>The Edinost</b></div>
<div><br /></div><div>The Edinost, which is also the newspaper of the organization, has been so violent in attacking the Italians that it has had even to be seized and suppressed by the Austrian authorities.</div><div><br /></div>
<div>Here is the program for national propaganda as it appears in the columns of that paper in the number of January 7, 1911:</div><div><blockquote>“Tomorrow the Slavs of Trieste must speak. We are here and we will stay here and enjoy our rights. Tomorrow we shall throw the gauntlet of defiance to the coterie which dominates, and then will begin the duel which we shall not give up until the day when we have under our feet, crushed to dust, the artificial Italianism of Trieste. So far our struggle was for equality. Tomorrow we shall say to the Italians that the future struggle will be for domination. We shall not stop until WE command in Trieste; we Slovenes, Slavs! The Italianism of Trieste, which is now ebbing, is now celebrating its last orgy before its death. Tomorrow we, the Slovenes of Trieste, shall invite these voted to death to recite the confiteor.”</blockquote></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Employees</b></div><div><br /></div><div>1. Unionbaugesellschaft — employs all Italians.</div>
<div><br /></div><div>2. 1900-10. Population of Carniola increases 3.3 per cent., Slavs in Trieste 130 per cent.</div><div><br /></div><div>3. Railroad of Tauri imports 700 Slovene families of railroad workers.</div><div><br /></div><div>4. New harbor of Sant'Andrea. 2500 laborers, all Slovene.</div>
<div><br /></div><div>5. New harbor of Sant'Andrea. Beginning work of discharging ships, 64 Slovene stevedores against 160 Triestine applications.</div><div><br /></div><div>6. Austrian Lloyd. 1300 Slovenes out of 3000 shipyard workmen.</div>
<div><br /></div><div>7. Triestine Technical Works: By order of the Government all Italians and many Triestans are discharged, their places being filled with Slovenes, Croatians and Germans.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Bureaucracy (</b><b>1910)</b></div><div><br /></div><div>4000 positions for subordinate government employees and 3700 given to Slovenes.</div><div><br /></div><div>Government railroads of 828 station employees: 728 are Slavs, 70 Italian, 30 Germans.</div><div><br /></div><div>Post Office: 358 clerks — 245 Slavs and 95 Italians.</div><div><br /></div>
<div>Customs-house Officers: 500 — 146 Italians.</div><div><br /></div><div>Police: 661 — 100 Italians.</div><div><br /></div><div>Südbahn (private): 1913</div><div><br /></div><div>Station: Employees 369 — 260 Slavs, 70 Italians, 30 Germans.</div><div><br /></div><div>Laborers: 380 — 354 Slavs, 6 Italians, 20 Germans.</div><div><br /></div><div>Journeymen: 300 — 298 Slavs, 2 Italians.</div>
<div><br /></div><div>Inspectors: 50 — 47 Slavs, 3 Italians.</div><div><br /></div>
<div>Railroad restaurants: Slovene signs and Slovene waiters.</div><div><br /></div><div>A Triestan [who speaks] Italian, Slovene [and] German was refused for mail carrier; accepted Slovenes speaking only their own language.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Schools</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Trieste had an Italian gymnasium dating from 1619; amplified by Napoleon; in 1815 was suppressed; petitions for the reopening of the gymnasium were presented to the government in 1824, 1833, 1840, 1851, 1859, 1861, 1862. In 1862 the government gave permission, provided the city would pay expenses. The city immediately decided to do so, but permission was suspended. Finally, 1863, the gymnasium was opened, but its examinations are not considered valid for state purposes.</div><div><br /></div>
<div>There are no Italian high schools in Pirano; Rovigno with 5000 Italian inhabitants; Monfalcone with 12,000 Italians.</div>
<div><br /></div><div>In Gorizia there were allowed Italian classes in the German gymnasium under the principalship of a Slovene, with the limitation of the number of pupils to 50.</div><div><br /></div><div>Italian primary schools in Trieste, all supported by the city, were founded in 1868, with 6819 pupils. In 1911 there were 21 schools with 16,470 pupils. Illiteracy has dropped from 43 to 14 per cent.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;"><b>Heroic Episodes in Fight for Schools</b></div><div><br /></div><div>At San Colombano, in Istria, 89 family heads were tried and sentenced to jail for insisting that they wanted an Italian school instead of a Slovene school.</div><div><br /></div><div>At Servola, a suburb of Trieste, in 1911 there used to come every morning a child of six years, Celestina Rosa, accompanied by three brothers, coming from Bagnoli, another village, having to walk every day four hours to come and go.</div><div><br /></div><div>In Trieste the government has forbidden the teaching of the history of Trieste itself.</div><div><br /></div>
<div>An order of the last Governor of Trieste, Prince Hohenlohe, dated June 24, 1913, forbids the town council of Trieste to give the names of Dante and Petrarca to two schools of which the city pays the entire expenses.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>The Church</b></div><div><br /></div><div>The Church is one of the most potent vehicles of the national agitation among the Slavs, and this is equally true of the Catholic Church as of the Orthodox.</div><div><br /></div><div>At present the diocese of Trieste has 290 priests, of which 190 are Slovenes. The Church has even tried to introduce Slav influence into the convents and monasteries. The priests at Daila, in Istria, who were all The Italians, are all Slav now. monastery of the Minor Observant, in Capodistria, is already partly filled with Croatian monks. Croatian nuns from Agram [Zagreb] have opened a school in Pola. The Slovene nuns of Cilli tried to open a school in Trieste, but they got badly tangled up in financial matters and the Government saved them from bankruptcy by buying their building for 900,000 kronen.</div><div><br /></div><div>On the other hand, the Italian friars of Pirano who had asked to open at their own expense a branch of their monastery in Pola, were refused the permission.</div>
<div><br /></div><div>In 1909 there was a Eucharistic Congress at Ragusa, in Dalmatia. 600 Croatian priests from Agram [Zagreb] went to Fiume to board a steamer for Ragusa and traversed the city marching on a front of four, like soldiers, with Croatian flags and singing war songs. As the steamer passed Zara, they renewed their demonstrations, shouting insults to the Italians of that city. Great tumult followed, with blows and pistol shots. The Slavs who were arrested were at once released, while the Italians who were arrested had to stay for several days in jail. And this was all for a religious ceremony.</div>
<div><br /></div><div>In Spalato, a man known to be of Italian sentiment died; the Croatian priest refused to assist him in his last moments, refused to open the church for the funeral, refused to allow him to be buried in a cemetery.</div><div><br /></div><div>In Istria, at Topolovatz, the priest, a man called Knavs, refused to bury an Italian girl, who was left for two days and two nights in her home.</div><div><br /></div><div>In Sterna the priest Nedeved refused the last rites to a carpenter of Uberton because he was Italian.</div><div><br /></div><div>At Lindaro, near Pisino, a Croatian priest refused to baptize a child because the father requested that the formula be said in Latin instead of Slovene.</div>
<div><br /></div><div>On October 28, 1913, the master of the Italian school of Sovignaco, in Istria, was tried before the court of Rovigno for “disturbing the functions of the Catholic religion for having, during the procession of St. Mark, made the Italian school children sing the litanies in Latin, while the priest Klun and the other believers were singing in Croatian.”</div><div><br /></div><div>In the diocese of Trieste the Italian priest of Roviano was suspended <i>a divinis</i> by the bishop for having refused to sing tantum ergo in Slav, while the Vatican orders it sung in Latin.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Courts</b></div>
<div><br /></div><div>From 1781 to 1895 proceedings were held in the language of the country, hence in Italian. Later Slovene wa
s introduced.</div><div><br /></div><div>In 1903, all hearings were held in Slovene, and, despite vigorous protests, there was no response from the Government and Slovene was imposed.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Elections</b></div>
<div><br /></div><div>A Jugo-Slav writer in a newspaper recently complained that in Trieste during the last elections, 14,000 Italian votes could elect four members to the <i>Reichsrat</i>, while 10,000 Slovene votes elected only one, giving this as an example of the favoritism of the Austrian Government toward the Italians. The writer, to begin with, forgot 9000 Socialist votes which are entirely Italian, because the Slav Socialists vote for their own people, and secondly forgot that in the present arrangement of majority representation, this fact is simply proof of the minority of the Slavs and nothing else.</div><div><br /></div><div>In Connecticut, for instance, there are five members of Congress, four of whom are Republican and one is Democratic, and yet the Democratic party polled some 75,000 votes against 86,000 of the Republican. But the Slavs would like to have majority representation where they are in the majority, and proportional representation where they are in the minority.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Register of Land Surveys</b></div><div><br /></div><div>The register is compiled with notes in Slovene, German and Croatian. The Diet proposed one in Italian with authentic Slovene translation but the Government refused.</div>
<div><br /></div><div>Zara: Italian register of land surveys (1914) was translated into Croatian and the names were changed.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>FIUME</b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">(From <i>Current History</i>, January, 1918)</div><div><br /></div><div>Fiume was just outside the terrain of evacuation; still, it has a predominating Italian population of 45,000. The Mayor was Italian, so was the Town Council. Armed bands of Jugo-Slavs under orders from the Jugo-Slav Council at Agram entered the town, forced the resignation of the Mayor and Town Council, and ordered them to take down the Italian flag and hoist the Jugo-Slav banner in its place. Gatherings of Italians to celebrate the Italian victory were dispersed by rifle and machinegun fire. Italian soldiers on the heights above the city looked on and saw their fellow countrymen thus terrorized and were powerless to help them until orders came from General Diaz for their take possession of Fiume and protect the Italians there. Meanwhile similar, although not so serious, Jugo-Slav demonstrations commander, General Raineri, to had taken possession of Fiume and Pola, where they had been suppressed by the respective military Governors, General Petitti and Admiral Cagni.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>[...]</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>DALMATIA</b></div><div><br /></div><div>November 1910: Court clerk called before disciplinary commission of the Court of Appeals of Cittavecchia to answer to the charges of:</div><div><br /></div><div>1. Leader (instructor) of an Italian music band.</div>
<div><br /></div><div>2. Had his daughter baptized in Italian.</div><div><br /></div><div>3. Had his daughter baptized in Mafalda.</div><div><br /></div><div>1914: Italian register of the survey of lands (<i>libro catasto</i>) translated into Croatian and names altered.</div><div><br /></div><div>The <i>Oesterreichische Rundschau</i> in Vienna, May 1, 1909, wrote:</div><div><blockquote>“We must act at Trieste as we did in Dalmatia; help the non-Italian propaganda in order decidedly to suppress the Italian element.”</blockquote><br /><br /><b>See also:</b><br /><a href="https://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2024/02/italys-case-against-jugo-slavs.html">Italy's Case Against the Jugo-Slavs</a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6653813795681370244.post-20273350989180784822024-02-25T12:20:00.003+01:002024-02-25T21:44:53.725+01:00Italy's Case Against the Jugo-Slavs(<i>Written by Felice Ferrero, taken from the journal “Italy Today: A Fortnightly Bulletin”, Volume 2, Issue 2, 1919</i>.)<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>An Address made by Dr. Felice Ferrero in answer to Mr. V. R. Savic at a Luncheon organized by the League for Free Nations.</b></div><div><br /></div><div><div>In order clearly to understand the Italian position in the so-called Adriatic question, we must state first what is the real political status at present of the Jugo-Slavs. This point has been brought out already several times in the press, but it is necessary to insist upon it because it has a good deal of bearing upon the whole question. As you doubtless know, the Jugo-Slav state does not exist; neither the United States, nor Great Britain, nor France, nor Italy, have recognized the Jugo-Slav state, although they have all expressed their sympathy with the Jugo-Slav aspirations. The Jugo-Slavs accuse Italy of being the real obstacle to such recognition and it is quite possible that such is the fact, but we shall see that there are many very good reasons for it.</div>
<div><br /></div><div>As things now stand, we have the old kingdom of Serbia, which is one of the Allies and will be represented at the peace conference. On the other hand we have a group of populations composed of Slovenes, Croats, Bosnians, Herzegovinians and Dalmatians who are part of an enemy country; who to the effects of international law are still an enemy population, and who are waiting for the peace congress to decide what shall be done with them. In this decision they, as well as the other parts of the Austro-German Empire dr, Germany, have no voice at all. It is for us, the Allied countries, and more precisely for the four Great Powers, to say what their fate shall be. There is no doubt that the verdict of the congress of peace will be that those people, in so far as they make up a compact national unit, shall join their Serbian kinsmen to form a greater state therein to enjoy a full national life, if their internal quarrels will allow. When, however, it comes to territories, where such people do not form a compact national unit, but are mixed with Italian populations, that is to say, to the Adriatic provinces, the question as to what should be done with such regions is already settled by the all too famous and much abused Treaty of London.</div><div><br /></div>
<div><br /></div>
<div><b>Validity of Treaty of London</b></div><div><br /></div>
<div>Before I go any further into the discussion of the Treaty of London, I should like to indulge in a few general considerations concerning the reception that the treaty has been given in the world at large. The Jugo-Slav agitators in this country and in Europe would like to give the impression that the treaty is null and void because it was a secret treaty, and this being the dawn of the wonderful era of democracy and people's brotherhood, secret treaties are not allowed. I should like to call your attention to the fact that, so far, such view has been expressed officially only by the Premier of Serbia and the Premier of Greece, two countries in which, as is unfortunately the case of most Balkanic countries, political good faith is usually held in very low esteem. As a matter of fact the treaty still exists and none of the signing powers have expressed any intention of not honoring it. The Minister of Foreign Affairs in Great Britain, Mr. Balfour, has solemnly declared in Parliament that any treaty bearing the signature of the British Government is sacred to Great Britain; and no opposition has arisen on the part of the French Government, although the Jugo-Slavs, by the very reprehensible game of stirring up ill feelings between allies in favor of an enemy, have succeeded in creating a certain current in their favor in part of the press of all countries.</div><div><br /></div><div>As for the United States, it is futile to say that the fact that it was not a party to the compact makes it free to help the cause of the enemy Croatians against allied Italy. If my information is correct the United States was informed of the existence of the treaty when it entered the war and raised no objection to it; then actually implicitly accepted it by sending troops to the Italian front. The number of American troops at the Italian front was, it is true, quite small; but again, if I am correctly informed, the American Government had decided to send, and Secretary Baker had ordered, very large contingents to the Italian front, when the order was suspended and withdrawn because of certain opposition which for the moment I need not discuss further, as this is not quite pertinent to the subject in hand.</div>
<div><br /></div><div>It is rather unpleasant to have to remind people of a debt of honor, because such things are supposed to be unnecessary among gentlemen. If anyone will say that, circumstances having changed, the signatures of France and England are no longer good, I shall not argue the question with him. I shall remind him that the war which devastated Europe was possible only because of an act of international bad faith on the part of Germany, which alone brought the intervention of England in the war; and also that the cause of the entrance of the United States in the war was not, as people often say, the championship of any principles of democracy but again an act of international bad faith on the part of Germany in not keeping her submarine agreement. International laws and relations are based on good faith, as there is no other possible force to enact international agreements; and it would be a sad league of nations, indeed, or a poor peace, indeed, that would begin with such an act of bad faith as the violation of a treaty.</div><div><br /></div>
<div><br /></div><div><b>The Slav's Threat of War</b></div>
<div><br /></div><div>The Serbian and Jugo-Slav agitators would like to have us believe that a settlement of the Adriatic question according to the Treaty of London would mean certain war in the future; in fact, they threaten us with war to the knife if we dare to think of it. I am quite sure that the Jugo-Slavs and their friends need not worry about possibilities of war. This peace, like every other peace, will have the germs of the next war in it, no matter what we do. Without going any further, Alsace-Lorraine will be sufficient excuse for a powerful Germany of the future to start trouble whenever she feels strong enough for it, not only because of national claims, but because of the very important fact that the transfer of Lorraine to France will have given to France the best iron deposits of Germany and 80 percent of the total iron production of Europe. And the rivalries of the small states which are rising all through Eastern and Central Europe, making of it an immense Balkanic peninsula, will be enough to give food for thought and occupation for armies for centuries to come, unless some way can be found of keeping them down.</div><div><br /></div><div>The threat of war on the part of Premier Vestnich, of Serbia, strikes me as either funny or pitiful, according to the point of view. We know very well that Serbia has a little army left — the army which Italy saved for her after the tragic retreat of Albania by transferring it to Corfu and then to Salonica — but it might be well to remind the Premier that all the manhood of military age of Croatia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Dalmatia and of Slovenia is held prisoner in Italy, and that Italy has been supplied by the collapse of the Austrian army, which was made up of one-third of Croatians, with enough guns, ammunitions, horses, motor trucks, airplanes, gasolene and ships to keep in order for a long time to come not only little Serbia, but greater Serbia, or a fellow many times her size. But the threat seems to me too absurd to consider it further, even as a jest.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>
<div><b>Conciliatory Faction in Italy</b></div><div><br /></div>
<div>The Treaty of London, then, stands as it is. The intemperance, however, of the Jugo-Slavs in putting forth their claims has stirred up a counter current of nationalism in Italy which goes much beyond the limits of the Treaty of London and claims, besides Fiume, the whole of Dalmatia, and, beyond, Ragusa and Cattaro. I should not be surprised if these claims were recognized by the peace congress, and if so, the Jugo-Slavs will have only to thank their own work for it.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Jugo-Slavs and their friends tried to make much of the fact of supposed dissension in the Italian public concerning the Treaty of London. The party of conciliation with the Jugo-Slavs, which the Jugo-Slavs have very wrongly interpreted as a party of renunciation, is headed by the <i>Corriere della Sera</i> of Milan. Inasmuch as I have belonged to the editorial staff of the <i>Corriere</i> since my college graduation and I am still connected with it, I may claim the privilege of giving you some exact information as to what the polemics started by the <i>Corriere</i> last fall exactly mean in this matter. The <i>Corriere</i> and its followers never meant to abandon the claims of Italy to Trieste, Gorizia, Gradisca and Istria; lately the <i>Corriere</i> has added Fiume to the claims of Italy, about which no discussion is even admitted. The <i>Corriere</i> said, however, that in view of the evident advantages of conciliation and friendly relations with the neighboring Slav state-to-be, it might be advisable to compromise on the question of Dalmatia by allowing the Croatians to control Dalmatia on condition, however, that the necessary guarantees be given for the protection of the Italian element living there. That was all.<br />
<br />And this is also the standpoint that I have supported in this country, strenuously enough to bring upon my head, on the part of the Italian press, the accusation of being a pro-Slav; but I must sincerely confess that given the tone of the Jugo-Slav agitation, I very much fear that no matter what the Italians might be willing to concede for the sake of conciliation, no conciliation is possible, and I doubt very much besides whether the arrangement suggested by this conciliatory party would be of any greater satisfaction to the Croatians than the intransigent behavior of Minister Sonnino. This party of conciliation, in fact, would require, as I said, absolute guarantees for the Italian element in Dalmatia, failing which they would approve of armed intervention to secure them.</div><div><br /></div><div>Since the Croatians of Dalmatia, short of a miracle, are not to be depended upon to respect other nationalities, as I shall show you later on the basis of documents, this would mean a clash between Italy and the future Jugo-Slav state within a very few years, and with such prospect in view I think it would be a safer proceeding to settle the matter now along the clearer, if apparently stiffer, lines of the Sonnino program. </div><div><br /></div>
<div><br /></div>
<div><b>Pact of Rome</b></div><div><br />
</div><div>There has been a tendency on the part of the Jugo-Slavs toward accusing Italy of, let us say, forgetfulness, because of that Pact of Rome of last winter which was supposed to have established an agreement between Italy and Slavs. I shall say, however, that that Pact of Rome expressly excluded any question of territorial boundaries and simply formulated a program of action by which the oppressed nationalities of Austria should co-operate in the destruction of the Austrian Empire. This was accomplished, but it is regrettable to say that while all the other oppressed nationalities did their part, the Croatians, Bosnians, Herzegovinians, Slovenes and Dalmatians did not; they fought with the Austrian Empire and for the Austrian Empire until the last, running out of the house and seeking shelter in the bosom of the Allies only when they heard the timbers of the roof crash over their heads. Under the circumstances, little consideration is due to them for the results.</div>
<div><br /></div><div>And now let us examine very briefly the arrangements of the Treaty of London, as far as they apply to the Adriatic. There are two separate parts of the Adriatic provinces which the Treaty of London gives to Italy; one is the northern part including Gorizia, Gradisca, Carinthia, part of Carniola, Trieste and Istria — to these now Fiume has added itself by its own plebiscite. The other is Dalmatia.</div>
<div><br /></div><div>As far as the first part is concerned, I beg to state that no differences of opinion exist in the mind of any Italian; that part is occupied, will be retained, and no discussion is at all admitted by any Italian party of any kind. Only as a matter of extreme courtesy, I will allow myself to take up a few arguments which may be of interest in this question.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Population of Disputed Area</b></div><div><br /></div><div>The reason why Italy insists on the possession of these regions is twofold. First, because the country is inhabited by a large Italian population, amounting to about one-half of the total, which has been long persecuted and oppressed by Austria, especially through the medium of the Slovene population. It might be of interest to you to know that irredentism in Trieste is a matter of comparatively recent times. ... With the advance of Italy toward the East and the freeing from Austrian dominion of Lombardy and Venice, Austria entirely reversed its policy and began a most determined attempt to stifle the Italian character of Trieste and neighboring countries by helping and encouraging the national invasion of the Slovene population. A state of political tension followed which I shall describe later, and resulted in a Slovene oppression of the Italian city and the development of a powerful feeling of irredentism in its Italian population.</div><div><br /></div><div>The case of Fiume is even more conspicuous, as Fiume has always been a free city strongly animated by feelings of local freedom. The irredentism of Fiume which led to its declaration of union with Italy practically dates from the declaration of the war and the regime of violence which under the protection of the Austrian Government was instituted in the city by the Croatian element. Such feeling is now so strong that the Mayor of Fiume solemnly declared in Rome that should Fiume be assigned by the peace conference to Croatia, the entire population of Fiume would rather migrate than stay, and other officials of the city, not constrained by the necessity of keeping parliamentary language, put it more bluntly by saying that the Fiumans would rather go to hell than be with Croatia.</div>
<div><br /></div><div>A curious thing is to be noted here. I said that the population of those regions is about half Italian and half Slav. According to the Slavic figures it is exactly 439,413 Slavs and 354,595 Italians. It must be remarked, however, that these figures are based on a revised census of 1910 for the city of Trieste — an interesting instance, this, which I shall explain to you later — the first census taken that year giving Trieste 24,000 more Italians and therefore 24,000 fewer Slavs — that is with a shift of 48,000 in the proportions of the two parts of the population. This shift would bring the total Slav population down to 415,000, and the total Italian up to 378,000. If we add to these 35,000 Italians and the 10,000 Slavs of Fiume, we should reach the final figures of 413,000 Italians against 425,000 Slavs, which figure, however, includes a few thousand Germans and Hungarians of Trieste, Fiume and Pola. In other words, the population is about equally divided.</div><div><br /></div><div>The curious thing is that the Jugo-Slavs and their friends, while they accuse Italy of imperialism for its intention to incorporate 425,000 Slavs in this region, apparently think nothing of the fact that the Jugo-Slavs would like to include 413,000 Italians in their own territory.</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>The facts on which the whole question of the population hinges, Italians and Jugo-Slavs substantially agree upon. The Jugo-Slavs admit that the majority of the cities is Italian, and the Italians agree that the majority of the country[side] population is Slav; in what exact proportions it really does not matter. We also agree that it is practically impossible to separate the cities and the hinterland. The question then is: shall the cities go with the country, or the country with the cities? In the world of hypothesis the Italian claim that the country must go with the cities is as good as the Slav claim that the cities must go with the country.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Frontier Question</b></div>
<div><br /></div><div>But the Italians have some other and better reasons in their favor, chief of which is the protection of their frontiers. By extending the boundaries to the main divide of the Alps in Southern Tyrol and in the East, Italy has secured for herself absolute protection against any possibility of foreign invasion. The war has proved that no army, no matter how powerful, can cross a well defended mountain chain. The Russians failed in the Carpathians, the French and Germans failed respectively in the Vosges, the Austrians failed on the Trentino side of Italy and the Italians failed on the eastern side. The only chance for the invasion that devastated part of Italy for a year was exactly through the open door of the East. You may rest assured that Italy, having now conquered by force of arms, the eastern door to her house, will not relinquish it.</div><div><br /></div><div>[...]</div><div><br /></div>
<div><br /></div><div><b>Suppression of Italians in Dalmatia</b></div>
<div><br /></div><div>As to Dalmatia, the story is a little bit different, but only apparently so. It is true that the overwhelming majority of the population is Croatian, with the exception of the city of Zara, which is Italian-note the curious fact that the capital of a Slavic province has remained Italian in spite of all things done to change it but it will not be amiss to remember that Dalmatia was for three centuries part of the Republic of Venice, that from 1815 to 1866, during the first part of the Austrian occupation, Dalmatia was still connected with the provinces of Lombardy and Venice, that Italian was the official language of the courts, of all public offices and of the schools. Until about 1870 Italians and Slavs in Dalmatia lived in very good harmony, the Slavs accepting the influence of Italian civilization, going to Padua and not to Agram [Zagreb] for their college studies, and generally recognizing the historical necessity of the Italian character of Dalmatia.</div>
<div><br /></div><div>It might interest you to know that Nicolò Tommaseo, a Dalmatian who wrote (in Italian) a lyric to the Greater Serbia which would come in the future, and who became one of the greatest grammarians of Italy, wrote in 1837 the following lines to Cesare Cantù: “I am Italian because I was born of Venetian subjects, because my first language was Italian, because my great-grandmother's father came to Dalmatia from the valleys of Bergamo. Dalmatia virtually is more Italian than Bergamo, and I at heart am more Italian than Italy.” And let me also quote from a Croatian newspaper of Spalato, the <i>Nase Jedinsto</i> of December, 1910: “We no longer study Italian and great is the danger that comes from this, especially among the young people.”</div>
<div><br /></div><div>Affairs changed in Dalmatia, at the same time as in the north and for the same reason, in about 1870, and in the new generations of Croatians, helped and egged on by the Austrian Government, grew the fierce, almost savage, spirit of aggressive nationalism that had only one program: destroy everything, and with all means, that was not Croatian. With the help of the Government they suppressed Italian as the official language in offices, they suppressed the Italian schools, they suppressed the Italian courts, they even forced Italians that have to do with courts to stand proceedings in Croatian without any interpreter, and to have all documents concerning property, like mortgages, transfers, etc., written and registered in Croatian. It is a very easy argument, of course, on the part of the Croatians to say that we must deal with conditions as they are now and not as they were. That is the comfortable argument by which Germany tried to persuade the world that the occupation of Belgium was no longer to be discussed; but it is not unnatural that many in Italy should want not only to recall a past which dates back only about forty years—about the time of the Alsace-Lorraine occupation-h also investigate the methods with which some of the results of the present day have been achieved. I do not see, therefore, that the matter of the present make-up of the population of Dalmatia should be any obstacle to the Italian occupation.</div>
<div><br /></div><div>Italy, on the other hand, has some important reasons, also of a military nature, for the occupation of those lands, and especially of Sebenico, which is the best harbor of the Adriatic after Cattaro. Slavs accuse Italy of wanting to make of the Adriatic an Italian lake. That, however, is not the idea of Italy. What Italy wants to do is to make the Adriatic a sea in which there is no foreign navy to threaten her coasts, nor any possibility of such a foreign navy being developed; with the occupation of the harbors of Pola, Sebenico, possibly Cattaro, and the control of the entrance to the Adriatic through the occupation of Valona, such result is very definitely and positively obtained. “But whoever threatens Italy?” say our Croatian neighbors, who alternately play the role of the lamb and the lion according to the effect desired. The Croatians with their Serbian friends have struck such a belligerent tone that any measure of protection on the part of Italy would be, by this very fact, justified in the eyes of all peoples.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>
<div><b>The Russian Peril</b></div><div><br /></div><div>That is not all. We come here to a very interesting argument, which has to do with the present situation of of Central and Eastern Europe and the possibilities of their future. For one thing I read in the book of my esteemed opponent, Vladislav R. Savic, the following passage: “It is of no small concern to Italy and the world which road the future Russian policy will take; will she develop like a sincere, broad-minded, peaceful and tolerant democracy, or be eaten by the cancerous desire of world domination? ... In vain Italians would say tomorrow that imperial Russia had consented to their occupation of those Slav lands ... Unable to hinder the occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria, Prince Gorchakov, at the Congress of Berlin is reported to have said to Count Andrassy: 'Well, go in, but Bosnia and Herzegovina will prove to be the tomb of Austria-Hungary. Are the words of Prince Gorchakov to Count Andrassy no warning to Italy?'”</div>
<div><br /></div><div>Here we see our Jugo-Slav neighbors threatening us the resurrection and the vengeance of Russia. But, gentlemen, the possibility of Russia's reaching the Adriatic shore through the lands of the Southern Slavs, acting either as her allies or as her vassals, was exactly one of the reasons that prompted the claims of Italy at the time of the Treaty of London, a reason which the contracting parties then and most writers now acknowledged to be very good. The danger is then still impending, it seems. Why should the Italian policy change, then, if such is the condition?</div>
<div><br />
</div><div>But there is something more that I should like to call to your attention.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>
<div><b>Revival of Austrian Empire</b></div>
<div><br /></div><div>The Jugo-Slavs will be a small power and to Italy, at least, an inoffensive state, it is said. Granted. But there is something behind and beyond the Jugo-Slav state that must be considered. I have recently, in a statement to the press, accused the Croatians of making Austrian propaganda by their trying to stir up trouble and ill feeling among the Allies. This, gentlemen, is not idle talk, is not chasing of spooks. The revival of the Austrian Empire in the original form, only enlarged, is far from being a remote contingency. We heard a few days ago President Masaryk of Czecho-Slovakia openly declare that one of the purposes of the foreign policy of Czecho-Slovakia would be the formation of a Danube Confederation, to which the Germans of Austria will be also admitted, if they so desire, the center and directing power of such federation to be in Prague. Gentlemen, this is nothing more and nothing less than Austria as it was, with the addition of Serbia; the only difference being the ingenuous belief of President Masaryk that if the Germans of Austria are admitted to the confederation, the Slavs of Czecho-Slovakia could even for one moment retain the controlling position in the confederation as against the active organizing and executive powers of the Germans of Vienna.</div><div><br /></div><div>[...]</div><div><br /></div>
<div>To come now to a conclusion, the situation is really a very simple one. It is not possible to dispose of the Adriatic coast without putting Slavs under Italian control or Italians under Slav control; it is only a matter of who should get first consideration. That Italy has the right to this first consideration is something that very few people will doubt in view of the facts and of the considerations already stated. I have been myself a partisan of the conciliatory policy suggested by the Corriere della Sera, as I stated before, and in this sense I have spoken at Columbia, at City College of New York, in cities outside of New York, and have written on many occasions; but I fear me that in view of the attitude assumed by our Croatian enemies, and I regret to add by our Serbian friends, a conciliation will be It difficult to reach. very seems to me that the cry which the Jugo-Slavs are trying to pass for the exultant voice of a new-born nation is nothing more than the ugly growl of a dog who sees a fat chunk of meat taken away from him and knows besides that the big stick of his master is no longer there to defend him in the enjoyment of his improperly acquired meat. I still hope against hope, but I must say the Adriatic question is a question that concerns Italy and the Jugo-Slavs — nobody else — and the next move for a good understanding must come from the Jugo-Slav side and in the proper frame of mind, that is of modesty and repentance; as far as I know Italy has done everything that she could do.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>See also:</div><div><a href="https://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2024/02/documents-on-austrian-and-slav.html">Documents on Austrian and Slav Oppression of Italians</a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6653813795681370244.post-79624799240625394432024-02-22T12:38:00.005+01:002024-02-25T21:55:13.976+01:00Dalmatia by Dr. Roberto Ghiglianovich<div>(<i>Written by <span style="text-align: center;">Roberto Ghiglianovich</span>, taken from “The Journal of American History”, Vol. 13, No. 1, 1919</i>.)</div><div><br /></div><div><i>The Honorable Roberto Ghiglianovich is the representative of the Italians of Dalmatia. For the last thirty years he has been a Member of the Dalmatian Diet; he is a former President of the Political Association of the Italians of Dalmatia and of the Board of Directors of the National League for their Italian schools. During the War he was a Member of the Board of Directors of the Political Society of Unredeemed Italians in Rome. A man of his calibre would naturally be a shining target for the Austrian police, who hounded him ceaselessly and finally triumphed in an order for his arrest. This he forestalled by his escape to Italy in March, 1915.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>It is a constant source of grief to the Italian Dalmatians to recall how near they had come to attaining their goal of unity with Italy when Garibaldi, in 1866, had actually planned the expedition for their liberation, in which he was supported by Premier Ricasoli. Garibaldi conceived of this as a continuation of the general programme of Italian unity and freedom. The unfortunate events that followed cut short the cherished hopes of Garibaldi and his Dalmatian brothers. The latter always assumed that, in any martial activities for liberation and Italian unity, they were to take their share of dangers and hardships equally with the Italians of the Kingdom. They proved this gloriously in 1848, in 1859, and 1866. The following clear statement of Dr. Ghiglianovich is full of inevitable suggestion.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: right;"><i>– The Editors.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>DALMATIA</b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">By Doctor Roberto Ghiglianovich</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">Member of the Dalmatian Diet</div><div><br /></div><div><div>After making my escape to Italy in March, 1915, I had the joy of returning to my native country with Admiral Millo, the hero of the Dardanelles, whom the Italian Government had named Governor of Dalmatia. I landed with him first at Sebenico and then at Zara. The two cities, and the Dalmatian Islands, had been occupied a few days before by the Italian land and sea forces. When we landed, the Italians at Sebenico received us with manifestations of joy. I found my native city, Zara, in ecstasy after the signing of the Armistice in November, 1918. Its streets were all bedecked with thousands of Italian flags. When the Italian battleship arrived, with the Commander who had occupied Zara several hours before the signing of the Armistice, the entire population of the city gathered along the shore. Young and old, women and children, knelt devoutly, blessing Italy, their liberator!</div><div><br /></div><div>When Admiral Millo spoke to the crowd from the balcony of the Municipal Palace of Zara, public demonstration knew no bounds. The entire population swore eternal allegiance to the Mother-Country, Italy, and to her glorious and victorious King. The Italians of the Dalmation Islands received the Italian forces of occupation with the same joyful acclaim. Thanks to the provisions made by the Italian Governor, after the first difficulties of feeding the population were overcome, and after dealing with Bolsheviki soldiers and prisoners whom Austria scattered through the interior of the country, life assumed its normal aspect. Food is plentiful there, and land and sea communications are being reestablished. Public administration and schools have resumed their regular work. The conduct of the troops of occupation is correct in every respect. Even the rural Slavs of the interior are receptive and appreciative.</div><div><br /></div><div>But the joy of all the liberated Italians is far from unalloyed. The chief city of Dalmatia, Spalato — the city which bears so long and sad a history of struggles for the triumph of Italian sentiment in Dalmatia — has not been occupied by the Italian Army and Navy. It was not included in the line of the occupation of Dalmatia as traced by the conditions of the Treaty of Armistice between Italy and Austria-Hungary. At Spalato there is now a provisional Croatian government, acting under directions from the National Committee of Sagabria [Zagreb]. With unheard-of violence, they suppress every demonstration on the part of the large and important Italian element of the city. Italian and foreign newspapers have published for American and Allied public opinion news of the outrages committed against the Italians at Spalato. Their tragic fate can easily be foreseen if their city should not be reunited to Italy as Zara, Sebenico, and the Dalmatian Islands will be.</div><div><br /></div><div>As an evidence of the persistently Italian character of Spalato, and of the ardent longing of the Italians at Spalato to have their city joined to Italy, the following incident will be enlightening. Only two days after the signing of the Armistice, about 5,000 Italians in Spalato became members of the National Association of the “Dante Alighieri” of Rome, which, since its foundation about thirty years ago, has been ceaseless in its efforts to uphold the sacred Italian aspirations among which, just like the Trentino, Venezia Giulia, Trieste, and Fiume, Dalmatia has always largely figured.</div><div><br /></div><div>Dalmatia has been as Italian as Rome and Venice for 2,000 years. It was Roman up to the time of the fall of the Roman Empire; then it constituted itself into free communities, thoroughly Latin and Italian in character. It belonged to the Republic of Venice from 1409 to 1797, in which year it was given by Napoleon to Austria, together with Venice and Istria.</div><div><br /></div><div>In spite of the barbarous methods employed by Austria from 1866 to the day of her disruption, in order to bring about forcibly a preponderance of Croatian population in Dalmatia, the Italian sentiment there is very much alive. This fact should be recognized and given serious consideration. Dalmatia has nothing of the Balkan and Eastern character. One has only to see its cities and be genuinely in touch with its populations in order to be convinced that Rome and Venice did not influence them externally only, but left indelible marks of Italian thought and culture upon them. Italy, therefore, has not only a legal claim, but a spiritual hold over the country.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>See also:</b></div><div><a href="https://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2024/02/fiume-by-dr-gino-antoni.html">Fiume by Dr. Gino Antoni</a></div><div><a href="https://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2024/02/trieste-by-dr-giorgio-pitacco.html">Trieste by Giorgio Pitacco</a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6653813795681370244.post-15029655740568331352024-02-22T12:28:00.005+01:002024-02-23T08:08:10.832+01:00Fiume by Dr. Gino Antoni(<i>Written by <span style="text-align: center;">Gino Antoni, t</span>aken from “The Journal of American History”, Vol. 13, No. 1, 1919</i>.)<br /><br /> <div><i>The Honourable Gino Antoni was born in Fiume and for the last twenty years has had but one purpose in life: to aid his fellow Italians in restoring their city to its motherland. In 1914 and the following year a goodly number of impetuous, daring Fiumans, with loyalty in their hearts and the glorious vision of union with Italy before their minds, braved the dangers of crossing the frontiers, for the joy of fighting beside the Italians. On the Isonzo and in the Alps they fought and died, happy in a death that found them on their own soil at last. Volcanic feeling was not only finding expression on the battle-fields, but among the civilian Fiumans who had succeeded in escaping from Magyar tyranny, and among those of their fellow-citizens who were in Italy before the War broke out. To be ready for the long-prayed-for hour, they formed a National Committee for Fiume and the Quarnaro. The cup for which they had bravely lived and bravely died was at their very lips, but it proved to be filled with the waters of Tantalus. But the bitterness of disappointment only whetted their determination, leaving their spirit uncrushed, undaunted. Doctor Antoni speaks for himself and his fellow-citizens. </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: right;"><i>– The Editors.</i></div><br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><b>FIUME</b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: center;">By Doctor Gino Antoni</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">Vice-Mayor of Fiume and Member of the National Council of the City</div></div><div><br /></div><div>For the last twenty years my fellow-citizens and I have been fighting for the cause of the redemption of Fiume. During the War, I was one of those put on trial for implacable Irredentism. How I escaped the gallows only adds another to the list of unexplained miracles. Now I have come to America to make the true voice of my city heard, and to make it clear in my official capacity that Fiume craves to be united to Italy. Fiume is Italian by the blood that flows in her veins, the words of her mouth, and the burning desire of her heart!</div><div><br /></div><div>Fiume has always fought against foreign oppression. She was a part of Hungary, but as a “separate body”. Hungary was composed of three states: Hungary proper, Croatia, and Fiume. The victory of the Italian Army severed this union and Fiume regained her independence. On the 30th of October, 1918, four days before Austria signed the Armistice, Fiume unanimously declared her union with Italy, thus repeating her own history. For in 1779 she fought against the proposed annexation to Croatia, and in 1868 obtained recognition of her peculiar position as a free and independent city, united to Hungary in a temporary way, but a state in herself.</div><div><br /></div><div>In so far as her self-determination is concerned, she counts on the sympathetic encouragement of America. In Fiume all the Mayors, all the Deputies, the Members of the Municipal Council, of the Chamber of Commerce, and of the Courts, have always been Italian. This being the case, they think themselves free to dispose of their own fate and who can deny them the right of joining their Mother-Country?</div><div><br /></div><div>We hear people say that if Fiume is united to Italy, the populations of the interior will not have an outlet to the sea. This is not true. Jugo-Slavia has excellent natural harbors between Buccari and Carlopago. It is not at all necessary to sacrifice the purely Italian character of Fiume in order to give an outlet to the interior. It is interesting to recall that before the War the commerce of Croatia at Fiume was only 7% of the total commercial output, the rest of the traffic belonging to Hungary. We are not enemies of the Jugo-Slavs, unless they invade our territory. Near Fiume they have the beautiful city of Susak which they may easily and naturally develop and enlarge. If we can each live within our own boundaries, peace and friendship will naturally follow.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Mayor, the President of the National Council, and the Deputy of Fiume to the Hungarian Parliament were received in Paris by President Wilson, to whom the situation was clearly explained and the justice of our national aspirations demonstrated. President Wilson and the American delegates expressed themselves as profoundly impressed with their significance: it was even triumphantly reported that the silent Colonel House lifted his voice in their favor.</div><div><br /></div><div>Fiume has a population of 35,000 native Italians. This population rules its own city, and the will of the citizens of Fiume must be seriously considered. We want to be Italians and Italy wants us to be Italians. We are like brothers who are at last reunited after centuries of suffering and struggles.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>See also:</b></div><div><a href="https://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2024/02/dalmatia-by-dr-roberto-ghiglianovich.html">Dalmatia by Dr. Roberto Ghiglianovich</a></div><div><a href="https://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2024/02/trieste-by-dr-giorgio-pitacco.html">Trieste by Giorgio Pitacco</a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6653813795681370244.post-88943270566693638262024-02-22T12:10:00.004+01:002024-02-22T12:39:47.656+01:00Trieste by Dr. Giorgio Pitacco<div>(<i>Written by <span style="text-align: center;">Giorgio Pitacco, t</span>aken from “The Journal of American History”, Vol. 13, No. 1, 1919</i>.)</div><div><br /></div><div><i>The Honourable Giorgio Pitacco, a Member of the Municipal Council of Trieste, was a former Deputy to the Parliament at Vienna. He was thus in a position for close observation and first-hand knowledge of the Austrian intrigue for crushing the Italian soul out of Trieste and Dalmatia. From 1900 to 1910 he watched the Austrians driving human hordes of Slovenes and Croats into Trieste — solely to outnumber the Italian census. Laibach [Ljubljana] was the centre of this Austrian activity which actually subsidized its hirelings of Slovene business men, agents, and tradesmen to emigrate into essentially Italian cities, especially Trieste. This is the true explanation of the sudden disproportionate increase of the Slav element in the immediate environs of Trieste.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Doctor Pitacco was sent to America by the Political Association of Unredeemed Italians as their President. This association is composed of all those from the Unredeemed Provinces who succeeded in escaping to Italy during the War. It has over 10,000 members from Trieste, Istria, Trentino, Fiume, and Dalmatia. Among them are eleven Deputies to the Parliament at Vienna, thirty-five Deputies to the Provincial Diets, and fifty Mayors. The name of the Association explains itself; it was formed to crystallize the national determination of the Unredeemed Provinces.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: right;"><i>– The Editors.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>TRIESTE</b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: center;">By Doctor Giorgio Pitacco</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">Municipal Councillor of Trieste; Former Deputy to the Austrian Parliament</div></div><div><br /></div><div>We have come to America in this period in which the future of our Unredeemed Country is to be decided, to implore the support of the generous American people. America, who, like Italy, entered the War of its own accord, for liberty and justice, will surely not permit the gravest kind of injustice to be perpetuated in separating from their Mother-Country provinces which always were, are, and are determined to remain, Italian.</div><div><br /></div><div>Trieste, like the rest of Istria, as a sign of protest, refused to send representatives to the Austrian Parliament, in the hope that some day they might be able to send them to the Italian Parliament. The Provincial Diet of Istria, when called upon to elect its Deputies to the Parliament of Vienna in 1867, replied, "Not one," and dissolved the meeting. After universal suffrage was introduced, the Italians were obliged to participate in the political elections and send their Deputies, in order to defend their national existence and their economic interests.</div><div><br /></div><div>After 1866, Austria, with the motive of depriving Italy of every claim to the territory along the Adriatic Sea, which had always been Italian, began a systematic plan of destruction of the indigenous Italian element, in which enterprise she received the effective support of the Croatians and Slovenes. All the Government offices were entrusted to the Slavs, to the exclusion of the Italians. In Trieste, for example, a city with a majority of 200,000 Italians in a population of 250,000, the whole personnel of the Department of Post, Railroads, Judiciary, Ports, and Customs, was Slav. The employees were sent from Carniola, Carintia, Stiria, and from other provinces that had nothing in common with the city of Trieste, either in language or customs. In one day alone they transported 700 families of Croatian and German railroad men, aggregating 5,000 persons in all, to Trieste. This system, which was carried out further by the order that the Italians should be deported for every small offense, was intended to secure for the Austrian Government a preponderant number of Slavs who had been taught to antagonize the Italians. For the same purpose the census was compiled, using figures so evidently false that the Central Committee of Vienna could not explain the sudden reduction of the Italian population from 78.27% to 62.31%, compared to an increase of 100% of the Slav population. This Committee, therefore, had to admit that the census was not reliable.</div><div><br /></div><div>In spite of all this, the Italian character of Trieste was ardently maintained through the many Italian schools for which the community of Trieste alone paid an annual sum of over two and a half million crowns.</div><div><br /></div><div>Trieste and Istria, which form a geographic whole, have always loyally demonstrated their great attachment to Italy, especially during this War. Many thousands of men from Trieste, Istria, Fiume, and Dalmatia volunteered in the Italian Army. Of these, hundreds died in action and eight were decorated with the gold medal for extraordinary acts of heroism. All these volunteers faced a double death: that on the battlefield, and that on the gallows, if they were captured, as in the case of Nazario Sauro from Istria, Francesco Riamondo from Spalato, and Cesare Battisti from Trento.</div><div><br /></div><div>In the Parliament at Vienna, the Italian Deputies have held memorable debates. The one in defense of the municipal autonomy of Trieste in 1906, against the decree which deprived the city of its administrative independence, was particularly famous. Not a single one of the representatives of the various other peoples which formed the Austro-Hungarian Empire supported the Italians, with the exception of the Roumanians, who upheld them in their fight against this arbitrary act of the Government.</div><div><br /></div><div>This war has brought into high relief the utter vileness of the reactionary and autocratic Government of Vienna. It, alas, is not yet obliterated, since it survives in the hatred of other peoples who are trying to reorganize themselves on the spoils of Austria.</div><div><br /></div><div>Throughout the War, the Italian people have displayed wonderful qualities, on the battlefield and at home. A people whose wounded soldiers requested the physicians to attend to the enemy first, because they were more seriously wounded, whose same soldiers offered their own bread to their prisoners, because they knew them to be more hungry, are a people who can look the future straight in the face and await the triumph of Justice over every wicked intrigue.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>See also:</b></div><div><a href="https://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2024/02/fiume-by-dr-gino-antoni.html">Fiume by Dr. Gino Antoni</a></div><div><a href="https://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2024/02/dalmatia-by-dr-roberto-ghiglianovich.html">Dalmatia by Dr. Roberto Ghiglianovich</a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6653813795681370244.post-67900433958588653822022-10-18T13:48:00.007+02:002023-05-28T13:21:13.930+02:00Horror in Slovenia: Over 3,000 Bodies Discovered<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgShxY0ZhPTDoB8I8xnMimXeMnMjkO9MpHP4hMBoBA23fPFWdDwe4NZvJnuhYRd6hVMfuPemf0wsf64gXrek1Ph6xXecLHcsn0vujs160_LkickjMmFw2XzbQ90xK22DFdbUb8bqa7CGds9RWydEELa-Q8yYUMRqc_LZ_jWD_9OU-33GdHQbWt4IGDL/s961/Macesnova%20Gorica.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="710" data-original-width="961" height="283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgShxY0ZhPTDoB8I8xnMimXeMnMjkO9MpHP4hMBoBA23fPFWdDwe4NZvJnuhYRd6hVMfuPemf0wsf64gXrek1Ph6xXecLHcsn0vujs160_LkickjMmFw2XzbQ90xK22DFdbUb8bqa7CGds9RWydEELa-Q8yYUMRqc_LZ_jWD_9OU-33GdHQbWt4IGDL/w383-h283/Macesnova%20Gorica.jpg" width="383" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Skeletal remains of massacred victims at Macesnova Gorica, Slovenia</b></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div>In September 2022 a team of speleologists and anthropologists investigating the <i>foiba</i> of Macesnova Gorica, in Slovenia, reported that they had identified more than 3,000 bodies belonging to victims massacred by the Yugoslav Partisans of Communist dictator Josip Broz Tito.<div><br /></div><div>These were victims of the Kočevski Rog Massacre. In truth only a fraction of the victims, as the total number of people killed in this massacre could be as high as 30,000 people, buried in multiple different locations. This most recent investigation at the Macesnova Gorica site resulted in the recovery of over 3,000 skeletal remains.</div><div><br /></div><div>The bodies are mostly of adult men, but with a high percentage of children, namely young boys between the ages of 13 and 17. They are said to be primarily Slovenian civilians, though the presence of other nationalities – including Italians and Croats – can not be excluded.</div><div><div><br /></div><div>The victims were arrested in May 1945 by Tito's Partisans and detained in the village of Šentvid, near Ljubljana, after the war had already ended. Between June 9 and June 15 they were brought to Macesnova Gorica and dumped into deep pits known as <i>foibe</i>. According to the team, no less than 30 bodies were discovered in isolated tunnels, indicating that they had been thrown alive into the abyss and attempted to escape by dragging themselves into small openings of the crevice, only to die a slow and agonizing death beneath the earth's surface.</div><div><br />
Based on the experts’ analysis of the remains, as many as 500 bodies had been dismembered as a result of explosives thrown onto the pile of bodies by the Yugoslav Partisans, in an attempt to kill the still-breathing victims and cause a collapse of the cave's walls in order to cover up the bodies.<div>
<br />On September 28, 2022 the Bishop of Novo Mesto and President of the Slovenian Bishops’ Conference Andrej Saje visited the horrific site.</div><div><div><br />
Visibly shaken, he stated the following after his visit:
<blockquote>“<i>I am deeply disturbed by the criminal acts that have been carried out here, and I express my expectation that the State and responsible authorities will ensure that all those who were violently murdered during and after World War II receive a dignified burial and have a place in the nation's historical memory</i>.”</blockquote>The largest cemetery in Slovenia's capital, Žale Cemetery, as well as the municipality of Ljubiana itself, have already rejected any notion of hosting the remains of the victims. This is quite reflective of a country that still refuses to come to terms with its past. Denialism of crimes and justification of brutalities is unfortunately very common in this region of Europe.<br />
<br />
This is far from the only skeleton in Slovenia's closet. The country is home to some of the largest mass graves in Europe, known as “silenced mass graves” (<i>zamolčana grobišča</i>) because for decades their existence was concealed from the public.</div><div><br /></div><div>It is estimated that in total there are over 700 different sites where Tito's Communist partisans killed, ‘infoibed’ or disposed of their victims’ bodies in the period between May-September 1945. What has been uncovered at Macesnova Gorica is merely <i>one</i> of the hundreds of mass graves, connected to but <i>one</i> of innumerable massacres carried out by the Yugoslav Partisans.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Slovene-Yugoslav partisans also slaughtered thousands of Italians in the <i>Foibe Massacres</i>. They chased thousands more Italian civilians out of their homes in Istria and Julian Venetia, before repopulating the territory with Yugoslav settlers. Capodistria (<i>Koper</i>), the 5th largest city in Slovenia, was 92% Italian in 1900; now the Italians are less than 5% of the population, owing to the genocide conducted by those who today are still exalted as ‘heroes’ and ‘liberators’ in Slovenia.</div><div>
<br />
Slovenia is not yet prepared to admit or acknowledge how it treated its own people, let alone admit the role it played in the horrific crimes and ethnic cleansing perpetrated against the Italian population who lived in these lands since time immemorial – since before the Slovenes themselves did.<div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">Sources:</span></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://triestecafe.it/it/news/politica/orrore-in-slovenia-riesumati-3-000-corpi-delle-vittime-dei-partigiani-titini-del-giugno-1945-dall-abisso-di-macesnova-gorica-16-ottobre-2022.html" target="_blank">Trieste Cafe - Orrore in Slovenia, riesumati 3.000 corpi delle vittime dei partigiani titini del giugno 1945 dall'abisso di Macesnova Gorica (16 ottobre 2022)</a></span></li></ul><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://nova24tv.si/lokalno/ogrin-ob-koncu-izkopa-pobitih-v-macesnovi-gorici-v-kocevskem-rogu-brezno-ki-je-skrivalo-to-strahoto-je-zdaj-odprto-in-prazno" target="_blank">Nova24TV - Ogrin ob koncu izkopa pobitih v Macesnovi gorici v Kočevskem rogu: “Brezno, ki je skrivalo to strahoto, je zdaj odprto in prazno” (15. 10. 2022)</a></span></li></ul><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://nova24tv.si/lokalno/kocevski-rog-grozljiva-odkritja" target="_blank">Nova24TV - Kočevski rog: Grozljiva odkritja (29. 9. 2022)</a></span></li></ul></div><div><br /></div><div><h2 class="image-gallery-title">Image Gallery</h2>
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<div class="title">Containers holding the skeletal remains of over 3,000 victims</div>
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<div class="title">Skulls of the victims</div>
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<div class="title">Investigator collecting the ekeletal remains of the victims</div>
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<div class="title">Inside the deep pits of Macesnova Gorica, Slovenia</div>
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<div><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6653813795681370244.post-5636623683702134442022-08-10T21:39:00.007+02:002022-10-17T21:47:47.778+02:00 Italy and the Balkans: The Problem of Dalmatia<div>(<i>Written by Ferruccio Bonavia, taken from “The Near East”, Volume 13, 1917</i>.)<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="#" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="260" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb_ekgaXCAi0aNDD7YBK_WvmxAAhQxO_DxbgH1oQIUrwNHvhkrWtQTwRfyPrU-0x-cfa0UZp1XxaAHmyeoE6hQsYUXrTa4vXWltMzYzSlZfyIVF_gTkzqZL_lD8HUpNXQdB-R_iA0_tMRj3qvjk8qHB8Ztq1Pyk4xoY5FJM4N98DB7LQ8pIN71A64V/w372-h260/Tra%C3%B9%20centro%20storico.jpg" width="372" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Traù — Former Italian city in Dalmatia</b></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><i>With a view to enabling our readers to see both sides of the controversy between the Southern Slavs and the Italians regarding the future of Dalmatia, we have asked Signor F. Bonavia to state the Italian case. This he has undertaken to do, and we publish below the first of his articles:</i><br /><br /><br /><b>Italy and the Balkans: The Problem of Dalmatia</b><br /><br />There seems to be a general, if not clearly-defined, impression that the claims of Italy to her unredeemed provinces on the eastern shores of the Adriatic are based more or less on a very recent imperialistic policy, and that their attainment would be a repayment for the help given by Italy in the present war, entailing gross injustice to other races. Fiume is spoken of as a Hungarian town, although the Magyars are at most only a twelfth of the population. One writer, obviously honest and eager to deal fairly with the subject, suggested a little while ago that Trieste should become, at the end of the war, an international city; another, less unbiassed, perhaps, but equally misinformed, suggested that Austria be given a “chance” in the future partition of the Adriatic. Austria has had her chance; and this state of mind, this uncertainty, is the direct result of the policy through which Austria wished to justify her possessions in the Adriatic in face of the democracies of the world.<div><br /></div><div>There was never a more ruthless application of the motto “<i>Divide et impera</i>” than the history of these unfortunate provinces can show. For half-a-century the most cruel policy of wholesale banishment and persecution was carried out by the Viennese Government; yet the world at large heard little of it, since the Italians, represented by a hopeless minority in the Austrian Parliament, could not make themselves heard while the storm raged between Czechs and Germans. Italy, their natural protector, was gagged and bound by the unnatural treaty of alliance, which was the first cause of that mistrust with which she was in the past sometimes regarded by those very nations whose history, race and sympathies fashioned them to be her friends. The free choice of the people of Italy in the moment of crisis showed where the heart of Italy had always been, but the mischief has not been undone wholly yet.<br /><br />The Italian claims on Trieste, Istria and Dalmatia (their right to the Trentino does not seem to have been questioned) are neither imperialistic nor recent. Since ever the idea of a united Italy began to take root from the blood-soaked fields of Napoleonic campaigns these provinces, which had been Roman first and then Venetian, in any case Latin for twenty centuries, were claimed for the new Italy. In the little town of Capodistria two pieces of cannon placed in the only square and a gallows equally permanently established, were necessary to stifle the protests of the people when the population was handed over to Austria in payment for her treachery to Venice. The people in the Dalmatian towns wept with grief when they saw the insignia of the Venetian Republic lowered. It was not difficult then to know the political wishes and the nationality of these provinces.<div><br /></div><div>In the days of Mazzini and Garibaldi the aim of the Italian patriots was equally known and accepted by all liberal-minded people. “Austria is arming herself to defend Istria and Venice; for Garibaldi, as soon as his army is reinforced, will throw himself on Dalmatia, crossing from Puglia, and shut in the face of the barbarians that always open door, the Italian Alps,” wrote Count Prospero Antonini to G. Rinaldi. Cavour's <i>Charge d'Affaires</i>, in a long interview with Napoleon III., submitted a memorial, which gave as the boundaries of Northern Italy “Piedmont, Lombardy, Venice, Italian Friuli and the coastland of Dalmatia.” There was then no doubt in the minds of statesmen as to the justice of the Italian claims, the only doubts were as to the expediency of a war to realise them.</div><div><br /></div><div>If further proof be wanted, one need only glance at the proclamations of the Dalmato-Istrians calling the people to arm for Italian independence, to the sums of money freely and generously given for the liberation of Venice ; to the repeated protests of the municipalities of Istria against its union with Krain; to the requests for national and administrative autonomy. Carlo Cattaneo in January, 1851, in a letter to <i>The Times</i> and the <i>Daily News</i>, wrote:<br /><blockquote>“Many English people are under the erroneous impression that Austria possesses her Italian provinces in virtue of some old hereditary right, and they go so far as to believe that Prussia or any other Germanic Power has not only the right, but the duty, by uninterrupted tradition, to ensure to Austria the domination of these lands. I wish to point out that two-thirds of the Italian subjects of Austria are quite a recent acquisition; almost four million inhabitants belong to the Venetian States and its original dependencies on the Istrian coast of the Adriatic — Istria, Dalmatia, Ragusa, and Cattaro. ... The way in which the Venetian, the oldest autonomous State existing in Europe, passed sixty years ago suddenly from one moment to the next, from being the ally of Austria to becoming its prey and victim, marks one of the lowest and meanest transactions to be met with in modern history.”</blockquote>This is the <i>fons et origo</i> of all the evil which, let us hope, the present war will rectify, as it certainly will if justice and right are to prevail over violence, and if the remnants of a policy by which nations were traded in and handed about like chattels are no longer to poison the future destinies of the world. The Treaty of Campoformio, which gave Austria these provinces, irrespective of the wishes of the population, prepared the way for the attempt to force a way through to Salonika and to the East, suppressing on the way both the Italians of Dalmatia and the Slavs of Serbia.<br /><br />As long as the Austrians still hoped to reconquer Venice and their Italian dominion, they did not deny the Italian nationality of the southern provinces. In 1848 the <i>Osservatore Triestino</i>, the official organ of the Austrian Government in Trieste, commenting upon a proclamation of the Governor relative to a revolt in favour of Italy ruthlessly suppressed, wrote:</div><div><blockquote>“Citizens, he who writes is Italian, and proud of the fact. If he were ordered to renounce his nationality he would be the last to write a line in this paper; but, for the love of Heaven, be not misled by those who play upon your unfounded fear of seeing your nationality adulterated, disturbing your minds by a mere phantom.”</blockquote></div><div>How well founded was this fear of a murderous attempt upon their nationality is proved by the fact that little more than half a century later an apparently unbiassed writer could seriously suggest the internationalization of Trieste.</div><div><br />As Austria lost first Lombardy and then Venice, she tightened her deadly grip on the remaining provinces. Her dream of an Italian domain lost, with the establishment of a free and united Italian nation, she had no more use for an Italian population. Taking advantage of the fact that Italy was shackled by an alliance and that Germany was drawing to herself the alarmed attention of the rest of Europe, she turned her energies to the ruthless systematic uprooting of the Italian element in her Italian provinces. How this war was waged and with what success will be considered in the next article.<br /><br /><br /><br /><b>Italy and the Balkans: The Problem of Dalmatia II</b><br /><br />The latest Austrian statistics give an overwhelming majority of Slavs in Dalmatia. The Slavs themselves are not satisfied with this majority, and maintain that the statistics favour the Italians. The electoral returns seem to show that, far from being favoured, the Italians in Dalmatia have been under-estimated by two-thirds. But if the policy of persecution, of intimidation, and violence pursued by Austria during the last fifty years is not to be allowed to obtain its object, if the great democracies of the world are not to let crime go unpunished, it will be necessary to consider not the statistics of today alone, but the statistics of the last fifty years, and to inquire very carefully into the astonishing changes which have taken place. Even in 1880 all the municipalities of the largest Dalmatian cities were Italian. Today the capital alone — Zara — has an Italian corporation. Even Ragusa had until the turn of the century a municipality which consisted half of Italian and half of Serbian representatives. Now Ragusa, like Spalato since 1883, like Sebenico and Trau, is entirely in the hands of the Croats.</div><div><br /></div><div>In the Dalmatian Diet of 1861 the Italian party had thirty members against thirteen more recently. When the Venetian Republic fell the Dalmatian cities showed in unmistakable manner their attachment to the State which had carried on the traditions of Rome extending over a period of twenty centuries. What has happened in the last fifty years to change the national character of the province? Simply this: the Austrians, to justify their possession in the face of Europe, which demanded a national base for the State, decided upon a crusade to denationalise the whole of the Italian provinces, a crusade which sometimes was childish and futile, as when the Austrian authorities cut a Venetian lion from one of the city walls of Monfalcone, but more often was bloody and violent.<br /><br />The notion originated with Radetzky. But it was not adopted at once, for Austria had still hopes of recovering Venice and possibly the Milanese, in which case there would have been one more nationality to steady the political balance of the empire. When the statesmen of Vienna realised that Italy was more likely to claim what belonged to her by right than to lose a part of what she held, they embarked on their new policy, which is the exact counterpart of the policy carried on by Germany in Alsace-Lorraine and attempted in a necessarily modified form in Belgium since the occupation. Europe demanded that the people should choose their government. Austria and Germany — autocracies — undertook to provide the kind of people that would be faithful to them. The experiment has not been altogether successful in Dalmatia, for part of the Slavs now demand separation. But the Croatian Slav is still one of the mainstays of the monarchy, and in the meantime the Italians were sacrificed.<br /><br />How Austria respected the wishes and aspirations of her people is shown by the manner in which the elections for the Diet were carried on in Dalmatia. The preparation consisted in a series of acts of brutal violence to intimidate the Italian electors. Flourishing vineyards were destroyed, trees cut down, fields ready for the harvesters trampled upon, electors shot at and stoned. The electoral commission worked protected by the soldiers' bayonets. One of the Austrian officials, unaware that a Croatian victory had been ordered from Vienna, reprimanded the authors of some gross fraud. He was immediately suspended, and the campaign was carried on with greater violence, with contemptuous disregard of all equity and justice.</div><div><br /></div><div>When it became apparent that the victory would go to the Italians unless new subterfuges were resorted to, the Slav electors were recalled and made to impersonate voters long dead. The Italians discovered the fraud, and obtained and produced death certificates; the commission refused to listen to them. But victory still hung in the balance. The special Viennese envoy had to resort to open violence. He began by teaching the Slav from the country to make the road dangerous for the Italian electors. He ended by ordering or countenancing a charge of two battalions of Tyrolese chasseurs to disperse a few hundred Italians who were waiting their turn to enter the polling booth.</div><div><br /></div><div>Is it surprising if the result gave a Diet in which the number of the Italian representatives fell from thirty to thirteen? Nor was the method adopted to win over the municipal government essentially different. When Spalato passed over to the Croatians in 1883 a couple of warships kept their guns trained on the town, while patrols of soldiers and sailors prevented Italian electors from reaching the voting stations. Italian votes were cancelled, clocks were tampered with to hasten or suspend the closing hour as the election seemed to go in favour of or against the Croatian party. The Austrian “prefect” ordered all the Government employees to vote for the Croatians, and the Slav bishop issued a similar command to his dependents. Thus gradually all the civic government fell into the hands of the <i>protégés</i> of the Austrians. A few years ago the islands of Brazza, Lisa, Werbosca, in Lesina, still held out. Today the capital — Zara — stands alone.<br /><br />To capture the municipal government was essential to the success of the Austrian plan. The municipality alone is sufficiently powerful to protect the city and the surrounding district from the attacks of the government party. To drive away or convert forcibly the Italians, it was necessary to control schools and churches. This could not be done as long as the town authorities had the means to open new schools and the power to protest against a political campaign carried on from the pulpit. When the control of the city government was secured church and schools were used with unparalleled. unscrupulousness to sow hatred and distrust of all Italians.</div><div><br /></div><div>There are cases on record where the Croatian priests (the bishops of Trieste and Veglia are Slavs) have refused to administer baptism and the last sacraments of the Church to Italians because they were Italians. A funeral procession was refused admittance to church, and denied permission to enter the cemetery for the same reason. A few years ago the Bishop of Veglia, Monsignor Mahnic, issued an order that religion was to be taught [in Croatian in all the Quarnero islands] irrespective of the nationality of the students and of their inability to understand the language. But the schools' council had still some power over which the Government's hand did not stretch, and it exercised it by substituting for the priests lay teachers able and willing to teach religion in the only tongue the pupils spoke and understood. At the close of the scholastic year the bishop retorted by excommunicating both teachers and council, a procedure which the Croatian clerical paper, <i>Pucki Prigateli</i>, described as an excellent manoeuvre.</div><div><br /></div><div>Another teacher was arrested and tried because he happened to use Latin instead of Croatian when singing the “<i>Tantum ergo</i>.” When a religious body from Slav Zagabria asked permission to open a school at Pola, the authorisation was granted immediately, but the friars of Pirano, when they made a similar request, received a sharp denial, because they were of Italian nationality. Such examples could be multiplied indefinitely, but enough has been said, perhaps, to prove at least that the power which inspired this policy of extermination against the Italians of the <i>Irredenta</i> is hardly likely to have “cooked” the statistics in order to favour the Italians at the expense of the Slavs. The Italians of Dalmatia, says Gayda, contributed 30 per cent of the provincial taxes in 1911, yet the Budget did not give them a single school in which their children could receive their education in the language of their fathers.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Austrian Minister of Education, after many petitions, acknowledged in 1886 that “the conditions required by the law for the institution of an Italian school at Spalato exist without doubt,” and the Imperial tribunal confirmed the Government's statement, and yet the school was not established.<br /><br /><br /><br /><b>Italy and the Balkans: The Problem of Dalmatia III</b><br /><br />The Austrian statistics in regard to the Italian population of Dalmatia are exceedingly eloquent, if seen in their true perspective. Once the official census gave 56,000 Italians; in 1880 the official figure fell to 20,000; ten years later there were apparently only 16,000 Italians left. The conclusion is obvious; the Italians were being suppressed no less effectively than they could have been, if Vienna had followed the example of Constantinople and adopted its more primitive and more direct way of destroying the Armenians. Cruel or puerile, the persecution of the Italians is always directly traceable to Vienna. As long as the Austrian Lloyd ships belonged to a Trieste company they were named after cities and the heroes of mythology — there was the Venezia, the Milano, the Pandora, the Ettore. As soon as the Government stepped in and controlled the company, Achilles and Hector had to make way for the names of obscure Austrian statesmen. Of course, it was childish; but it was the <i>reductio ad absurdum</i> of Teutonic thoroughness. The church, the school, the police were handed over to an alien race. The names of things and places had to follow.</div><div><br /></div><div>When the war began it was considered that the game had been won in Dalmatia. Trieste was the next objective, and all the apparatus used in Dalmatia was brought to bear — provocation, intimidation, military force. In addition, Trieste being a commercial city and consequently less dependent on favours and less afraid of the displeasure of the Government, banks began to exercise their influence to finance and direct politico-commercial operations similar in every way to those undertaken by Germany to snare other unsuspecting peoples and making them dependent financially upon Berlin. The Government offices were filled with foreigners, of whom not one could speak correctly the language of the people. Every obstacle was placed in the way of Italian subjects wishing to establish themselves in Trieste, and to prevent the swelling of the Italian party, in spite of the fact that no foreign subject could obtain political rights.</div><div><br /></div><div>A [man named] M. Vernet was refused permission to build a mill because he happened to speak Italian like a native, having lived some years in Sicily. When he threatened to place the matter in the hands of the French Consul, he was told that had he made known his nationality sooner all the difficulties would have vanished, and the concession was given forthwith.</div><div><br /></div><div>An Italian was murdered by a drunken Croat. All that the murderer could say in defence was that he had killed “an Italian.” He was condemned to four months' imprisonment. More than once Italian subjects accused of a trifling offence have been condemned to terms of imprisonment and — inevitable corollary — deportation. If the Court of Appeal cancelled the sentence and the imprisonment was remitted, the banishment was nevertheless upheld by the police even for those born in Trieste, if the parents were Italian subjects.<br /><br />Throughout these years the animus of the Austrian authorities in these provinces was that of the bully who, although physically much stronger than his victim, is afraid and anxious lest he should be caught red-handed and his brutality punished. They lost their heads for no particular reason; they believed the wildest rumours. They mobilised suddenly all the available troops in Dalmatia and set them to defend the coast, because it had been reported (obviously by some wag) that 30,000 Garibaldian volunteers were preparing to invade it. The Athletic Club of Trieste, with 3,000 members, was closed by order of the police five times. But as there is no law against the formation of a new society, the closure of the club only meant a change of name.</div><div><br /></div><div>Some of the reasons given for the action of the authorities are perhaps worth recording. In 1864 the alleged reason was that a public entertainment had been given in the garden of the club; in 1882 the club postponed a meeting in sign of mourning for the death of Garibaldi, and this, the Austrian authorities said, showed that the club had “political aims dangerous to the safety of the State.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“I want to clear out all these Italians,” the the chief of the police was overheard to say in Trieste. “We must do in Trieste as we have done in Dalmatia; help with every means the non-Italian elements and wipe out the Italians altogether,” wrote Lieutenant-Marshal Foerstner in the <i>Oesterreichische Rundschau</i> shortly before the war.<br /><br />The merciless persecution of the Italians in the unredeemed provinces must be taken into account even before the great historical and important military claims of Italy on these lands are considered. Any solution, any proposal which did not make full amends for the wrongs suffered during fifty years by the Italian population would be bound to encourage a policy which is not only immoral, when measured by every canon humanity ever evolved to save civilisation from barbarism, but is also bound to lead to international complications. The sufferer must needs revolt against the oppressor as soon as the opportunity arises. The oppressor himself who does wrong, and is conscious of it, redoubles his cruelties to stifle the victim before Nemesis can overtake him.</div><div><br /></div><div>Neither the most cynical and most hardened criminals nor the new tyrant can escape this instinctive dread of justice even when they have reason to think themselves beyond its reach. Germany was eager to “give France a lesson,” although she knew that France was not in a position to attempt, and was far from contemplating, the recovery of Alsace-Lorraine. At the time of the Messina earthquake Austrian generals, betraying the instinct which combines fear and cruelty, suggested an attack on Italy to prevent even the remote possibility of a cry of anger from the mother country for the Italian population across the frontier deprived of its birthright. One wrong leads inevitably to another.<br /><br />As for the strategical claims of Italy on these coastal provinces, their importance may have been thought exaggerated once. Now, however, it must be clear that for the mastery of the Adriatic the possession of the eastern coast is an indispensable condition. Neither Italian, English nor French commanders have been able to accomplish much, in spite of the great skill shown in smaller operations and the devotion of the sailors. “The long coastal State of Dalmatia, which flanks Bosnia-Herzegovina on the west,” writes Sir Thomas Holdich, “is divided from them by the effective wall of the Dinaric Alps. Across that rugged system no railway has yet been carried, and Dalmatia owes her independent existence entirely to the natural strength of her frontier.”</div><div><br /></div><div>This is the reason why her history and her civilisation were those of Rome and Venice, not those of the people living beyond the Alps. These are, of course, frontier provinces, and frontier provinces have always a more or less mixed population. If the Czechs obtain their autonomy and France recovers Alsace-Lorraine, the percentage of the foreign population will be higher there than it will be in these unredeemed provinces of Italy. Nor is it to be thought that the fulfilment of the Italian claim would mean the exclusion from the Adriatic of other nations. Both to the north and to the south of Dalmatia there are excellent harbours which would give the hinterland its outlet on the sea.</div></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6653813795681370244.post-26967797052041983802021-10-19T07:56:00.000+02:002021-10-19T07:56:38.951+02:00Foibe Massacres: The Deep Italic Roots of Istria and Dalmatia(<i>Written by Mario Bortoluzzi, taken from the journal “Secolo Trentino”, February 9, 2021</i>)<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HOZhN9eqMi8/YW5cKB5GC_I/AAAAAAAAHwI/NN8me619oqE3-93LwH1Y2PplXFKQKavkQCPcBGAYYCw/s655/Italia%2Bdopo%2Bla%2Bpace%2Bdi%2BCateau-Cambr%25C3%25A9sis%2B%25281559%2529.jpg" style="font-style: italic; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="655" data-original-width="600" height="293" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HOZhN9eqMi8/YW5cKB5GC_I/AAAAAAAAHwI/NN8me619oqE3-93LwH1Y2PplXFKQKavkQCPcBGAYYCw/w267-h293/Italia%2Bdopo%2Bla%2Bpace%2Bdi%2BCateau-Cambr%25C3%25A9sis%2B%25281559%2529.jpg" width="267" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">Map of Italy after the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis (1559)</span></b> </td></tr></tbody></table><br />Objectors say: “<i>The exodus of the Istrians, Fiumans and Dalmatians is a consequence of the events of the Second World War; the tragedy of the Foibe Massacres is the result of violence perpetrated by the Slavs in retaliation for violence during the Italian occupation from 1920 to 1945</i>.”<div><br /></div>This is the objection that is raised every year on the Day of Remembrance. It is repeated like a mantra by the media in our country, which is controlled by a well-identified school of thought. In essence, they claim that the Slavs led by Tito may have been a bit excessive in their anti-Italian violence, but it was simply a reaction to the violence and oppression of the Italian occupier.<br /><br />All this denotes a profound ignorance – if not intentional bad faith – with regard to the history of Istria and Dalmatia. These lands were never divorced from Italian history, as we shall see later, but are rightfully part of our national history, just as are the histories of all the current-day Italian regions.<br /><br />What Tito did was only the final act of a process that began in 1860, and quite frankly the Communist ideology professed by Tito was not the triggering factor; if anything it was the new ideological glue that held the Slavic peoples together (Slovenes, Serbs, Croats) in their anti-Italian operation.<br /><br />The history of those lands, which were Roman and then Venetian for nearly a thousand years, is part of the history of our Fatherland and should be studied in schools in all grades. But today it is forgotten history, indeed its history is unacknowledged and hidden.<br /><br />That is why, for example, nothing is ever said about what took place in Istria and Dalmatia between the time of the Risorgimento and the First World War.<br /><br />That is why they fail to teach and explain that the methods used by the Italian government from 1918 to 1945 (the famous compulsory use of the Italian language in schools, the supposed “italianization” of surnames and violence during the war), although considered wrong by people today, were not considered wrong according to the mentality of the time; during that time these policies were regarded as the only feasible way to repair the injustices suffered by Italians in previous decades.<br /><br />Remember, nothing ever happens for no reason.<br /><br />In order to discuss the origin of the conflict between the nationalities in these areas it is first necessary to give a basic account of Dalmatian history, from the beginning.<br /><br />Ancient Dalmatia, called “Illyria”, entered history beginning in 156 BC with the first of eight wars that were waged against Rome. Dalmatia became a senatorial province in 27 BC and later an imperial province. It was fully integrated with the Roman world and was the birthplace of Roman Emperors like Claudius and Diocletian.<br /><br />The entire Dalmatian coast and islands were Latinized by the Romans who founded cities and favored a fusion with the native Illyrian element.<br /><br />In 475 A.D. Emperor Julius Nepos took refuge in Dalmatia, while Romulus Augustulus was raised to the purple in Ravenna. In 476 A.D. the latter was deposed by Odoacer and the Western Roman Empire ceased to exist. But Julius Nepos survived in Dalmatia with the Emperor's insignia and remained a symbol of Romanity until 480 A.D., the year of his death.<br /><br />In the seventh century A.D., the barbarian invasions began. In particular, the Avars invaded the Balkans with their slaves, the Slavic tribes, and later pushed towards the Adriatic coast. These invasions lasted for nearly two centuries, with ups and downs, conquests and reconquests, and essentially was limited to the hinterland. The Latin people retreated to the fortified towns of Dalmatia. The Slavs eventually reached the sea along the Velebit Channel and occupied the the mouths of the Narenta river where they devoted themselves to piracy. The Dalmatian cities sought help from the rising Venetian power; seeing as its trade was threatened, Venice decided to intervene.<br /><br />On Ascension Day in the year 1000, after refusing to pay the <i>pretium pacis</i> to the Croats, i.e. a tax to avoid attacks on Venetian convoys, the Doge Pietro Orseolo II set sail for Dalmatia with his ships and his warriors, obtained an oath of submission from all the Latin cities, and defeated the Slavic pirates everywhere, reaching as far as Spalato and Curzola.<br /><br />This was a historical act of immense importance.<div><br /><div>Venice would forever consider it a perpetual and inalienable acquisition and one of the fundamental cornerstones of its statal right. From then on until 1797, with some losses, re-conquests and wars, the submission of the Latin cities was uninterrupted, and since the fifteenth century all of Dalmatia became an integral part of the Venetian “Stato da Mar”.</div><div><br /></div><div>Cities such as Zara, Spalato, Traù, Sebenico, Cattaro, Ragusa (the modern Dubrovnik, which was the 5th Italian maritime republic after becoming independent from Venice), islands such as Curzola, Lissa, Lesina, Brazza, Meleda and a hundred other towns of Dalmatia still carry the signs of Venetian culture and political presence today in their urban layout, artistic and military monuments, palaces and streets.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Slavs were never able to impose their language on the Dalmatians, whose language was a vernacular derivative of Latin known as <i>Dalmatico</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div>In the fourteenth century the Dalmatian language was gradually replaced by Venetian, which became the official language of the region and the language of culture.</div><div><br /></div><div>Until the fall of the Republic on May 12, 1797, Dalmatia flourished in institutions, in the arts, in culture and in commercial activities under the Venetian banner.</div><div><br /></div><div>Even the Slavic-Croatian element, invited by the Venetians to repopulate the countryside affected by the plague, peacefully coexisted for centuries with the Latin element, sharing uses and customs; even the language spoken by the Slavs on the coast from Fiume to Spalato, known as “chakavian”, a special variety of language distinct from Croatian, is rich in Venetian words that are unknown to the Croats of Zagreb.</div><div><br /></div><div>These new “Dalmatian Slavs” (peasant farmers, sailors, fishermen), who were in contact with the Latin element, are anthropologically “Mediterraneans”.</div><div><br /></div><div>The most loyal Schiavoni, the <i>Oltremarini</i>, were the last troops to leave Venice after the fall of the Republic.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Morlochs of Latin blood, <i>pastores Romanorum</i>, for centuries fought under the banner of San Marco and so did the <i>Stratioti</i> (mercenaries) who provided Venice with light cavalry and were used against the Turks.</div><div><br /></div><div>All felt united and protected under the wings of the Venetian Lion.</div><div><br /></div><div>Just as the Roman Empire survived in Dalmatia even after 476 A.D., so the Venetian <i>Signoria</i> continued on in Dalmatia for some time after the fall of the Republic.</div><div><br /></div><div>In Zara the flag of San Marco was lowered on July 1, brought to the Cathedral, kissed and bathed in tears by the people.</div><div><br /></div><div>The last and most poignant farewell was given on August 23 by the inhabitants of the town of Perasto, bearer of the battle flag of the Venetian fleet, in the Bay of Cattaro.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Commander of the fortress, after placing the fallen Venetian banner under the altar, pronounced a noble speech whose most famous line we will here quote:</div><div><blockquote>“For three hundred and seventy-seven years our bodies, our blood and our lives have always been for You, O San Marco; and most faithful we have always thought ourselves, You with us, we with You; and always with You on the sea we have been illustrious and full of valor. No one with You has seen us flee, no one with You has seen us defeated or fearful…”</blockquote></div><div>With the Treaty of Campo Formio, Dalmatia was sold by Napoleon to Austria, but a few years later, in 1806, Dalmatia returned to the Kingdom of Italy, together with Istria. Later, after a few decades marked by bitter disputes, the region returned to Austria again.</div><div><br /></div><div>And so we come to 1815, the year in which we can date the beginning of the Risorgimento, also in Dalmatia. The Austrian police immediately realized that the Italian citizens in the Adriatic supported the ideas of independence and reunification with Italy. They discovered Carbonari lodges, and later, in 1830, found supporters of Mazzini's Young Italy movement.</div><div><br /></div><div>It was in 1847 that Nicolò Tommaseo of Sebenico entered the history of Dalmatia. Adhering to the opinions of Mazzini, he advocated the destruction of the Habsburg Empire and the resurrection of nationalities.</div><div><br /></div><div>Therefore Hungarians, Italians, Romanians, Serbs, Croats, Bulgarians, Albanians, “must rise up and form a living nation of young associated nations.”</div><div><br /></div><div>The Dalmatians pursued camaraderie with the Slavs and therefore multiplied the initiatives of scientists, scholars, jurists.</div><div><br /></div><div>But, when the uprisings broke out in 1848, the Croats remained indifferent because they were pursuing the consolidation of the Habsburg dynasty through a Croatian movement that they hoped would become a pillar of the Empire's strength.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Croats thus became the military arm of Austrian absolutism and they aspired, as part of the Empire, to annex Dalmatia to Croatia.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now, Dalmatia in 1848 was nationally the same as how Venice left it.</div><div><br /></div><div>Up to that point Dalmatia had been preserved by Austria: it was totally Italian in culture, in administration, in its ecclesiastical hierarchy, in wealth, in commerce, in navigation, in artisanry. Austria never changed the names of the cities, islands, mountains or rivers. These names remained Italian under Austria for 120 years because they had existed for tens of centuries.</div><div><br /></div><div>But unfortunately the Italian element, in the eyes of the imperial authorities, represented an ethnic group whose loyalty to the Empire was questionable. The sea was the only thing that separated the Dalmatians from their Italian Motherland and Austria was well aware of this.</div><div><br /></div><div>In early March of 1848 Milan, Venice, Zara, Sebenico and Spalato revolted together. The swift Austrian suppression nipped in the bud any possibility of success. The Dalmatian cities were surrounded by Austro-Croatian troops and the Croatian peasants of the countryside were armed and incited against the Dalmatians. They were also incited by the Croatian clergy, who depicted the Italians as godless Freemasons.</div><div><br /></div><div>On the political plane the Croats of Zagreb began to require a pledge of their loyalty to the Empire and openly demanded the annexation of Dalmatia to Croatia.</div><div><br /></div><div>In 1860, after years of Croatian attempts and strenuous opposition by the Dalmatians (it is sufficient to recall Spalato's response to a letter sent by Zagreb proposing annexation: “Dalmatia is Italian: only one citizen of Spalato, out of 12,000, was able to translate your honorable words [from Croatian]”), the Croats, supported by the Empire, proclaimed the forced annexation of Dalmatia to Croatia.</div><div><br /></div><div>The elections of a Diet of Dalmatia to be sent to Zagreb were held and the ballot boxes gave 29 Italian representatives and 12 Croats. But the majority of the Diet refused to go to Zagreb. The Croatian delegates departed for Zagreb to join the Croatian delegation which soon left for Vienna.</div><div><br /></div><div>To counter the Croats, the Diet of Dalmatia, all in unison and guided by the ailing Archbishop of Zara Giuseppe Godeassi, left for Vienna and was received on May 8 by Emperor Franz Joseph, who realized the adamant will of the Dalmatians to remain autonomous from Zagreb. No one spoke of annexation to Croatia any longer.</div><div><br /></div><div>Unfortunately, the slow and inexorable operation of slavicizing Dalmatia continued in forced stages. On June 15, 1866 an imperial ordinance limited the use of the Italian language in offices and forced officials to learn Croatian.</div><div><br /></div><div>On November 12, 1866, the Council of the Crown met in Vienna.</div><div><br /></div><div>The report reads verbatim:</div><div><blockquote>“His Majesty has expressed the precise order that we decisively oppose the influence of the Italian element still present in some Crown lands, and to aim unsparingly and without the slightest compunction at the Germanization or Slavicization – depending on the circumstances – of the areas in question, through a suitable entrustment of posts to political magistrates and teachers, as well as through the influence of the press in South Tyrol, Dalmatia, and the Adriatic Coast.”</blockquote></div><div>On June 14, 1867 another decree ordered the Slavicization of the grammar school in Zara; in the same year there were the first anti-Italian street riots provoked by masses of Slavic peasants; citizens were forbidden access to the countryside; the Italian landowners had their vines chopped, trees cut down, crops stolen; the Croatian friars in Signo refused to administer the sacraments to the Italian population.</div><div><br /></div><div>In Sebenico on July 31, 1869 a Croatian mob attacked and killed 14 sailors of the Royal Italian ship <i>Monzambano</i> which was anchored in the port of the Dalmatian city.</div><div><br /></div><div>On February 15, 1870 the Croats attempted to set fire to the Verdi Theatre of Zara, a temple of Italian art.</div><div><br /></div><div>All of these incidents led to the first exodus of the Dalmatian population towards Zara, Istria and the Italian Motherland. Croatian Slavic irredentism, which aimed at annexing Dalmatia to Croatia, thus was able in such a short time to destroy centuries of peaceful coexistence guaranteed by the good governance of the Republic of San Marco.</div><div><br /></div><div>And in Italy? The young Kingdom of Savoy made it known to Austria that “as far as a solution to the problems of the East, Italy intends to participate with its own ideas and in defense of its own interests.”</div><div><br /></div><div>This position of Italy rekindled the hopes of the Italians of Dalmatia, despite the difficulties due to the daily harassment they suffered, so much so that the Italian Chamber of Deputies burst into uncontrollable applause during the communication of the greeting and thanksgiving from the city of Zara.</div><div><br /></div><div>Trento, Trieste, Istria, Gorizia and Zara were the names of the places that needed to be liberated and were on the lips of every Italian irredentist.</div><div><br /></div><div>But forty-eight long years passed before part of Dalmatia was finally reunited with the Italian Motherland.</div><div><br /></div><div>In the meantime, the Austrians inexorably continued the forced Croatization of Dalmatia. It began with threats and abuses to change the balance of power within the provincial Diet: more power was given to Croatian politicians and less to Italians, which brought about a reversal of the anti-annexation results of 1860; now there was a new 24 to 16 majority in favor of the Croatian annexationists.</div><div><br /></div><div>By means of electoral fraud, violence, corruption and intimidation, one by one the Italian cities of Dalmatia fell. The offices, schools, churches and all public institutions were then Slavicized, always with the consent of the Austrians.</div><div><br /></div><div>In the provincial Diet – where until 1865 the discussions were held only in Italian – from 1866 onward Croatian was gradually imposed alongside the Italian language until 1883, when the use of the Croatian language was made exclusive and Italian was forcibly excluded.</div><div><br /></div><div>This situation dragged on through thick and thin until the eve of the First World War, but with a constant progressive loss of land by the Italian Dalmatians, as if it were a retreating battle, slow and tenacious but forced to surrender ground inch by inch.</div><div><br /></div><div>Following the Pact of London, on April 26, 1915 Italy entered the war against the Austro-Hungarian Empire. On the basis of this pact, signed with France, Great Britain and Russia, Italy was promised – in the event of victory – recognizing of Italian sovereignty over Trentino-Alto Adige, Istria and Dalmatia up to the south of Sebenico, in addition to some Dalmatian islands.</div><div><br /></div><div>Many Italians from Istria and Dalmatia dedicated their lives to the liberation of their land by fighting in the Italian army. Nazario Sauro, captured by the Austrians and executed as a deserter, was one of them and every city in Italy today has a street or square named after this Italian hero.</div><div><br /></div><div>In 1918, at the end of the conflict, the American President Wilson opposed the implementation of the London agreements, which had not been signed by the United States, and in Italy there was then talk of a ‘Mutilated Victory’ due to Italy's own allies refusal to respect the signed agreements.</div><div><br /></div><div>France and England were in fact worried about the growing Italian influence on both sides of the Adriatic Sea.</div><div><br /></div><div>After months of intense diplomatic actions, on September 10, 1919 the Treaty of Saint-Germain was reached with Austria, which ceded Trentino, Alto Adige, Venezia Giulia with Istria and the Quarnaro islands, but excluding from the negotiations Fiume and Dalmatia.</div><div><br /></div><div>All the sacrifices endured by the Italians during the war appeared to most as vain and useless, to the point of arousing a strong wave of indignation in the population.</div><div><br /></div><div>On the basis of this widespread popular sentiment, on September 12, 1919 Gabriele D'Annunzio, together with his volunteers the Legionaries of Ronchi, undertook the liberation of Fiume, an overwhelmingly Italian city, giving rise to the Regency of Carnaro and a new constitution, the Carnaro Charter, quite socially advanced for the time and in fact provided for the right to education, the vote for women, the recognition of a living wage and health insurance.</div><div><br /></div><div>(The Carnaro Charter was essentially the work of the revolutionary syndicalist Alceste De Ambris who, in March of the same year, had collaborated in the drafting of the program of the first <i>Fasci di Combattimento</i> in Milan.)</div><div><br /></div><div>On November 12, 1920, the head of the government Giolitti signed the Treaty of Rapallo with the Yugoslavs, which assigned to Italy the city Zara, the only enclave of Dalmatia and the islands of Lagosta and Pelagosa, and declared Fiume a Free State. D'Annunzio did not accept the clauses of the Treaty, refusing to abandon Fiume. The consequence was a fratricidal clash between the legionaries and the Italian troops that went down in history as the Bloody Christmas.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Pacts of Rome of 1924 ratified the Treaty of Rapallo, definitively assigning Fiume to Italy but almost all of Dalmatia passed to the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.</div><div><br /></div><div>General Caviglia spoke during the discussion in the Senate regarding the Treaty of Rapallo. His words were prophetic:</div><div><blockquote>“Certainly the Treaty of Rapallo will be judged by history, but we can determine right now that this treaty has consumed a historical event of great importance and laid the seeds of endless troubles in a soil too fertile. After twelve centuries of slow advance and four centuries of struggle with the Italian race, the Slavic race was able to obtain from Italy, in an official document – the first in history – the recognition of its undisputed dominion on the east side of the Adriatic. This historical fact is consumated by the Treaty of Rapallo. Using the lesson of history, allow me to make some predictions. All of modern history indicates a strong movement of expansion of the Slavic race in all directions. As serfs, slaves, mercenaries, feudatories, they will expand westward, penetrate the boundaries of various neighboring nationalities and will replace the populations.</blockquote><blockquote>They do not carry a civilization of their own, but absorb the civilization of the peoples they replace, changing the names of the lands. But the expelled nationality preserves its identity; and thus the Italian will be forced to migrate to Italy, the German forced to migrate to Germany and Austria, the Greek to Greece, the Hungarian to Hungary. Voltaire, in his history of Charles XII of Sweden, found to his regret the disappearance of Greek-Byzantine civilization in the lands to the south-east of Poland due to the advance of the Slavs and the substitution of Greek names of rivers and cities with new Slavic names; with greater sorrow Italy will see the disappearance of Italian names from the eastern shore of the Adriatic and their replacement with Slavic names. Our people will gradually be driven from the eastern shore of the Adriatic; our merchant ships and our fishing boats will gradually encounter more and more obstacles forbidding us to exercise our millennial rights; we will end up having to flee from the eastern coast, and the Italian flag, which represents the banner of Rome and Venice with their most noble traditions, will be forced to abandon the coast of Dalmatia.”</blockquote></div><div> slow and constant ethnic cleansing created the conditions for the re-Italianization policy that in the years following the First World War affected those few Dalmatian lands that passed to the Italian state after the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Slavicization of Dalmatia and the gradual expulsion of the Italian element thus became a <i>fait accompli</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div>All this was <i>before</i> the advent of the Fascist regime, <i>before</i> the attempted re-Italianization of these lands by the Italians (1918-1941), and <i>before</i> the Italo-German military occupation of World War II.</div><div><br /></div><div>The poisonous seeds of ethnic hatred had certainly been planted, as can be seen, not by the Italians, but by the Slavs, and the plants unfortunately grew between 1943 and 1945 with the tragedy of the Foibe Massacres and the final exodus of the Italians in the years after.</div><div><br /></div><div>The nationalisms that caused the collapse of the Central Powers were unable to reconstruct that centuries-old peaceful coexistence among the people of Dalmatia which the Republic of Venice had managed to wisely guarantee from the fourteenth century until its fall. A peaceful coexistence which still remains as a living testimony and example for all generations.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>See also:</b><br /><a href="https://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-agony-of-italian-dalmatia-under.html">The Agony of Italian Dalmatia Under Franz Joseph</a></div><div><a href="https://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-first-dalmatian-exodus-1870-1880.html">The First Dalmatian Exodus, 1870-1880</a></div><div><a href="https://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2016/03/brief-history-of-dalmatia-in-19th.html">Brief History of Dalmatia in the 19th Century</a></div><div><a href="https://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-population-of-dalmatia-in-12th.html">The Population of Dalmatia in the 12th Century</a></div><div><a href="https://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-extermination-of-dalmatian-italians.html">The Extermination of Dalmatian Italians in Lagosta</a></div><div><a href="https://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-habsburg-genocide-in-dalmatia.html">The Habsburg Genocide in Dalmatia</a><br /></div><div><a href="https://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-forced-slavicization-of-clergy-and.html">The Forced Slavicization of Clergy and Liturgy in Julian Venetia and Dalmatia by the Habsburgs (1866-1914)</a><br /><a href="http://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2017/01/quotes-on-italianity-of-dalmatia.html">Quotes on the Italianity of Dalmatia</a><br /><a href="http://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2017/02/quotes-on-italianity-of-fiume.html">Quotes on the Italianity of Fiume</a><br /><a href="http://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2017/04/quotes-on-italianity-of-istria.html">Quotes on the Italianity of Istria</a><br /><a href="http://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2017/02/quotes-on-italianity-of-quarnaro.html">Quotes on the Italianity of the Quarnaro</a><br /><a href="http://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2017/02/quotes-on-italianity-of-ragusa.html">Quotes on the Italianity of Ragusa</a></div> </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6653813795681370244.post-25504006998489906122021-04-29T02:34:00.002+02:002022-08-27T23:31:07.525+02:00The President of Slovenia Falsifies History: The Tragicomic Case of Ioannis Kapodistrias<div>(<i>Written by the Unione degli Istriani, taken from the article “A falsare la storia ci si mette ora anche il Capo di Stato sloveno. Il caso tragicomico di Giovanni Capodistria a Lubiana”, April 23, 2021</i>.)</div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2oW4HONmec8/YInebIArTdI/AAAAAAAAHoQ/Ai1DeHASTcgb4UzNDtWOWr_jhlKSo6a6QCPcBGAYYCw/s833/Ioannis%2BKapodistrias%2B%2528Giovanni%2BCapodistria%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="418" data-original-width="833" height="161" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2oW4HONmec8/YInebIArTdI/AAAAAAAAHoQ/Ai1DeHASTcgb4UzNDtWOWr_jhlKSo6a6QCPcBGAYYCw/w320-h161/Ioannis%2BKapodistrias%2B%2528Giovanni%2BCapodistria%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><b><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">Ioannis Kapodistrias, Founder and 1st Governor of Greece</span></b></div></b><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">Descended from an Italian Istrian family of the Republic of Venice</span></b></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">Originally from Capodistria in Istria (today Koper, Slovenia)</span></b></div><div><br /></div><div>The lack of history and culture of a country can really cause delusions, especially in the case of a new state like Slovenia which wants to place itself on an equal pedestal to a universal colossus like Greece.</div><div><br /></div><div>Yesterday, on Thursday, April 22, 2021, the President of the Republic of Slovenia, the unparalleled Borut Pahor, our neighbor, once again went about robbing the history and culture of others – <i>our</i> culture and history – during his meeting in Ljubljana with the President of the Hellenic Republic Katerina Sakellaropoulou, elected just over a year ago.</div><div><br /></div><div><div>Sakellaropoulou's state visit, the first abroad since she took office, began with military honors in the elegant Congress Square, followed by the exchange of honors in the Presidential Palace.</div><div><br /></div><div>So far so good.</div><div><br /></div><div>A tragicomedy, however, took place immediately after, when the two Presidents began a long conversation: welcoming his guest, Borut Pahor, evidently feeling inadequate, clumsily decided to start his speech by reviewing the long history of Slovenia and its long cultural relations with Greece.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Long cultural relations with Greece”? What could he possibly be referring to?</div><div><br /></div><div>Well, this is where the unscrupulous robbery occurred: Pahor mentioned Giovanni Capodistria, that is to say Ioannis Kapodistrias, the founder and 1st governor of modern Greece, emphasizing with bogus pride the supposed “Slovenian origins” of his family, which came from the city of Capodistria – our Italian city!</div><div><br /></div><div>A perfectly-executed cultural robbery at the official State level; a dirty manipulation of history which, unfortunately, is all too common in these parts!</div><div><br /></div><div>The theft of this important historical figure of Istrian origin – a shameless robbery comparable to the theft of Marco Polo who, across the border, is referred to as “Croatian” merely because he was (possibly) born on the Dalmatian island of Curzola – represents however only the latest incident: two years ago, in fact, President Pahor, during his state visit to Greece, already had the audacity to unveil a commemorative plaque in honor of the “Slovene” Ioannis Kapodistrias.</div><div><br /></div><div>The second act of this comedy will be staged later today, when a “friendship bench” dedicated to the illustrious historical figure will be inaugurated by the two Heads of State in Capodistria – a city that was stolen from us, and from which thousands of our fellow citizens were expelled.</div><div><br /></div><div>At this point allow us to explain very briefly who Ioannis Kapodistrias really was.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>Born in 1776 in the city of Corfù, the main center of the Ionian Islands (at that time part of the Republic of Venice), Ioannis was the sixth son of Count Antonio Maria Capodistria and Diamantina Gonemi. The Capodistria family (<i>Kapodistrias</i> in Greek) had been in the Golden Book of the Corfiot nobility since 1679 by virtue of an ancestor who had been named ‘count’ by Charles Emmanuel II of Savoy and derived their name from the homonymous Istrian town which the family came from (Vittori was their original surname), while the Gonemi family (his mother's family) had been inscribed in the Golden Book even earlier (1606).</div><div><br /></div><div>After studying medicine, philosophy and law at the University of Padua, in 1797, at the age of 21, he returned to his native island to practice the medical profession, but, being interested also in politics, he would finally embark on a long diplomatic career which – following the upheavals caused by the collapse of Venice and the subsequent French domination – will lead him first to become Russian plenipotentiary and then to command the militias of the Ionian Islands in 1807, the year of the Ioannina rebellion.</div><div><br /></div><div><div>On April 18, 1828, the Greek National Assembly, meeting in Nafplio, elected Kapodistrias as the first president (<i>kybernetes</i>) of Greece, giving him a seven-year mandate.</div><div><br /></div><div>Dear President Pahor, the history and cultural context of Ioannis Kapodistrias has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with Slovenia!</div></div><div><br /></div><div>Inventing, boasting and stealing things from others never bodes well, especially for a Head of State!</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6653813795681370244.post-61931193824681138542021-03-16T19:33:00.000+01:002021-03-16T19:33:08.655+01:00The Foibe Massacres Were Not a Reaction to Fascism<div>(<i>Written by Marco Vigna, taken from the periodical “Lega Nazionale”, Anno XVIII, Numero 56, May 2019</i>)</div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2q7JjxfNrdH80ShfHbGwk3f1zKYkwF_v6iW0kn3ocU_cGqvltOhngD0giCbuzbe2gASJ2zMIeVxczbMl831JcbxZRt4bvKV_RyHkn9n16NnKPI2hVHC0HOtIQxdnzNneV3K-FpfE_IFw/s1000/Foibe.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="754" data-original-width="1000" height="308" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2q7JjxfNrdH80ShfHbGwk3f1zKYkwF_v6iW0kn3ocU_cGqvltOhngD0giCbuzbe2gASJ2zMIeVxczbMl831JcbxZRt4bvKV_RyHkn9n16NnKPI2hVHC0HOtIQxdnzNneV3K-FpfE_IFw/w410-h308/Foibe.jpg" width="410" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">The ‘<i>foibe</i>’ are deep underground pits or sinkholes found in the Carso/Karst region around Trieste, Istria & Venezia Giulia (located primarily in modern-day Croatia & Slovenia). This is where the bodies of Italians were dumped or hidden after being massacred by Yugoslav Partisans; sometimes the victims were thrown into the pits while still alive. As many as 20-30,000 Italians were killed in these massacres—most of them civilians—including anti-Fascists, women, children and clergy. It was a genocide.</span></b></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div><br /></div>The idea that the Foibe Massacres were a “reaction” to Fascism or that they were not an ethnic cleansing is a hypothesis that is both erroneous and yet deeply-rooted in certain political circles. The truth is that the Yugoslav invaders raged against anyone who would obstruct their objective of annexing Venezia Giulia, indiscriminately massacring Italians, whether they were Fascists, anti-Fascists (even Communists), politicians, officials, soldiers, etc. It was not an ideological persecution or a revenge for acts of war, but the execution of an ethnic cleansing program against Italian people.<br /><br />There are many proofs of this, such as the long duration of the Slavic war against the Italians which began in the mid-19th century and continued uninterruptedly until the First World War, the expulsion of many Italians from Dalmatia during the interwar period, and the Slavic terrorism in Venezia Giulia, which finally culminated in the Foibe Massacres. Another proof is the fact that Fascists were only a small minority of those who were murdered by the Yugoslav invaders, whereas many of the victims were in fact openly anti-Fascist.<br /><div><br />An anti-Fascist intellectual from Grado, Biagio Marin, representative of the Liberal Party in the C.L.N., stated the following about the behavior of the Slavic invaders:</div><div><blockquote>“The most important Fascists were not harassed and if they were arrested they were soon released, whereas on the other hand all the possible anti-Fascist elements which were of pro-Italian or autonomist sentiments (as in Fiume) were beheaded so rapidly and systematically so as to exclude any possible resistance.”</blockquote></div><div><div>Professor Elio Apih, in his work “<i>Trieste: Political and Social History</i>”, reports an excerpt from the document FO 371/48953, r. 1085. This is an official English document, which was collected by the British Secret Service immediately after the war, and then transmitted to the Foreign Ministry. This document was classified for over 40 years before being made public. Among other things, it reads as follows:</div></div><div><blockquote>“It has been established, beyond any doubt, that during the Yugoslav occupation of Trieste and the adjacent territory, many thousands of people were thrown into the local <i>foibe</i>. In Trieste all the members of the Police Headquarters, the Public Security, the Guardia di Finanza, the Carabinieri, the Civic Guard and C.L.N. Partisans who were taken by the Yugoslavs, were arrested and thrown into <i>foibe</i>.”</blockquote></div><div><div>These massacres – whose victims were members of the C.L.N. of Trieste, as well as Italian military personnel – are also confirmed by other official documents, this time from the State Archives of Slovenia.</div><div><br /></div><div>In addition to Trieste, killings of numerous Italian soldiers, Carabinieri and Guardie di Finanza, also occurred in other places invaded by the Slavs.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Titoists sometimes attacked the Italian anti-Fascists with greater determination, rather than their well-known Fascist adversaries, since, for specific political purposes linked to the peace conferences, the Yugolavs intended to peddle the idea that all Italians were “Fascists”: the anti-Fascists of Venezia Giulia were therefore physically destroyed.<br /><br />The Yugoslav avant-gardes – who arrived in Trieste after the Germans had already been forced to enclose themselves in a few strongholds, where they remained until the arrival of the New Zealanders – were concerned not with “fighting the Nazi-Fascists”, but with disarming the members of the Italian C.L.N. and indeed with arresting a good number of them. Thousands of people were arrested by members of the Yugoslav “People's Defense” or “People's Guard”, through pre-prepared hitlists. Still others were arrested because they had affirmed the Italian character of Trieste and Venezia Giulia, whereas the Titoists proclaimed it Slavic (“<i>Trst je nas</i>”, as Slovenian nationalists still say today).</div></div><div><br /></div><div>The arrests and massacres committed by the Yugoslavs in fact affected all those who were believed to be capable of opposing in any way the annexationist goals of the Titoists, and often those affected were anti-Fascists, given that the Fascists by now were – if not dead – completely devoid of power. Already in September 1944 the Triestine Federation of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) had been decimated by an internal purge, with the elimination (or “disappearance”) of, among others, Luigi Frausin and Vincenzo Gigante, both of whom had always expressed their total opposition to the Yugoslav desire of annexing the region. This internal purging of the PCI itself was prompted by the hostility of the Venezia Giulia sections of the PCI towards the idea of incorporating the region into Yugoslavia, which was previously written about, and was ordered – directly or indirectly – by the Yugoslav Communist Party, for the purpose of eliminating all those who opposed the annexationist project.</div><div><br /></div><div>The arrests and killings of members of the C.L.N. of Trieste and of the PCI of Trieste, which go hand in hand with the Porzus Massacre of the white partisans of the “Brigate Osoppo”, sufficiently demonstrate how the supposed Yugoslav “liberators” acted even against anti-Fascists themselves, even when they were Communists, whenever they were regarded as potential obstacles to the Slavization of Venezia Giulia.</div><div><br /></div><div>Among those killed in the Foibe Massacres was also Angelo Adam, who was an anti-Fascist Jew. As an Italian from Fiume, but of Jewish religion, he was deported to Dachau on December 2, 1943. His registration number was 59001. At the end of the war he returned to his hometown in Fiume, but found it occupied by Tito's partisans and saw that nearly the entire Jewish community had disappeared. Adam had tried to get in touch with the C.L.N. of northern Italy and with local partisans, without any result. The Titoists kidnapped him together with his wife, Ernesta Stefancich: they disappeared and were never seen again. When her daughter Zulema, a young minor, tried to find out about the fate of her parents, she too was made to disappear.</div><div><br /></div><div><div>All this demonstrates the ideological and fraudulent nature of the theory that Venezia Giulia was “liberated” from the “Nazi-Fascists”; the reality instead shows that:</div><div><br /></div><div>1) the Yugoslavs were disliked by the vast majority of the population, including a part of the Slavic population, and even by some Communists of Venezia Giulia;</div><div><br /></div><div>2) in addition to the notorious Foibe massacres and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Italians, the Titoists had dedicated themselves with particular ferocity to killing also Italian anti-Fascists of the C.L.N., and even to carrying out purges against the Communists of the PCI.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><div>The hostility of the Titoists towards the local anti-Fascists themselves was part of their program of conquering of the region, aimed at presenting abroad an artificial image of an Italian population made up entirely of “Fascists” and therefore undeserving of consideration in its requests.</div><div><br /></div><div>Subsequently, the false hypothesis of “anti-fascist retaliation” was advocated and propagated precisely in order to deny the obvious ethnic cleansing and genocidal character of the Foibe Massacres and the Exodus, and at the same time to try to provide it with a degree of justification, albeit of an ideological nature.<br /></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6653813795681370244.post-64042643644130071742020-07-05T13:53:00.001+02:002021-04-28T23:38:59.390+02:00Foibe Massacres: Historical Disinformation Techniques(<i>Written by Federico Gennaccari, taken from “Orwell.live”, February 9 & 10, 2020</i>)<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWwsdRwogZU0de2aZefz-LQ-doOEnfyNsRTxSko2GIRBInFlLCJwkEkmRe2C4V9f0yD8rLSzJIoRrnI-ps2ILe-xnVRJx35-c8STxJPkhiL2aUvCW5GwQ96p9MdCkw01xHL1BsEXZM3f0/s1600/Foiba+149.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="498" data-original-width="714" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWwsdRwogZU0de2aZefz-LQ-doOEnfyNsRTxSko2GIRBInFlLCJwkEkmRe2C4V9f0yD8rLSzJIoRrnI-ps2ILe-xnVRJx35-c8STxJPkhiL2aUvCW5GwQ96p9MdCkw01xHL1BsEXZM3f0/s320/Foiba+149.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Part I – Foibe Massacres: Historical Disinformation Techniques</span></b><br />
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<b>Justificationism and denialism are two sides of the same coin</b><br />
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When Parliament passed the law establishing Remembrance Day in 2004, it immediately caused the agitation of those political and cultural organizations which for 60 years had managed to “conceal” the massacre perpetrated by Tito's Communist partisans.<br />
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Ever since then, new interpretations have been born every year, new “historical re-readings” (often in conjunction with Croatian and Slovenian universities) have been brought forth to deny the Italian holocaust. Two theses, above all, are put forth: the first one argues that the Foibe Massacres were not a crime against humanity but rather a “justified revenge” of the Slavs against the Fascists; and the second one denies that any terrible massacre took place, but only a few executions.<br />
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They are known as “Justificationists” and “Deniers”.<br />
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We talked about the subject with Silvano Olmi, a journalist, historical researcher and member of the national directorate of the February 10th Committee (<i>Comitato 10 Febbraio</i>).<br />
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<b>Silvano:</b> The former are people who justify the Foibe Massacres as the revenge of the Slavs for the alleged suffering inflicted upon them by Fascism; the latter even go as far as to deny that the Foibe Massacres were a crime, claiming that it is a hoax invented by anti-Communist propaganda. Then there are also the “reductionists”, i.e. those who do not deny the tragedy but limit its scope.<br />
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<b>Who are these disinformation professionals?</b><br />
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<b>Silvano:</b> The national ANPI falls into the first category, that of the “justificationists”, and it never invites radical members such as Alessandra Kersevan, Claudia Cernigoi and Sandi Volk to its official conferences. Instead, they host them only at the local level. In fact, as we speak, the provincial sections of the ANPI are organizing blatant “denialist” events.<br />
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This division of roles is also reflected within the Democratic Party (PD), with national representatives reiterating the words spoken in the past by Giorgio Napolitano and also by the current president, Sergio Mattarella. Then, however, at local level, cases occur – such as in Lecce – where the municipal councilors of the Democratic Party reject the request to name a street in honor of Norma Cossetto, the Istrian girl who has become the symbol of the Foibe Massacres. Or in Pavia, where other PD councilors tried to prevent the presentation of the graphic novel “<i>Foiba rossa</i>” which tells the story of Norma Cossetto.<br />
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<b>What are the main points of justificationism?</b><br />
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<b>Silvano:</b> There are three cardinal points upon which the justificationists work. The first pertains to the “eastern borders”, the second to the concept of “<i>Italiani brava gente</i>” and the third to “ethnic cleansing”.<br />
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<b>Let's start with the “eastern borders”…</b><br />
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<b>Silvano:</b> The question of Italy's “eastern borders” (mentioned even by Dante) is very complex and has a long history that begins with Rome, continues with the Byzantines and culminates with the more than seven centuries of Venetian presence. The “justificationists”, instead, frame the story only from the end of the First World War, when Istria, Fiume and a small part of Dalmatia were assigned to Italy, completely ignoring everything that had happened before that time.<br />
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<b>Why do they not talk about it?</b><br />
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<b>Silvano:</b> For two reasons. The first is to keep silent about the centuries-long Italianity of those lands, where the cities were born on the coast as colonies of Rome and then developed under Venice until 1797. Cities where, as a well-known song says, “even the stones speak Italian”. The second is to keep silent about the tumultuous events under the Austrians, who favored the Slavic component to the detriment of the Italian one. This found expression in Emperor Franz Joseph's decision of November 23, 1866, during the middle of the Risorgimento period, in which he called for the “Slavicization” of Italian surnames and toponyms. However, the purpose of all this is to make people believe that the Italianization of those lands was something imposed by Fascism.<br />
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<b>Let's move on to the second point: “<i>Italiani brava gente</i>”…</b><br />
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<b>Silvano:</b> It has now become a slogan used in a derogatory manner with reference to what Fascism and, later, the Italian army supposedly did during the Second World War, starting in 1941, when the territory of the Kingdom of the Yugoslavia was occupied. However, many details are ignored. First: the military action was the consequence of a <i>coup d'état</i> which attempted to install a pro-Allied government in Yugoslavia (which posed a serious risk to Italian troops engaged in Albania and Greece). Certainly, mistakes and horrors were committed by the Italian side during the war. There is a lot of emphasis placed on this point because they think this would justify the Foibe Massacres as a reaction of the Slav Communists against the Italians, who are all depicted as Fascists. Yet, they are silent about the actions of Italian soldiers in Dalmatia who saved thousands of Jews. They are silent about the Croats (Ustasha) and Serbs (Chetniks) who were allies of the Italians. Finally, they are especially silent about the fact that the crimes of the Yugoslav Partisans were committed above all at the end of the war.<br />
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<b>The third point is to deny that the Foibe Massacres were an “ethnic cleansing”…</b><br />
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<b>Silvano:</b> The Slavs and the Communists deny the terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing”, claiming that there was “only” a killing of Fascists and those who opposed the new regime. In reality, the Foibe Massacres occurred in two waves. The first took place between September 8 and October 10, 1943 when the Italian army was overwhelmed by the Armistice and Istria was occupied by Tito's partisans. It was in this period that Norma Cossetto was killed, for example.<br />
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The second “wave” of executions began after May 1, 1945, therefore after the war, when Slavic troops arrived in Trieste. For the Julian capital the massacres ended after 45 days (with the arrival of the British) but for Istria, Fiume and Dalmatia there was no end. The revisionist thesis is even denied by Mattarella, because the Yugoslavs killed people who were never Fascist; even partisans and exponents of the non-Communist CLN were thrown into the <i>foibe</i>. These are facts which the justificationists do not want to remember, precisely because the presence of Italian anti-Fascist exponents and anti-Fascist fighters among the victims confirms that “ethnic cleansing” was involved. The intent was clearly to eliminate the Italians, killing them or forcing them to flee. And, unfortunately, they succeeded...<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Part II – Deny or Justify: The Strategies to Conceal the Truth</span></b><br />
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<b>Most of the bodies were never found... therefore they “do not exist”; the Exodus, then, almost does not exist and we try to talk about it as little as possible in schools</b><br />
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We saw yesterday the arguments used to counter the emotional impact of the genocide and ethnic cleansing carried out by the Yugoslav Communist partisans in Julian Venetia at the end of the Second World War.<br />
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On the one hand, there is the aim of “justifying” what happened (as if the elimination, abuse, torture and rape of more than 10,000 people could be justified). Then there are also those who deny these figures.<br />
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We therefore asked Silvano Olmi – a journalist, historical researcher and member of the national directorate of the February 10th Committee (<i>Comitato 10 Febbraio</i>) – to clarify these points.<br />
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<b>Silvano:</b> In every part of the world, Communism acts like the Mafia: it makes people disappear. Not finding the corpses of the victims, and not being able to consult Yugoslav source documents, the denialist historians can claim anything. Unfortunately, there is no precise number of martyrs, because it was not possible to recover the bodies from all the <i>foibe</i>, as for example the most famous one, Basovizza, a national monument on the Carso of Trieste. The bodies of those killed in 1943 were recovered. But for those of 1945 it was more difficult. Most of the <i>foibe</i> are located in Yugoslavian territory (today Slovenia and Croatia) and therefore have remained unexplored.<br />
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So we must rely on estimations. The victims of Trieste are at least 5 thousand in number (4,122 names are found in the list published by Mayor Gianni Bartoli); another 500 in Fiume; in Gorizia the gravestone in Memorial Park shows the names of 695 people killed in the <i>foibe</i>, of which about 200 were white partisans (i.e. anti-communists). To these must be added the victims of Pola, Zara and more than 100 towns and villages of Istria and Dalmatia. For this reason, at least 10-12 thousand victims are calculated.<br />
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However, what is important is not the exact numbers, but their intention to annihilate the Italian presence.<br />
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<b>Another disinformation technique concerns, the Internet and social media where incorrect photos are sometimes posted...</b><br />
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<b>Silvano:</b> Yes, it sometimes happens that images are posted that have nothing to do with the Foibe Massacres and the killing of Italian citizens. Such images have also deceived television programs such as “Porta a Porta”. The best known fake images are those of the shooting of some Slavic citizens by Italian soldiers and the recovery of the remains of Polish officers massacred by the Soviets in the Katyn Forest. One has to be very careful when posting images, because in this case the misinformation is based on a theorem: if the photo is false, then according to them everything that is written in the article or post must also be false.<br />
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<b>Those are the disinformation techniques pertaining to the Foibe Massacres. What about the Exodus...</b><br />
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<b>Silvano:</b> They try not to talk about the Exodus or else they reduce it to just a few lines. There, too, they contest the official figure of 300-350 thousand exiles, but for the most part they tend to ignore it, mainly for two reasons. The first is the shameful hostility manifested towards the Exiles by the Italian Communist Party, especially in Ancona and Bologna, to cite the most egregious cases.<br />
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It is worth remembering – for those who do not know – that the Italian Communist Party (PCI) has always been in favor of every concession to the Slavs. Let's recall Togliatti's proposal for the transfer of Trieste or the the 2,000 workers of Monfalcone who were sent to work in Yugoslavia and who, after the split between Tito and Stalin, ended up deported to the concentration camp of Goli Otok.<br />
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The second reason is precisely the enormous extent of the Exodus, with cities like Pola abandoned by 90% of the population, entire towns remained almost deserted. A fact which demonstrates the Italian character of those lands and populations. A drama which Simone Cristicchi, with his recital “<i>Magazzino 18</i>”, has managed to make known, and to divulge effectively. It is no coincidence that Cristicchi was challenged by the far Left and by partisans, precisely because his show was terribly uncomfortable for them.<br />
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<b>What do you think of the initiatives of the ANPI?</b><br />
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<b>Silvano:</b> We always hope to be able to arrive at a peaceful and unprejudiced dialogue with the national ANPI. Unfortunately, however, especially at the local level, the “denialist” initiatives which focus on disinformation are pervasive, as are their opposition to initiatives such as the screening of the film “<i>Red Land – Rosso Istria</i>” or the graphic novel “<i>Foiba rossa</i>”, both centered on the tragic story of Norma Cossetto.<br />
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<b>And yet, not all partisans are Communists.</b><br />
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<b>Silvano:</b> True. It would suffice to refer to the publications of the Istrian CLN, such as as “<i>Foibe. La tragedia dell’Istria</i>” or the clandestine newspaper “<i>Il Grido dell’Istria</i>”. The collection of the 53 issues published between August 1945 and February 10, 1947 was reprinted in facsimile a few years ago by the National Dalmatian Association and, by leafing through it, interesting discoveries are made which demonstrate that the facts which today they wish to deny or downplay were already very well known at that time.<br />
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<b>How often is the Committee invited to speak in schools?</b><br />
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<b>Silvano:</b> Rarely. There are still very few schools which adequately celebrate Remembrance Day in Italy. Every year you have to search for principals and professors who are aware of the importance of making known to students this forgotten tragic page of Italian history (a page which has even been torn out). But, for the most part, they are not interested, or else are obstructed by red rape. Often, however, it is the students themselves who invite us to talk about what is not written in the textbooks and what their teachers do not want to explain.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6653813795681370244.post-42484322053602939812020-05-25T16:52:00.000+02:002020-05-26T03:40:09.900+02:00The Myth of Anti-Slavic Ethnic Cleansing in the Balkans(<i>Written by Marco Vigna, taken from the magazine “Indygesto”, March 31, 2020</i>)<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sKH-gHq69t8/XsvET_nubcI/AAAAAAAAHcE/UC9gF2FKewc0R1kiE5xL1nZaYDWB5f67wCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Profughi%2Bgiuliano-dalmati.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sKH-gHq69t8/XsvET_nubcI/AAAAAAAAHcE/UC9gF2FKewc0R1kiE5xL1nZaYDWB5f67wCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/Profughi%2Bgiuliano-dalmati.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Julian-Dalmatian Refugees During the Exodus from Pola (1947)</b></td></tr>
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<i>The idea that the Foibe Massacres were a reaction to Italian abuses is a polemical tool used by Foibe deniers. The historical data shows otherwise: the Italians did not carry out any mass repression, but instead suffered two of them...</i><br />
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One of the arguments used by those who try to deny the genocidal nature of the Foibe Massacres, or who try to justify it as an alleged reaction to supposed Italian abuses, is the accusation that Fascists carried out a de-nationalization of Slavs in Julian Venetia.<br />
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However, an examination of the quantitative data recorded in the censuses of the Julian population in the periods from 1880-1910 (under Austrian administration) and from 1921-1936 (under Italian administration) attest that no “ethnic cleansing” took place under the Fascists.<br />
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It is well known that the Habsburg government pursued a policy of germanizing and slavicizing Julian Venetia, Dalmatia and South Tyrol, in accordance with the directives of Emperor Franz Joseph at the meeting of the Council of Ministers in 1866. This is confirmed by the demographic data of the period from 1866-1918, which on the one hand documents massive expulsions of Italians, and on the other a Slavic immigration favored in every way by the government, all accompanied by a persecutory policy against Italians, which included endemic violence, the forced alteration of a large number of surnames, the closure of Italian schools, etc. Even a great historian like Ernesto Sestan made mention of this imperial policy:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“About 35 thousand Italian citizens were expelled in the decade from 1903 to 1913.” <span style="font-size: x-small;">(1)</span></blockquote>
The support of the imperial authorities for Slavic immigration from the Balkans, together with their simultaneous hostility towards the Italian population, caused a rapid increase in the Slavic-speaking population in Julian Venetia.<br />
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For example, the Slovenian population had a demographic expansion of 3.4% in the period 1880-1890, a 2.7% increase in 1890-1900, and as much as 20.8% in 1900-1910.<br />
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In some cities, the increase in the number of Slovenes was even more pronounced. In the period between 1900-1910, the Slovenian presence in Gorizia grew by 36.3%, in Trieste by 116.7%, and in Pola by 178.9%. <span style="font-size: x-small;">(2)</span><br />
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Obviously, the increased percentage of Slavs meant also a relative decrease of Italians.<br />
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The impact of these combined series of measures against the Italians was devastating especially in Dalmatia, resulting in a very rapid decline of the Italian ethnic group. Professor Monzali writes:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“In the first unofficial Austrian statistical studies carried out in the 1860's and 1870's, the number of Italian Dalmatians varied between 40,000 and 50,000; in the official census of 1880, their number dropped to 27,305, and then dropped dramatically in the following decades; 16,000 in 1890, 15,279 in 1900, 18,028 in 1910 (out of a total Dalmatian population of 593,784 people in 1900, and 645,646 in 1910).” <span style="font-size: x-small;">(3)</span></blockquote>
An abrupt de-nationalization operation to the detriment of the Italians during the last fifty years of the Austrian Empire is therefore proven by the sharp changes in the demographic percentages of the various ethnic groups. The Italian population was almost wiped out in Dalmatia and was reduced in Julian Venetia by the collaborative grip of Slavic nationalists and the imperial authorities.<br />
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On the other hand, there was no ethnic cleansing operation against the Slavs under the Kingdom of Italy. It is true that population movements occurred in the period of 1918-1921 in Julian Venetia, however they were voluntary migrations and were due to economic reasons.<br />
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In the preceding decades, the Austrian government had introduced into the region a number of officials, administrators, soldiers, employees of post offices, telegraphs, railways, etc., of Austrian, Hungarian and Slovenian ethnic background, so as to “Germanize or Slavicize [the region] ... unsparingly and without the slightest compunction”. <span style="font-size: x-small;">(4)</span> When the Austrian state surrendered the region to Italy, all these people naturally lost their jobs: no state in the world would have kept foreign officials, soldiers and civil servants – who were not even born in Julian Venetia – both for reasons of loyalty and because admission to certain jobs was subject to specific requirements and educational standards which differ from country to country.<br />
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As usually happens when a territory passes from one state to another, these people lost their jobs, so they voluntarily decided to return to their homelands. What happened was the voluntary emigration of some groups of Austrians, Hungarians and Slavs who had lost their state positions due to a simple and ordinary administrative measure, common to all states (the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, for example, enacted the same policy on its soil). It certainly was not an “ethnic cleansing”, also because those who wished to stay were free to remain in Julian Venetia. <span style="font-size: x-small;">(5)</span><br />
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Trivially: just as Austria had used its own officials, administrators, civil servants and military personnel in Julian Venetia, so too did Italy. The only real emigration for political reasons – and not economic ones – from Julian Venetia to Yugoslavia was instead that of a few thousand (less than 3,000) Slavic nationalists who, also of their own free will, moved immediately after the war to the newly-formed Kingdom of Yugoslavia, where they became foreign agitators, propagandists and sometimes terrorists in the name of Yugoslav nationalism. Again, here one can not speak of “ethnic cleansing”, because this migratory shift was voluntary and involved only a few thousand people. <span style="font-size: x-small;">(6)</span><br />
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Furthermore, it should be noted that even during the Fascist period there was an immigration of Slovenes from Slovenia to Italy: J. L. Gardelles, a French scholar, calculates that at least 20,000 to 25,000 Slovenes immigrated to Julian Venetia and permanently took up residence there during the 1920's and 1930's. <span style="font-size: x-small;">(7)</span> Such a phenomenon, accepted by the Fascist regime, is incompatible with the idea of an “ethnic cleansing” project.<br />
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Simplifying things as much as possible for the sake of brevity, the Fascists proposed the Italianization of the region, but they never conceived of any expulsion of the Slavs nor of forcing them to assimilate. They limited themselves to adopting measures similar to those adopted by other contemporary states, including liberal or democratic ones, making use of educational institutions and mandating the use of the official language.<br />
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The non-existence of any forced upheaval of the ethnic and demographic composition of Julian Venetia on the part of the Fascist authorities emerges from a comparison between the 1921 census (which took place a year before the March on Rome and the beginning of the Fascist regime) and the 1936 census.<br />
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The census data of 1921 showed that Slovenes and Croats were equal to 37.3% of the population <span style="font-size: x-small;">(8)</span>, while their percentage in 1936 grew to 37.9%. To be precise, in 1936 the region had a total population of 1,022,593 inhabitants, of which 402,091 inhabitants were of non-Italian origin (Slavs, Germans and other very small communities, equal to 39.5%). More specifically, there were 252,916 Slovenes (24.7%) and 134,945 Croats (13.2%). <span style="font-size: x-small;">(9)</span><br />
<br />
Therefore, the Slavs had increased in number from 1921 to 1936, in both absolute terms (not surprising, given the general population growth) and relative terms, since the total percentage of Slovenian and Croatian inhabitants had grown, albeit to a modest extent.<br />
<br />
By contrast, one should note the extent of the brutal ethnic cleansing carried out by the Yugoslavs against the Italian population in Julian Venetia between 1943-1948, which led to the expulsion of about 300,000 Italians, to which one must add many thousands more who were murdered.<br />
<br />
In conclusion, the “Fascist ethnic cleansing” against Slavs in Julian Venetia is a myth. Meanwhile, two other ethnic cleansings did take place: one against the Italians in Julian Venetia and Dalmatia under the Habsburg Empire, followed by a second one against Italians perpetrated by Tito's partisans.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>References</b><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">1. E. Sestan, <i>Venezia Giulia. Lineamenti di una storia etnica e culturale</i>, Udine 1997, p. 93.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">2. Data based on the figures reported in O. Mileta Mattiuz, <i>Popolazioni dell’Istria, Fiume, Zara e Dalmazia (1850-2002). Ipotesi di quantificazione demografica</i>, Trieste 2005; G. Perselli, <i>I censimenti della popolazione dell’Istria, con Fiume e Trieste e di alcune città della Dalmazia tra il 1850 e il 1936</i>, Rovigno 1993.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">3. L. Monzali, <i>Italiani di Dalmazia. Dal Risorgimento alla Grande Guerra</i>, Firenze 2011, pp. 170-171.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">4. The decision of Franz Joseph to carry out an ethnic cleansing against the Italians in Trentino-Alto Adige, Julian Venetia and Dalmatia, can be found in <i>Die Protokolle des Österreichischen Ministerrates 1848-1867. VI Abteilung: Das Ministerium Belcredi. Band 2: 8. April 1866-6. Februar 1867, Österreichischer Bundesverlag für Unterricht, Wissenschaft und Kunst</i> (Wien 1973); the quote appears in Section VI, vol. 2, meeting of November 12, 1866, p. 297. The quotation appears in a section titled “<i>Maßregeln gegen das italienische Element in einigen Kronländern</i>” (“Measures against the Italian element in some territories of the Crown”).</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">5. The considerations of H. Angermeier in <i>Königtum und Staat im deutschen Reich</i>, München 1954, are very useful in this regard.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">6. J. A. Brundage, <i>The Genesis of the Wars: Mussolini and Pavelic</i>, London 1987.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">7. J. L. Gardelles, <i>Histria et Dalmatia. Peuplements: essai de synthèse</i>, in «Journal of Modern History», VI (1980), pp. 143-214</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">8. J. B. Duroselle, <i>Le conflit de Trieste 1943-1954</i>, Bruxelles, 1966.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">9. T. Sala, 1939. <i>Un censimento riservato del governo fascista sugli «alloglotti». Proposte per l’assimilazione degli “allogeni” nella Provincia dell’Istria</i> in «Bollettino dell’Istituto Regionale per la storia del movimento di liberazione nel Friuli-Venezia Giulia», a. I, n. 1, 1973, pp. 17-19.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6653813795681370244.post-88629264084287169672020-03-11T03:27:00.001+01:002020-03-11T03:27:53.131+01:00So now Marco Polo was “Croatian”: Someone failed their history test!(<i>Written by Fabio Rocchi, taken from the journal “Difesa adriatica”, anno XIII, n. 11, November 2007</i>.)<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Marco Polo Sailing from Venice in 1271</span></b></td></tr>
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After the ludicrous appropriation of the the statue known as the “Lussin Bronze” (thus named due to its having been found off the coast of the island of Lussino), exhibited for months in Florence as the “Croatian Athlete” and now collecting dust in Zagreb, Croatia is once again up to its usual game of attempting to make Croatian what has never been even remotely Croatian. This time it is Marco Polo’s turn: it seems he has been given full Croatian citizenship, and a Croatian passport for good measure.<br />
<br />
The Croatian National Tourist Board recently published 150,000 copies of a brochure and a 15-minute film in which “scientific proof” is given to show that Marco Polo was born on the Dalmatian island of Curzola and thus, his native land must inevitably be Croatia. (The source is an article from the September 5th edition of “<i>La Voce del Popolo</i>”, the Italian-language newspaper based in Fiume.)<br />
<br />
This latest, ridiculous, attempt at appropriation of identity is steeped in complete ignorance of historical fact: Marco Polo is universally recognized by hosts of expert scholars as having been born in Venice and besides, even if his family had its origins on Curzola, the island in that period was a territory of Venice, and the local population was of Latin-Venetian culture: there did not exist the remotest sign or mention of Croatia.<br />
<br />
This cheap attempt at “Croatianization” demonstrates the will – this time, truly scientific – to rewrite history, tailoring it to fit a nation’s needs and preferences, conferring citizenship on famous people so as to gain favor on tourist brochures. There might be a few tourists who, ignorant of the truth, will fall into the trap, but culture and history are something else entirely: they are written in books, not on tourist brochures.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6653813795681370244.post-88677194925893098032020-02-10T22:10:00.000+01:002020-02-10T22:10:25.085+01:00February 10th — The Day of Remembrance: Foibe Massacres and the Exodus(<i>Written by Elisabetta de Dominis, descendant of the De Dominis family of Arbe, taken from the newspaper “La Voce di New York”, February 9, 2020</i>.)<br />
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<i>We were in Trieste for the presentation of the book “10 Febbraio. Dalle foibe all’esodo”, containing 50 testimonies collected by Roberto Menia.</i><br />
<br />
Monday February 10th is “The Day of Remembrance” and many Italians still do not know what is supposed to be remembered, because they do not know what the Italians who lived in the regions of Istria and Dalmatia (located along the eastern coast of Italy, which today belong to Slovenia and Croatia) suffered from in the ten years after the war. They still do not know what the words ‘<i>Exodus</i>’ and ‘<i>Foiba</i>’ mean.<br />
<br />
I must confess that my guts are turned inside out every time I return to my family's island of origin – Arbe in the Quarnero – and I hear Italian tourists, ignorant of history, calling it by its new name <i>Rab</i>. Yes, I think angrily: <i>Rab</i>. But what the hell is Rab? For centuries it was called <i>Arba</i>, ever since the times of the ancient Romans, who founded it. Lussinpiccolo has become <i>Mali Lošinj</i>, which sounds horrible... Ragusa, the sixth Italian maritime republic, is now called <i>Dubrovnik</i>, which sounds eerily similar to <i>Diabolik</i>... And there are many other cacophonous names: it is sufficient to look at the map.<br />
<br />
For example <i>Goli Otok</i>, i.e. Isola Calva, the Adriatic gulag where malnourished deportees were forced by the guards to move stones all day while they were beaten by other deportees under the scorching sun until they killed each other. When this land of stones along the coast appears to me, I always think that the stones are the petrified bones of those unfortunate people. Most of the prisoners in that gulag were Italians Communists who had moved from different regions of the Italy in order to live in a communist paradise in accordance with Yugoslavian Stalinist ideology, which Tito later decided had to be eliminated, but not before making them suffer in unspeakable ways (I just referenced above a small part of the brutalities perpetrated against them).<br />
<br />
The huge tragedy of the exodus of 350,000 Italians was the result of fear, fueled by the continuous “disappearances” of Italians at the hands of the Yugoslav Communists. The most “successful” method of making them disappear was to throw them alive into <i>foibe</i> in Istria (i.e. natural sinkholes found in the Carso area) or else mutilate them and drown them in the Dalmatian sea with a stone tied around their neck.<br />
<br />
Nowadays “cultural” meetings are held in various Italian regions organized by self-styled “historians” of Slovenian origin, usually born in Trieste or Istria, who claim that the Foibe Massacres are a hoax. And this makes me feel like vomiting. I wonder how our country can allow such a humiliation towards its own citizens to take place. There is still a lot of bad faith on the part of certain municipal administrators, who say: “<i>Well, they were Fascists...</i>” More than 11,000 defenseless citizens, women and children were killed, and you're telling me they were all Fascists!?<br />
<br />
“<i>Our parents, even here in Italy, continued to hold their tongue: it was advisable not to speak up or else you would be accused of being a Fascist. If today we have the opportunity to speak with our heads held high, without fear of making ourselves heard, we owe it to the honorable Roberto Menia who established the Day of Remembrance in 2004</i>”, said Massimiliano Lacota, President of the Union of Istrians last Thursday, in Trieste, at the presentation of the 50 testimonies collected by Menia in his book “<i>10 Febbraio. Dalle foibe all’esodo</i>”. Sitting next to me, Mrs. Gigliola from Cherso (as it was called by the ancient Greeks, which the Croats decided to change to <i>Cres</i>) commented: “<i>When one has great pain, one does not speak</i>”.<br />
<br />
Piero Del Bello, director of the Museum of the Istrians, Fiumans and Dalmatians explained that “<i>you are an exile by obligation, a migrant by choice, albeit under terrible circumstances</i>”, adding that “<i>in my house we did not talk about it at all, for that sense of modesty had turned into shame because everything had been lost: family, home, land. How can you remember and construct a memory if you no longer have the fertile ground which makes your story last for generations? Shame turned into fear, which our people have suffered from ever since. You have to write your own story, otherwise it will be forgotten. Roberto, on the other hand, was lucky that his mom shared it with him</i>.”<br />
<br />
The Sicilian writer Pietrangelo Buttafuoco commented that he found it vulgar that in the Senate the word ‘<i>drama</i>’ was attached to the Foibe Massacres, when in reality it was “<i>the pinnacle of tragedy</i>.” And he stressed that bad faith is always accompanied by ignorance, since here “<i>the victim has been turned into the accused</i>”. A poetic and touching speech, but I shed tears when Roberto Menia finally spoke, because he expressed my exact feeling:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“<i>Over the years, I feel this inner bond growing ever deeper. It pains me to look at the sea from the shore of Trieste and see in the distance those lands which I have never lived in. For us these places no longer exist, except in our souls. Our journey has no meaning unless it leaves something. Why must this Italy, which is a wonderful mosaic, lose these pieces of its history? The grand history of a Country is made up of many smaller histories. And when they touch your heart, they transmit something to you. We have the right and duty to collect all the testimonies and pass them on to our children. Simone Cristicchi, who wrote “Magazzino 18”, came to Trieste to write about the asylum and discovered that it was full of insane Julian-Dalmatian exiles: they gazed upon the horizon without speaking...</i>”</blockquote>
<br />
<b>See also:</b><br />
<a href="https://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2018/05/40-days-of-terror-yugoslav-occupation.html">40 Days of Terror: The Yugoslav Occupation of Trieste</a><br />
<a href="http://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2016/04/april-25-feast-of-san-marco.html">April 25: The Feast of San Marco – Not Liberation</a><br />
<a href="https://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2016/02/national-memorial-day-of-exiles-and.html">National Memorial Day of the Exiles and Foibe</a><br />
<a href="https://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-day-of-remembrance-foibe-massacres.html">The Day of Remembrance: The Foibe Massacres and the Julian-Dalmatian Exodus</a><br />
<a href="https://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-meaning-of-foibe-massacres.html">The Meaning of the Foibe Massacres</a><br />
<a href="https://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2016/03/pits-of-death-give-up-their-grisly.html">Pits of Death Give up Their Grisly Secret</a><br />
<a href="https://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2016/02/triestine-girls-reflections-on-istrian.html">Triestine Girls: Reflections on the Istrian Exodus</a><br />
<a href="https://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-foibe-are-still-open-in-our-hearts.html">The Foibe are Still Open in Our Hearts</a><br />
<a href="https://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2016/02/a-painful-piece-of-italian-history.html">A Painful Piece of Italian History, Overlooked</a><br />
<a href="https://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2018/07/castua-massacre-exhumations-completed.html">Castua Massacre: Exhumations Completed After 73 Years</a><br />
<a href="https://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-priests-murdered-in-foibe-massacres.html">The Priests Murdered in the Foibe Massacres</a><br />
<a href="https://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2018/01/titoist-crimes-50-priests-murdered-in.html">Titoist Crimes: 50 Priests Murdered in the Foibe Massacres</a><br />
<a href="https://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-disappearance-and-death-of-don.html">The Disappearance and Death of Don Francesco Bonifacio</a><br />
<a href="https://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-rape-and-murder-of-norma-cossetto.html">The Rape and Murder of Norma Cossetto</a><br />
<a href="https://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2018/10/overview-of-lidia-bastianichs.html">Overview of Lidia Bastianich's Autobiography</a><br />
<a href="https://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2018/10/excerpt-from-lidia-bastianichs.html">Excerpt From Lidia Bastianich's Autobiography</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6653813795681370244.post-54275513737041125742020-01-01T17:53:00.000+01:002020-01-01T17:53:32.754+01:00Forbidden Truths: Istria and Dalmatia Were Italian(<i>Written by Elisabetta de Dominis, descendant of the De Dominis family of Arbe, taken from the newspaper “La Voce di New York”, March 3, 2019</i>.)<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Conference in Trieste, February 26, 2019<br /><span style="font-size: xx-small;">From left to right: Massimiliano Fedriga, Elisabetta de Dominis, Fausto<br />Biloslavo, Massimiliano Lacota, Vittorio Feltri & Marcello Veneziani</span></b></td></tr>
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<i>What you are about to read is the speech I delivered at the conference on “The Role of Journalism in Preserving the Memory of the Julian-Dalmatian Exodus”. The conference was organized by Massimiliano Lacota, President of the Union of Istrians, at the Palazzo della Regione Friuli Venezia Giulia, in Trieste. In attendance were Massimiliano Fedriga, President of Friuli-Venezia Giulia; Vittorio Feltri, editor of “Libero”; Marcello Veneziani, journalist and political scientist; and Fausto Biloslavo, correspondent for “Il Giornale”.</i><br />
<br />
In the beginning we had hope: we hoped to return to our lands. Then we dreamed about it: because returning was no longer possible. But the dream of living helps one to survive. Now we no longer dream. We have come to terms with reality – a reality which is not the historical reality, however. Too many people still do not know what happened to the Italians of the Adriatic Coast.<br />
<br />
Then there are those who did know – those who participated in the killing, in the stealing, in inflicting suffering upon us. These are the friends, relatives or comrades of the modern-day Foibe-deniers of the Communist Party. These deniers deny the crimes proven by witnesses and deny the discovery of human remains, although many of the prisoners were made to disappear. By denying it, they defend and confirm the heinous actions of Tito's partisans. If today we deny a crime, then we admit that tomorrow it can be perpetrated again.<br />
<br />
Not wanting to acknowledge what happened over 70 years ago, they do not allow history to teach us how to deal with the present, in the first place the symptoms of totalitarianism. It is always born from jealousies and social hatred, from disparity in wealth.<br />
<br />
Nobody wants to accept that culture can make a difference, because culture is wealth. It can teach you to understand, to reason, to warn and even to honestly obtain a social position – without having skeletons in the closet or stolen paintings in the living room.<br />
<br />
History must be told and repeated, because, as the Latins said: <i>repetita iuvant</i>.<br />
<br />
Those who officially represent Italy internationally still do not have the courage to express themselves on the gravity of the historical events that occurred after the war on the Eastern Coast of Italy; they do not have the courage to respond to Pahor and Plenkovic, presidents of the nearby republics of Slovenia and of Croatia.<br />
<br />
They almost seem to fear them: <i>hic sunt leones</i>, as the Romans said.<br />
<br />
No, beyond the border there are no longer any lions; the only lion that was there was the lion of San Marco. Then came the jackals, eventually.<br />
<br />
First, the presidents of Slovenia and Croatia should not have the audacity to complain about what is said in our country regarding the Foibe Massacres, because Italy is a sovereign state.<br />
<br />
Second, Italy is a state of significantly greater European and international weight.<br />
<br />
Third, it is time to reveal and dispel the taboos that haunt Slovenia and Croatia. And I wish to speak about this.<br />
<br />
<b>Taboo No. 1: Istria and Dalmatia were Italian lands and belonged to Italy.</b><br />
<br />
We Triestines, many of whom are of Istrian or Dalmatian origin, know this. But how many Italians really know that these were regions of Italy and that our parents and grandparents fled their own homeland – not from Yugoslavia, which did not even exist yet as a federal socialist republic?<br />
<br />
Still to this day they do not teach this in schools.<br />
<br />
On Sunday February 10th, on the Day of Remembrance at the Foiba of Basovizza, Antonio Tajani saluted us by saying “<i>Long live Italian Istria and Italian Dalmatia!</i>”, in order to remind us what our nationality was and what the nationality of our lands were at that time.<br />
<br />
Still today too few people are aware that those who remained behind [in Yugoslavia] had to deny their Italian heritage and declare themselves Slavic, and were forbidden to speak Italian.<br />
<br />
I will not defend Tajani, because in the following days he proved incapable of even defending himself. Perhaps he does not know history. He could have confidently responded to the complaints of the Slovenian president Borut Pahor by simply saying: “I paid homage to what used to be the Eastern Coast of Italy and its heroic inhabitants.”<br />
<br />
The day after the Day of Remembrance, I woke up in the middle of the night with this phrase: “Everyone is a hero unto himself and the Fatherland is where it begins.”<br />
<br />
<b>Taboo No. 2: The Slavs did not have their own written culture.</b><br />
<br />
The only cultural identity along the Eastern Adriatic Coast was Italian cultural identity. The Slavs, who for centuries lived 100 km from the coast, were transferred <i>en masse</i> to the coastal towns by the Austro-Hungarian imperial government in order to turn the Italians into a minority. But the imperial government had to keep schools and all legal documents – everything from contracts to land registrations – in Italian, because the Slavs did not have their own written culture or national identity, as they had not had any kingdom for 800 years, having always been divided into different ethnicities and tribes. Indeed, the so-called Karadjordjevic “princes” were Serbian chieftains who were placed at the head of a kingdom created by the British at the end of the First World War, a kingdom which the Slovenes and Croats had joined only with reluctance, as later events show.<br />
<br />
<b>Taboo No. 3: False honor.</b><br />
<br />
How can honor be built upon a crime, a robbery, a massacre? Tajani, with his “<i>Long live...</i>” speech, has put a dent in the public credibility of the neighboring republics, which they care about so viscerally.<br />
<br />
By taking offense – as if these historical facts were made-up by Italy – presidents Pahor and Plenkovic demonstrated that at the bottom of their bowels lies their guilty conscience, which they are ashamed of and which they wish to conceal from the younger generations in their countries, who feel the need to know history and discover their non-existent roots.<br />
<br />
Their children are kept in the dark about the 400 years of Venetian and then Italian history: in schools they begin with the Early Middle Ages and then pass to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. And many kids do not know that they live in houses stained with the blood of its former Italian owners.<br />
<br />
<b>Taboo No. 4: Croatia and Slovenia do not have a history of their own.</b><br />
<br />
After stealing our lives, our country, our affections, our land, our houses, our belongings, our tombs, Croatia and Slovenia are now also stealing our history from us, while our leaders remain silent.<br />
<br />
Having never had national sovereignty, they need famous men in order to forge a history for themselves. And since they do not have any, they resort to translating the names of our ancestors into Slavic.<br />
<br />
According to them, Marco Polo was “Croatian” and was born in Curzola. Too bad that at that time Curzola was an island of <i>La Serenissima</i>.<br />
<br />
My ancestor, Giovanni de Dominis, commander of the Dalmatian fleet in the battle of Lepanto, aboard the galley <i>San Giovanni</i>, has now become “Ivan”. Fortunately, they did not translate the surname since it is Latin.<br />
<br />
My ancestor Marcantonio de Dominis, an optical scientist, archbishop of Spalato and later dean of Windsor, has become “Marcantun”.<br />
<br />
<b>Taboo No. 5: Croatia and Slovenia have no roots.</b><br />
<br />
Read the book “<i>Les Slaves</i>” by Francis Conte and you will understand: the Slavs inhabited the swampy and infertile areas of southern Russia, then pushed into the Balkans in the fifth century. They have always raided and killed in order to take possession of fertile land. And so it was, all the way up to the latest war in the 1990's. In order to effortlessly enrich themselves they have always liquidated and exterminated those who owned the land, whether by throwing them into a <i>foiba</i> or tossing them into the sea. The ancient Greeks called them <i>sklavos</i>, to emphasize that they had no dignity as a people: they served the highest bidder.<br />
<br />
When you have no roots, you have no dignity. You are undignified.<br />
<br />
Unlike them, we Istrians and Dalmatians have roots. These roots are in our hearts, which gave us the ability to make a dignified choice and to live in peace, because we know who we are and where we come from.<br />
<br />
For centuries, we felt that we were citizens of the world, as Venice had taught us. Under the Austro-Hungarian Empire we discovered Europeans before Europe itself did. But we always felt Italian, even when we found ourselves annexed to Central Europe, which was not exactly a place that we felt a part of. Because it is the Adriatic that was and has been our destiny.<br />
<br />
I woke up very early one morning from a dream that I do not well recall, but I do remember this phrase: “Crushed between two eras, two wars, two civilizations, two cultures”.<br />
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<b>Our Middle Adriatic Destiny?</b><br />
<br />
Not lands in the middle of ours, like those of Central Europe, but lands in the middle of the sea, the Middle Adriatic land. The sea between the land, between the islands.<br />
<br />
Are we more sea or more land?<br />
<br />
We are like the sea: we have no land. We are the sea. And the land was only a landing place for us. Coveted yes, but not definitive. Only the sea is forever.<br />
<br />
We on the east coast of Italy are neither meat nor fish. We eat meat and fish, but we prefer ham and scampi, salty and sweet at the same time. So we are: salty, pungent, biting and lovable, moderate, sentimental. This is why we are different: torn, uprooted, half and half. In the middle?<br />
<br />
We are no longer there, but nor do we feel like we are from here, in this part of Italy, even if we were born here. Our roots remain in our hearts, in ours bowels, in our blood. In the memories of our fathers and mothers. Memories of joy and suffering.<br />
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Even if you [Croats and Slovenes] took everything, even our graves, you did not take our roots. We will continue to grow there, in our occupied lands. Where the spirit of our ancestors is, where our homes are, where our history can torment your consciences. Nor do you know how to dive into the sea and resurface on other shores. You are not sons of this sea.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6653813795681370244.post-56067977685986773052019-12-31T21:22:00.001+01:002019-12-31T21:30:31.573+01:00In Memory of Nicolò Luxardo (1927-2019)<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMxice0HnGqunp0kG4mMcGFORzfnkiWsPmrzH6HuMNgCJzi2e4IhQoao3cor9I4Q0HUo5FEdf0vRrkBO0WqSM4BOWSAZjNmMZ38EKIbLig9ZtYYtLHgsWAole7HKXEghR4e0i0xyG4xYw/s1600/Nicol%25C3%25B2+Luxardo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="781" data-original-width="564" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMxice0HnGqunp0kG4mMcGFORzfnkiWsPmrzH6HuMNgCJzi2e4IhQoao3cor9I4Q0HUo5FEdf0vRrkBO0WqSM4BOWSAZjNmMZ38EKIbLig9ZtYYtLHgsWAole7HKXEghR4e0i0xyG4xYw/s320/Nicol%25C3%25B2+Luxardo.jpg" width="231" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Nicolò Luxardo III (1927-2019)</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">“<i>The Luxardo name is synonymous with a success story and with an enlightened company which is always attentive to its employees, but it is also inextricably linked to the painful and unforgettable page of the destruction of Zara, the Julian-Dalmatian exodus and the tenacious memory of the exiled communities. The whole of Veneto must be grateful to Nicolò – an Istrian of Ligurian descent – for having the strength to be reborn, which he demonstrated by making our land the homeland of Maraschino</i>.”</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">– Luca Zaia, President of Veneto</span></blockquote>
<br />
It is sad to report that Nicolò Luxardo III, a member of the illustrious Luxardo family, passed away in his home in Padua earlier this month on December 3, 2019. He was an Italian Dalmatian exile and entrepreneur who helped rebuild the Luxardo company after the tragedies the World War II.<br />
<br />
Nicolò was born in Trieste in 1927. His family, known throughout the world for its maraschino liqueur produced in the Dalmatian city of Zara, was then enjoying a business resurgence in the Kingdom of Italy. In 1943, however, the city of Zara was destroyed by Allied bombings and reduced to a pile of rubble. Tito's Yugoslav Partisans then descended upon Zara in 1944 and began a series of massacres which nearly wiped out the entire Luxardo family. His father Pietro, his uncle Nicolò II and his aunt Bianca were all murdered by the Yugoslavs. His uncle Giorgio (1897-1963) was the sole survivor of his generation.<br />
<br />
Despite the millennial Italian character of the city and its population, the city of Zara was annexed to Yugoslavia after the war. Like thousands of other Italians of the Eastern Adriatic, the Luxardos were forced to abandon their native land and their factory, which was seized by the Yugoslav Communists, and had to rebuild their company in post-war Italy.<br />
<br />
After conducting research and experiments aimed at finding an ideal location to grow the maraschino cherry, the company was reborn in 1947 in Torreglia, a small town in the province of Padua at the foot of the Euganean Hills. Here, Nicolò and his uncle Giorgio rebuilt the company which had been founded in Zara by Girolamo Luxardo in 1821. When he re-founded the company with his uncle, Nicolò was just twenty years old.<br />
<br /><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-foA7juvM56E/Xgun14DsAxI/AAAAAAAAHE0/c2Tr4rB_C5MMhTXQ5oWOoB02gcLqcRzhQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Nicol%25C3%25B2%2BLuxardo%2BIII.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="435" data-original-width="671" height="129" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-foA7juvM56E/Xgun14DsAxI/AAAAAAAAHE0/c2Tr4rB_C5MMhTXQ5oWOoB02gcLqcRzhQCLcBGAsYHQ/s200/Nicol%25C3%25B2%2BLuxardo%2BIII.jpg" width="200" /></a>
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-size: x-small;">“<i>Nicolò Luxardo was a great man, entrepreneur, innovator and precursor of the times who witnessed so much history – some of it frightening – with the will to be reborn, enlightened pragmatism, and extraordinary moral strength, which are his greatest legacies. ... The personality and example of Nicolò Luxardo will be a guide for our entrepreneurs, especially the youngest ones whom he dedicated particular care to, who will respect the ideals in which he believed and invested: work, family, culture, history, attachment to the territory, attention to the product and attention to quality, which made Luxardo and his Maraschino an admirable example, known and appreciated all over the world</i>.”</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">– Massimo Finco, Deputy President of Assindustria Venetocentro</span></blockquote>
<br />
In the following decades the Luxardo company had to fight numerous lawsuits against Croatian imitators in Yugoslavia who were attempting to market Maraschino liqueur using the Luxardo trademark. The Luxardo's successfully won all the court cases against them. Upon Giorgio's death in 1963, Nicolò assumed presidency of the company and resigned only in 2000, at the age of 73.<br />
<br />
In addition to being a successful entrepreneur, Nicolò Luxardo was a great lover of beauty: he oversaw the restorations of many Venetian villas, collected books on the Julian-Dalmatian Exodus and on the history of the Republic of Genoa, the original birthplace of his ancestors.<br />
<br />
In Padua he founded the <i>Giovani imprenditori di Confindustria</i> (a group of young entrepreneurs), oversaw the publication of the Dalmatian Italian magazine “<i>Rivista dalmatica di storia patria</i>” and wrote two books: the first dedicated to his family and the company, entitled “<i>I Luxardo del maraschino</i>”, and the second dedicated to the story of his father, uncle and aunt who were killed during the war, entitled “<i>Oltre gli scogli di Zara</i>”.<br />
<br />
With Nicolò Luxardo's death Italy loses one of its last surviving representatives of Italianity in the Eastern Adriatic, as well as a great industrialist.<br />
<br />
He leaves behind his wife Anna Maria Angelini, a poetess with whom he had two children, Guido and Piero, who run the Luxardo company with their cousins; the latter has also been the chairman of the Campiello Prize Management Committee since 2011.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hBRAKnQ_a1k/XguXu6c7ukI/AAAAAAAAHEo/Bqqw1BF9KPgKWOB7goMFhgBgG5NYtZ7RQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Nicol%25C3%25B2%2BLuxardo%2BFranchi.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="332" data-original-width="644" height="164" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hBRAKnQ_a1k/XguXu6c7ukI/AAAAAAAAHEo/Bqqw1BF9KPgKWOB7goMFhgBgG5NYtZ7RQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Nicol%25C3%25B2%2BLuxardo%2BFranchi.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Wife Anna Maria, sons Piero with Cristina, Guido with Elena,<br />sister Alessandra, grandchildren Alvise, Martina, Gaia, Nicolò,<br />Chiara, Laura and Francesco, with deep sorrow announce<br />the loss of Nicolò Luxardo Franchi, 92 years old.</span></b></td></tr>
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<div>
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<br />
<b>See also:</b><br />
<a href="http://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-history-of-maraschino.html">The History of Maraschino</a><br />
<a href="http://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-history-of-luxardo-company.html">The History of the Luxardo Company</a><br />
<a href="http://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2017/09/luxardo-maraschino-vs-croatian-maraska.html">Luxardo Maraschino vs. Croatian Maraska</a><br />
<a href="http://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-luxardo-distillery-how-croats.html">The Luxardo Distillery: How the Croats Attempted to Usurp the Brand</a></div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6653813795681370244.post-71998295808735431902019-12-28T14:19:00.002+01:002019-12-28T17:45:17.545+01:00A City Hostile to the Austrians: Irredentism in Trieste(<i>Written by Marco Vigna, taken from the newspaper “Il primato nazionale”, December 8, 2019</i>.)<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KPXdTycs82k/XgbemcIMj_I/AAAAAAAAHEM/jf4KvCRQlvQbSiY8yI9EG7k6WRb_6zkpwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/trieste-irredentismo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="624" data-original-width="958" height="208" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KPXdTycs82k/XgbemcIMj_I/AAAAAAAAHEM/jf4KvCRQlvQbSiY8yI9EG7k6WRb_6zkpwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/trieste-irredentismo.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
The massive presence of irredentism – that is to say, Italian patriotism – in Trieste can be traced back to the mid-nineteenth century. Trieste is a very symbolic city, notable for its size, its geographical location and its history.<br />
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In 1848 a governor of this city, General Ferencz Gyulai (later Field Marshal, Viceroy of Lombardy-Venetia and commander of the Austrian army in the war of 1859) had published an article in <i>L'Osservatore Triestino</i> – which at that time functioned as a government press organ – in which he contrasted the Slavic subjects, whom he considered loyal to the empire, with the Italians, whom he accused of being collectively hostile to imperial authority. In truth, the governor does not appear to have been wrong.<br />
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<b>Trieste: The Hostile City</b><br />
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Within a few months following the publication of this article, there were three attempts at insurrection in Trieste, all three nipped in the bud by the imposing military and police apparatus: the riot of August 20, 1848, which resulted in deaths, injuries and arrests; another attempted insurrection on October 10-11; and then riots which lasted from October 23 to October 29, 1848.<br />
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On March 17, 1849 Trieste was placed under a state of siege: an entire regiment – the <i>Fürstenwärther</i> – was concentrated in Opicina. The castle of Trieste was put in a state of alert in anticipation of a siege, and a national guard was trained, most of whose recruits were foreigners. The concentration of large military forces in Trieste occurred when Hungary, Lombardy and Venetia were in full revolt, while Carlo Alberto's army was in pursuit of Radetzky's forces. Despite this dramatic situation for the empire, it was decided to place several thousand troops in the city of Trieste, demonstrating its importance and recognizing the danger of its potential insurrection.<br />
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On the other hand, Gyulai was one of the most renowned imperial generals and in 1850 he managed to prevent the insurrection of Trieste by becoming Minister of War, then military commander of Lombardy-Venetia, and finally viceroy. His career depended largely on the merits acquired in 1848.<br />
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Even the central government seemed convinced of the antipathy of Trieste towards the empire, so much so that on October 28, 1848 it had communicated to the imperial authorities in Trieste that, in order to effectively oppose the Triestine Society (<i>Società dei Triestini</i>), which was "absolutely Italian and anti-German", it was necessary to develop and enhance the German society, which already existed, as well as a Slavic society, which was then in the process of being formed. In accordance with this, already on December 1 of that year Gyulai gave the order to encourage Slavic immigration.<br />
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These judgments and evaluations were passed on to the governors and to the central government, which had at its disposal a widespread network of police and informants. The police chiefs knew the mood of the population very well, took note of what they said and did, and reported it regularly to their superiors.<br />
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For example, in 1848 the chief of police of Trieste, Altgraf von Salm, communicated to Vienna that the most widely-read newspapers in the city were the following seven: <i>Il Costituzionale</i>, <i>La Guardia nazionale</i>, <i>La Frusta</i>, <i>La Gazzetta di Trieste</i>, <i>Il Giornale di Trieste</i>, <i>Il Telegrafo della sera</i>, <i>Il Diavoletto</i>. Of these, Salm wrote, only one (<i>Il Diavoletto</i>) was in favor of the empire and it was also the least read.<br />
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In the following years, the Kaiser's visits to Trieste revealed the citizens' coldness towards him. Franz Herre, the well-known biographer of Franz Joseph, provided a detailed description of the isolation and hostility with which the emperor and empress found themselves surrounded in Italy, wherever they went: Milan, Brescia, Venice...<br />
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Two visits by the kaiser to Trieste, in 1851 and 1856, were both politically negative, since in both circumstances the city proved cold and contemptuous towards the imperial couple. During the visit of 1851 the carriage, upon its departure, was accompanied not by a procession of jubilant subjects, but rather by small groups of children, some of whom booed. During the visit of 1856 the police had been alerted months in advance about the upcoming visit of the sovereign, because it was feared that there would be public demonstrations hostile to the monarch. A police report warned the Interior Ministry that a "festive reception to His Majesty was doubtful".<br />
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After his departure, the chief of police of Trieste, Franz von Hell, made it known that Franz Joseph was unhappy with the reception he had received. A booklet published shortly after by Baron Pascottini, a senior government official, reports the conditions of the time. He described a Trieste in which irredentists were everywhere, brazen though hidden, and that they had been able to influence the populace "to apathy, to silence, to non-intervention in public shows", when the emperor had come.<br />
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The awareness that Trieste was, for the most part, opposed to imperial rule remained rooted in the minds of the imperial authorities and was regularly reaffirmed until 1914. In 1859 the city again came under siege, despite its distance from the front, therefore purely for reasons of internal public order. In 1862 Franz Joseph, speaking with Marshal Thun, expressed his disdain for the political conditions of Trieste, while the Minister of War called it a "rebel's nest" (<i>Rebellennest</i>). In 1866, Trieste was placed under siege yet again.<br />
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A few years later, on August 5, 1869, General Karl Moering, Lieutenant of the "Littoral" (that is, Venezia Giulia) sent a report to Minister Giskra. He wrote that political and social life in Trieste was entirely dominated by a bloc which brought together almost all Italians and that it was against the Austrian government.<br />
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The Exhibition for the 500th anniversary of the so-called Austrian dedication of 1382, held in 1882, was a disaster for Austria's image. It is superfluous to recall that it was on that occasion that Guglielmo Oberdan planned to kill Franz Joseph and ended up sentenced to death. The sentence was met with the disapproval of the international community, which opposed the use of capital punishment for an act which was not committed, but only planned, which legally is a very different thing. But the Exhibition itself was unsuccessful. The solemn inauguration, in the presence of an archduke and various government authorities, was practically deserted, because the Triestines boycotted it.<br />
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<b>The Irredentist Spirit</b><br />
<br />
Still a few years before the world war, Habsburg officials and soldiers wrote in their official reports that Trieste's citizenry was predominantly irredentist, so they ordered measures consistent with their firm belief. For example, the brutal repression of the 1902 Lloyd strike, which saw three different cases of the military opening fire upon crowds of demonstrators (leaving at least 14 dead and an unknown number wounded) was due to the belief that the demonstrators were mostly irredentists. The government of Vienna had explicitly given orders "to make an example" out of them. The city was once again under siege and remained so from February to April. Military units were even brought in from places such as Klagenfurt and Ljubljana and three battleships from Pola. Vienna sent the executioner Josef Lang, the same who later hanged Cesare Battisti. It was on that occasion that Conrad von Hötzendorf, then military governor and later chief of the imperial staff, was convinced that irredentism was socially and culturally invincible, and that force needed be used in order to crush it.<br />
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The Austrian governor of those years, Leopold von Goess, formally and in writing advised against granting an Italian-speaking university in Trieste because the <i>Volksitaliener</i> (a term used by the imperial administration to designate those who were of Italian ethnicity, although legally subjects of the empire: <i>Volksitalianer</i> means "ethnic Italians") were unfavorable to Austrian rule. That is more or less what was also said by the <i>Statthalter</i> who replaced him, Konrad zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, who contrasted the loyalty of the Slovenes to the empire (who, in his opinion, should be helped) with the hostility of the Italians.<br />
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The lieutenant of Trieste, Baron Alfred Fries-Skene, appointed in February 1915, sent a secret report to the government in 1916 in which he reported both on the situation of the city and of the region during the war and in the pre-war period. The <i>Die politische Verwaltung des Küstenlander in eineinhalb Kriegsjahern</i> described a Trieste which even before 1915 was already pervaded by a strong irredentist spirit, with the municipal administration and all its apparatus, the schools and the largest city newspaper (<i>Il Piccolo</i>) all opposed to imperial authority.<br />
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The idea that the population of Trieste was made up mostly of irredentists is found not only in the books and memoirs of Italian nationalists, but also in the documents and official decisions of the imperial administration. The short list of sources mentioned above is far from complete.<br />
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<b>See also:</b><br />
<a href="http://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2017/06/trieste-most-italian-city.html">Trieste, the Most Italian City</a><br />
<a href="https://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2017/04/making-trieste-slavic-overview.html">Making Trieste Slavic: An Overview</a><br />
<a href="https://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2016/10/making-trieste-slavic-ethnic-cleansing.html">Making Trieste Slavic: Ethnic Cleansing and the Attempted Slavicization of Trieste</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6653813795681370244.post-25574161912503033892019-10-28T18:04:00.000+01:002020-05-25T15:05:37.087+02:00The Forced Slavicization of Clergy and Liturgy in Julian Venetia and Dalmatia by the Habsburgs (1866-1914)<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsm6O1wCq69y7YkSKD9VBWuwlraWZzyDYi1nOKAiwq2bn9jsuTo2SonMHTZt07VIRrSAneMgxNEnRBU74cXKIqcnnxX1159wQgDxUr8hnD1IDbwYE6HrhyphenhyphenJ1pjkG7abtt8fjq5tn0U8bM/s1600/Basilica+Eufrasiana+-+Parenzo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="792" data-original-width="791" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsm6O1wCq69y7YkSKD9VBWuwlraWZzyDYi1nOKAiwq2bn9jsuTo2SonMHTZt07VIRrSAneMgxNEnRBU74cXKIqcnnxX1159wQgDxUr8hnD1IDbwYE6HrhyphenhyphenJ1pjkG7abtt8fjq5tn0U8bM/s320/Basilica+Eufrasiana+-+Parenzo.jpg" width="319" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>The 6th century Basilica Eufrasiana in Parenzo, Istria</b></td></tr>
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The forced Slavicization of Julian Venetia and Dalmatia, designed and carried out by the Habsburg Empire, notoriously developed in a variety of forms and ways, including judicial and police activities, deportations, mass immigration of Slavs from the interior, political propaganda, educational measures, etc. One of the instruments used by the Imperial Royal authorities to Slavicize these regions was the Slovenian and Croatian nationalist clergy, through whom they sought to achieve a massive Slavicization of the local Catholic Church in all its aspects, in contrast to the national and religious identity of the Italian Catholics who lived there.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: medium;">I. Austro-Slavism</span></b><br />
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So-called “Austro-Slavism” was a widespread political current among Slovenes and Croats that was intended to achieve their national and nationalistic goals within the Habsburg regime and with its collaboration. Austro-Slavism was also popular among other Slavic peoples of the Empire, such as the Czechs. But what we will focus on is its presence among the South Slavs. The purpose of this movement was to promote Slovene and Croatian “trialism”, ultimately leading to the establishment of a third “kingdom”, alongside Austria and Hungary, which, in order to satisfy their aspirations, was to include Slovenes and Croats.<br />
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Many Slovene politicians advocated the creation of a new administrative unit, located within the Habsburg Empire, which was to include not only Carniola, southern Styria and southern Carinthia, but even lands in which Italians were the majority, such as the so-called Littoral (Julian Venetia), and therefore Trieste, Istria and the County of Gorizia and Gradisca, as well as Dalmatia. They even claimed Italian territories beyond the Isonzo, claiming that it was part of the Natisone Valley. The boundaries of this new administrative unit would have largely followed the idea fabricated in the middle of the nineteenth century by Peter Kozler, a Slovenian geographer of German origin who was favorable to the Habsburg Empire. In 1848 Kozler created the first map of “Slovenia”, in which he included many territories that did not even have a Slovene majority.<br />
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The hypothetical “third kingdom” would also have to include Croatia, Slavonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The fate of the Italians and Serbs in this new national construction would have been, according to the intentions of many Slovene and Croat nationalists, one of forced assimilation, and therefore Slovenization and Croatization. Thus they would have to find a <i>modus vivendi</i> with the central power and the Austrian ethnic group, and denationalize the Italian and Serb minorities within the new administrative structure.<br />
<br />
These nationalists hoped to achieve their national reform projects by forging an alliance with certain sectors of the Imperial establishment, particularly the army. In fact, the Chief of Staff Conrad von Hötzendorf, a well-known Italophobe (he proposed attacking Italy twice: once after the Messina earthquake in 1908, and again during the Italo-Turkish War in 1911-12), sympathized with the position of the Austro-Slavists. This was also the case with the heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand who, not coincidentally, was on good terms with von Hötzendorf.<br />
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Austro-Slavism had the sympathy and support of significant sectors of the Austrian ruling class and was supported by the leading figures of Slavic nationalism, who were, symptomatically, all clergymen: J.J. Strossmayer, bishop of Dakovo; J. Dobrila, bishop of Parenzo and Pola; Janez Evangelist Krek, priest, professor of theology at the seminary of Ljubljana, leader and prominent ideologue of the <i>Slovenska Ljudska Stranka</i> (“Slovenian People's Party”), who supported the union of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs “under the scepter of the Habsburgs” and hoped to find allies within military circles in order to implement his national reform plans; Anton Mahnic, bishop of Veglia. <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[1]</span><br />
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In fact, the Slovenian and Croatian clergy represented the political leadership of the nationalist movement of these two peoples, because these two peoples had a very weak cultural awareness and lacked an aristocratic, bourgeois or intellectual ruling class which could represent them aside from the clergy. The alliance between the Habsburg Imperial power and Slovenian and Croatian nationalism served an anti-Italian purpose: the Habsburgs saw in Austro-Slavism a way to eliminate Italian influence and found their political representatives in the Slavic clergy.<br />
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The Concordat of 1855 between Vienna and Rome had granted to the Catholic Church a number of public functions which had been suppressed during the reign of Joseph II. The Church was assigned the registry office, the power of repression of crimes provided for by canon law, jurisdiction in matrimonial matters, authority over censorship and influence on the entire education sector. In exchange, however, the Church had to agree to reduce its own members to conditions of partial submission to the political power, because the clergy were considered <i>de facto</i> civil servants of the state, and the Emperor could exert extensive influence over ecclesiastical administration, particularly over the appointment of bishops. This made it possible to Slavicize the population at the hands of Slavic nationalist clergy.<br />
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<br />
<b><span style="font-size: medium;">II. The Slavicization of the Clergy</span></b><br />
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The Viennese government made sure to appoint only Slavic bishops in Julian Venetia, a region which was predominantly Italian, and brought in Slavic priests from the Balkans who encouraged immigration in hopes that the Slavs would eventually outnumber the native Italians.<br />
<br />
Despite the fact that Italians were the majority of the population in Julian Venetia, even according to the Austrian censuses, and even though some areas were entirely Italian, all the bishops were chosen from among the Slavs by the express will of the government, with the sole exception of the bishop of Parenzo, but he only received the position because he submitted to the will of Vienna. The two leaders of Slavic nationalism in Julian Venetia were not laymen, but bishops: Bishop Dobrila, who was appointed bishop of Trieste (a city with an overwhelming Italian majority) and Bishop Vitovic in Veglia (an island which also had an overwhelming Italian majority). The Slavicization of the episcopal offices was followed by the Slavicization of the priests.<br />
<br />
Attilio Tamaro wrote in ‘<i>The Conditions of the Italians Under Austrian Rule in Julian Venetia and Dalmatia</i>’ (Rome, G. Bertero, 1915):<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“The priests are cooperating in this distorted system of ethnic and historical destruction of Julian Venetia and Dalmatia. The bishops of the provinces, except Parenzo, have blind devotion to the Austrian government, and all are Slavs, by the express will of Vienna. As such, through the episcopal seminaries and through their relations with the provincial interiors, they increased with great intensity the production of Slavic priests and, taking advantage of the small number of Italian priests that the provinces could produce, filled all the parishes with Slavs, even the Italian parishes.”</blockquote>
The cathedral chapter of Trieste was Slavicized too, because each time a seat was left vacant a Slav was appointed, usually one who was not even a native of Trieste. It so happens that in 1891, out of the 14 canons that constituted the chapter of the cathedral of St. Justus, just one, a simple honorary canon, was Italian, while the other thirteen were all Slavs, including eight who came from Carniola: this despite the fact that the city of Trieste had an overwhelming Italian majority, as shown by the same Austrian censuses. At the same date, there were 92 priests in the Diocese of Trieste originating from Carniola, 16 from Bohemia, 14 from Carsia, 6 from Styria, 5 from Dalmatia, 5 from Croatia, 2 from Moravia, 1 from Poland. In 1900 in the Diocese of Trieste-Capodistria there were 100 Italian priests and 189 Slavs. Most of these Slav priests were not even natives, but were brought in from the interior regions of Slovenia and Croatia in order to religiously Slavicize the region. In 1892 in the Diocese of Parenzo-Pola (which had a net Italian majority) there were 81 priests, among which 56 were Slavs, all from other regions, some even from very far away, since 11 of them were from Bohemia.<br />
<br />
The situation was so serious that it even aroused protest in the municipalities. On December 29, 1886 the City Council of Trieste, after explaining in detail the situation regarding the local clergy, declared:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“The City Council recognizes in these actions a clear attempt to propagate Slavism, which is incompatible with the office of the Episcopal Curia, harmful to our schools, likewise to religion and to the public government, unfair to young Italians who wish to devote themselves to to the priestly profession, dangerous to the peace and well-being of the city, and a most serious offense to the national character of the country, to the feeling of its people and to its centuries-old civilization. The City Council very strongly protests against these actions, and in the meantime reserves the right, within the limited means of its powers, to instruct the most illustrious Signor Mayor to give a summary of this resolution to the Imperial Royal Government.”</blockquote>
The Istrian cities of Capodistria, Pirano, Isola, Muggia, Buie, Cittanova and Portole also joined in the protest of the Council of Trieste.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: medium;">III. Instigating Hostility Against the Italians</span></b><br />
<br />
The Imperial authorities also took care to stir up Slavic nationalism in order to propagate italophobia. An example of this is the work of the Imperial Royal Commissioner in Istria, Ritter von Födransperg. In September 1848 he sent to several Istrian parish priests an article of political propaganda in favour of Slavicizing Istria. Paradoxically, it was written in Italian: indeed, Italian was the language of culture in Julian Venetia and Dalmatia for centuries, next to Latin, so that even the Slavs themselves habitually used it (suffice to say that the newspaper of the Croatian nationalists in Dalmatia was written in Italian and was called “<i>Il Nazionale</i>”!).<br />
<br />
The letter from the Commissioner stated:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Very Reverend Signors,</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I thought it well to send you an attached Italian translation of a fundamental article written on the Slavic nationality of Istria, a refutation of the many unfounded, insipid and other passionate articles, with which certain Italians attempt to suppress the Slavic nationality for the benefit of the Italian people.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I don't believe I would be troubling you if I asked you to disseminate this translation and to explain it in Slavic to the parishioners, in order that they may be instructed in their right to nationality so that they may assert themselves against the Italic people who, as guests on Istrian soil, arrogates to itself rights which the Slavs do not have. Hopefully in the near future Slavic Istria will justly obtain the true benefits of its nationality under the glorious banner of our most beloved constitutional Emperor, and be fraternally united to the other German and Slavic provinces, so there will be a loyal and strong support for His ancestral throne.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
After taking a copy of said translation, gently push it forward with solicitude, and circulate it in the manner indicated below.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: right;">
Pinguente, September 24, 1848</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: right;">
<i>Födransperg</i>, Imperial Royal Commissioner.”</blockquote>
<br />
This letter, an unambiguous form of propaganda in favor of pan-slavist nationalism, was written and signed by a senior imperial official and transmitted to a series of parish priests in Istria.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“To the very Reverend Signor Parish Priest of Sovignacco.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Received on the 19th and passed along on September 21, 1848 (<i>Zimmermann, Parish Priest of Sovignacco</i>).</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Received and passed along on September 24, 1848 (<i>Novak, Parish Priest of Verch</i>).</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Received on the 4th and passed along on October 5, 1848 (<i>Podobnik, Parish Priest of Terviso</i>).</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Received on the 7th and forwarded on October 8, 1848 (<i>Kodermann, Parish Priest of Valmovrasa</i>).</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Received on October 13, 1848 (<i>Sacher, Parish Priest of Socerga</i>).”</blockquote>
<br />
Many Slavic priests preached hatred and hostility towards the Italians, or otherwise discriminated against them in various ways, and political campaigns were waged against them. Slovene nationalism in Julian Venetia was built with the decisive support of the Slavic clergy. This was already happening in the crucial period of 1867/1870, during the phase that Slovene nationalists call “the Tabor era”. The <i>tabors</i> were large Slovenian rallies, in which the people were indoctrinated by nationalist orators, who often times were priests.<br />
<br />
These rallies promoted many nationalistic and extremist demands: the establishment of a Habsburg Land of Slovenia, which however was to include the entire Julian March, including areas which had a vast Italian majority, such as Gorizia, Trieste, Venetian Istria and eastern Friuli; the Slovenian orators, including the priests, urged Slovenian women not to “defile” themselves by contracting marriages with Italians, thus clearly demonstrating a racist ideology; they went so far as to ask the Empire to arm the Slovenes against the Italians, as happened in a meeting in Collio Goriziano.<br />
<br />
The idea of exterminating Italians from the region therefore was part of the Slovenian nationalist movement since the beginning and was expressed with great clarity, accompanied by racist theories based on the “myth of blood” and a belief in the existence of biological diversity between the two nations.<br />
<br />
The Tabor Movement first developed in Julian Venetia in October 1868 and had the decisive support of the Slovenian clergy, the only ruling class of the Slovenes at the time, since they were the only Slovenes who had any kind of minimal intellectual education. The Empire in every way favored the presence of Slavic clergy in Julian Venetia, to serve as anti-Italian agents, to the point of habitually appointing Slavic bishops in cities and lands inhabited by an Italian majority. Even if there were differences in degree (greater caution was taken in Gorizia, but they were very aggressive in Trieste and Capodistria), it can be said that the Slovene clergy were the protagonists of the Tabor Movement's italophobia, both due to nationalism and due to loyalty to the Empire: in other words, the hostility towards Italians sprang both from aggressive nationalism and from compliance with imperial directives.<br />
<br />
An example of what happened in the Slovenian tabors is offered by the first Istrian Tabor, organized on August 8, 1870 in Covedo (Capodistria): among the participants there were 24 religious. One of them, Lavrič, began by frantically telling the women not to marry Italians, but only to marry Slovenes. Another Slovenian priest, Raunik, delivered a rant in which he claimed, quite falsely, that the earliest inhabitants of Istria were Slavs, when in reality the Slavs only arrived there in the seventh century AD and did not make any settlement until the turn of the ninth century AD. Relying on such a totally erroneous historical claim, Raunik demanded that the Slavs should possess Istria. Then two other Slovenian priests took the floor, both parish priests. While various orators spoke, other Slavic priests in the crowd were trying to inflame the minds of the crowd by launching battle cries such as “<i>Živijo, hocemo, nocemo</i>”. Among the Slovene nationalists present was also Fr. Urban Golmajer, the priest who had destroyed all the Roman tombstones found in the local town of Rozzo during excavations (hostility towards ancient Rome was, naturally, part of the italophobia of Slovene and Croat nationalism), which aroused the indignation of the great German historian Theodor Mommsen: Golmajer was later a candidate for the local Diet on behalf of Slovene nationalists. The initiative of the tabor was an idea of Fr. Raunik and all expenses were covered by the Slavic clergy.<br />
<br />
In Dalmatia the work of the Croatian clergy was, if possible, even worse. Its members went so far as openly inciting violence against Italians and taking part in physical assaults. For example, in Zara during the religious festival of Holy Easter Thursday, a Croatian nationalist, incited by anti-Italian speeches made by the Croatian friars and priests, fired multiple gunshots into a crowd of Italian faithful, causing numerous injuries. He was arrested by the Imperial police, but instead of being tried and convicted for this criminal aggression, he was immediately released. It is important to recall a similar case at the beginning of 1909: a group of peaceful Italian citizens from Zara were traveling on boat to Bibigne in order to go on a hike, but they could not even disembark because they were attacked by a crowd of Slavic peasants, incited by their priest, who attempted to stone them to death.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: medium;">IV. The Slavicization of Italian Surnames</span></b><br />
<br />
Parish priests from Istria and Dalmatia, who were mostly of Slavic ethnicity as a result of Austrian Imperial Royal policy, from 1866 onwards began a falsification of state records which would last for decades. Because in the Habsburg Empire, which is wrongly considered an example of good administration, the tasks of the registry office were still delegated to the parish priests (an old practice that had long since disappeared in other European countries), the Slavic priests were able to falsify baptism and wedding records, using Slavicized versions of the original Latin and Italian names and surnames.<br />
<br />
Attilio Tamaro wrote about it in ‘<i>The Conditions of the Italians Under Austrian Rule in Julian Venetia and Dalmatia</i>’ (Rome, G. Bertero, 1915):<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“The parish priests in Austria controlled the registry of state records. The Slavs, ignoring the protests of the inhabitants, were under the strong protection of the Government, with whom they were organically linked in this work: they Slavicized the surnames in birth records, marriage records and deaths records. The goal was to create statistical data and official documents that would seemingly substantiate the non-existence or gradual extinction of Italianity in the region, in order to effect Government policy.”</blockquote>
The work of forced Slavicization of Italian names and surnames by Slavic clergy, with the connivance of the Austrian authorities, is meticulously documented in a study by Alois Lasciac entitled <i>Erinnerungen aus meiner Beamtencarrière in Österreich in den Jahren 1881-1918</i> (Trieste 1939). Doctor Alois Lasciac, of Austrian origin, was Vice President of the Imperial Royal Lieutenancy of Trieste and President of the Administrative Commission of the Margraviate (March) of Istria: therefore he was a high-ranking Austrian official in the Habsburg administration.<br />
<br />
During his activity on the island of Lussinpiccolo he was able to testify that the local clergy, all of whom were Croats despite the population being majority Italian, falsified the names and surnames of the inhabitants. He devotes an entire chapter of his work precisely to that topic: <i>Verstümmelung der Familiennamen in den Pfarrmatriken</i> (Deformation of Surnames in the Records). Lasciac noted that the ancient use of Latin and Venetian forms to designate the names and surnames of the locals had been deliberately subverted by Croatian priests in the registry of births, marriages and deaths, Slavicizing the onomastics of the Italians in Lussinpiccolo. Lasciac, who was Imperial Royal Commissioner, required them to restore the original spellings, to which the Croatian nationalists responded by having recourse to the central government in Vienna. Lasciac concludes his narration of this story by saying that the intervention of the parliament in Vienna granted tolerance to this arbitrary alteration of names and surnames: the parish archives and state registries of the Empire were to be transformed into the Slavic form, in contrast to their centuries-old existence in Italian form.<br />
<br />
There were numerous public denunciations against the actions of the Slavic clergy, who were carrying out their work with the open support of the Habsburg authorities. In 1877 Francesco Sbisà, an Istrian deputy of the Parliament in Vienna, presented a query denouncing the Slavicization of Italian names and surnames. In 1897 the Istrian linguist Matteo Bartoli mentioned that 20,000 names were changed, especially on the islands of Cherso, Lussino and Veglia, which were almost entirely inhabited by Italians. In 1905, during a meeting of the Istrian Diet, the Istrian deputy and attorney Pietro Ghersa, using extensive documentation derived from extensive research, denounced the government's conniving work of Slavicizing approximately 20,000 Italian names in the Istrian Province. It should be noted that the research of Bartoli and Ghersa took place independently of each other: the former dealt primarily with the islands of the Quarnaro, while the latter instead dealt with the Istrian peninsula. Moreover, these findings took place in two different periods. The figure of 20,000 Slavicized Italian surnames, reported by both men, must therefore be referring to two different areas and therefore represents only a fraction of the total amount of names that were Slavicized in the regions of Istria and the Quarnaro.<br />
<br />
It should be noted that the data indicated above, regarding Italian surnames forcibly Slavicized in Istria, are largely incomplete for this region itself, since many others in Istria were modified without being restored to their original form. Additionally, these practices also occurred in other parts of Julian Venetia, in Dalmatia, and in the Trentino and South Tyrol (where they engaged in Germanization).<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: medium;">V. The Glagolitic Liturgy</span></b><br />
<br />
The most visible work felt by a large part of the Italian population during this operation of Slavicization was the forced introduction of the Slavic liturgical rite in dioceses with an Italian majority.<br />
<br />
A brief historical outline is necessary here. At the time of the evangelization of the Slavs, only three languages were approved by the Church of Rome for the liturgy: Hebrew (which was never used), Greek (used only in Catholic areas of Greek language) and Latin (practically universal).<br />
<br />
In the Slavic areas of Dalmatia and Croatia the Latin Catholic missionaries not only had to compete with Byzantine missionaries, but also with the Slavic rite after the Croats converted to Catholicism and adhered to the Church of Rome. <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[2]</span><br />
<br />
The Council of Spalato (925) reinforced the process of latinization of the area, trying to limit the use of Slavic in the liturgy as much as possible, because it seemed to be increasingly connected to the Byzantine tradition. There thus began to delineate a boundary, marked primarily by the circulation of liturgical books in the Latin alphabet and in the Cyrillic alphabet, which progressively marginalized the Glagolitic alphabet, which was designed as an alphabet for all Slavs.<br />
<br />
The Patriarchate of Aquileia and all the dioceses of Julian Venetian have always belonged to the Latin rite. The so-called “Slavic rite” (an incorrect term: remember that a Slavic rite has never existed in the Catholic world, it is only found in Orthodoxy: <i>ritus</i> in the liturgical sense and <i>language of use</i> do not necessarily coincide, and are nevertheless distinct concepts) in Catholic areas saw secondary diversities in the various “officia” and “sacramenta”. These were, and are, local variations of the same liturgy, which used Latin as the official liturgical language, and remained in force until the Novus Ordo Missae of Paul VI. <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[3]</span><br />
<br />
This of course did not prevent, in some areas, the use of rituals in a language other than Latin with a special dispensation, or rather tacit acceptance. The Slavic population of the Balkans was of very low culture, barely literate, so that even the clergy (the lower clergy, rural priests) sometimes did not know Latin: it was, to be blunt, a phenomenon induced by the ignorance of the clergy (I apologize, but that is the truth), which was tolerated by the episcopal authorities, who followed the Latin rite. In the case of the Croatian area this phenomenon is called <i>glagolism</i>, however it only existed in a very small part of the territories of Julian Venetia.<br />
<br />
To assess the attitude of the Church of Rome towards this, it is sufficient to recall what happened in the nineteenth century, when Croatian nationalists demanded the reintroduction of glagolism (which had virtually disappeared) in the area of Julian Venetia. This was opposed, albeit for different reasons, by the Roman Curia, by the scholars of ecclesiastical history, and by the people themselves. The Papal Curia of Leo XIII and Pius X called upon the supporters of Glagolitic to return to the Latin rite; the popes mistrusted them and opposed their desire to “reintroduce” such rites into a land where it had never been practiced.<br />
<br />
Historians—and it is enough to recall the priest Giovanni Pesante, the Istrian historian Bernardo Benussi, the illustrious scholar Francesco Salata and the Quarnerine professor Melchiade Budinich—demonstrated the scarcity of the Glagolitic phenomenon and its exceptionality, which in fact was merely tolerated alongside—and subordinated to—the use of Latin. In any case, the Glagolitic alphabet, at least before the twentieth century, was limited only to a few areas with a Croatian population, and only in certain periods. Suffice to say that the oldest “Old Slavic” document in Istria, the “Razvod Istarski”, was compiled by two Glagolitic priests in the sixteenth century, while the arrival of Slavic peoples beyond Mount Nevoso occurred between the sixth and eighth century AD.<br />
<br />
All other writings of similar nature are of modest value, annotations (and little else) on the margins of missals, some inscriptions and graffiti in a few churches in the countryside, besides a few illegitimate wills and parish registers, only for very brief periods and in isolated villages of an extremely bounded range. To give an idea of how scarce the presence of the Glagolitic liturgy was, suffice to say that in 1650 the then very vast Diocese of Trieste saw in its entire diocese just two tiny parishes that practiced it, only in a small area around Pinguente (the two small villages of Draguch and Sovignaco). <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[4]</span><br />
<br />
Despite the opposition of the Italian population of Julian Venetia and the distrust of the Vatican itself, the Roman liturgy in the Slavic language (instead of Latin) ended up being introduced under the converging pressure of the Habsburgs and the Slavic clergy. The Empire was interested in defending the Catholic liturgy in the Slavic language as a means of Slavicization even on the religious level. And thanks to its close and traditional friendship with the Vatican, exacerbated by the “Roman Question”, they were able to exert pressure on the pontiffs into allowing the reintroduction of a liturgical form that had been extinct since the beginning of the eighteenth century and which had existed only in a very few places.<br />
<br />
The diffusion of the Slavic liturgy, which was accompanied also by sermons, songs, etc. in the Slovenian and Croatian languages, was used by these nationalists and enemies of Italy to forcibly Slavicize the Italian population. The Glagolitic cult was not only reintroduced, but was also imposed in areas where it had never been used and where the inhabitants were overwhelmingly majority Italian. The situation was particularly regrettable in Istria, a land in which this experiment was widely extended and where Italians were often both patriotic and Catholic.<br />
<br />
The discontent was naturally very strong among the population, who often preferred to stay home rather than attend religious services in the Glagolitic rite. Many examples can be given. In 1888 a Slovenian priest from Carniola forcibly introduced the Slavonic rite into a church in Pola, where it had never been celebrated before, arousing the indignation of the Italians and even a good number of Slavs among the faithful. When the Latin rite was restored, Slavic nationalist newspapers unleashed a rampage against the bishop of Parenzo.<br />
<br />
The island of Neresine was the scene of repeated attempts at religious Slavicization, in contrast to Catholic orthodoxy, in contrast to the existing customs, and contrary to the expressed will of the inhabitants. A Croatian friar named Smolje demanded to celebrate mass in Glagolitic in the parish church of Neresine on September 22, 1895, resulting in all the parishioners abandoning the ceremony and forming a serious insurrection. This same priest demanded to impart baptism in Croatian, so he could Slavicize the names, and refused to do so in Latin even when directly requested by the child's father. The Superior of the Franciscan convent of Neresine, Luciano Lettich, demanded to impose the Croatian language at the burial ceremony of the spouses Antonio and Nicolina Sigovich, causing several of the relatives and other faithful to voluntary abandon the ceremony. Another episode of the many we could cite, happened on the second Sunday of April in 1906, a Croatian friar insisted on celebrating the Glagolitic rite in the church of San Francesco in Cherso, an island of purely Italian history and culture. The faithful, in the face of this celebration, which seemed to them like nationalistic propaganda, left the religious building <i>en masse</i>, leaving only the Croatian friar.<br />
<br />
After these and other similar events, the inhabitants of Neresine — and other areas threatened with forced Slavicization (Ossero, Cherso, Lussinpiccolo) — appealed unsuccessfully to the bishop of Veglia, Anton Mahnich. After their appeals were rejected by the Slavic prelate, they decided to appeal directly to Rome. The severity of these reported events caused Pius X to intervene, removing Mahnic from his office as bishop. Even after this, the Vatican had to again directly intervene to denounce and condemn both the liturgical abuse of the use of the Glagolitic rite, as well as the support the Slavic priests were giving to Slovenian and Croatian nationalism, as happened for example on June 17, 1905, when the Cardinal Secretary of State, by order of Pope Pius X, sent a stern letter to the Minister General of the Franciscan Friars Minor with strict orders to energetically intervene and put an end to the behavior of Croatian Franciscans in Dalmatia who were seeking to introduce Croatian into the liturgy.<br />
<br />
The Catholic Church itself did not at all welcome the pretenses of the Slovenian and Croatian nationalists and their attempts to restore the Glagolitic rite, both for strict liturgical reasons, and because often times such a request came from pan-slavists with an overt sympathy for Eastern Orthodoxy. The Slavic nationalist movements in Slovenia and Croatia were able to count on funding coming from very distant regions all over the Habsburg Empire and even from Russia itself, and also from supposedly Catholic clergymen who cared more about their nationality than about the faith they professed. An example, certainly extreme but still significant, was a small local schism, which involved the village of Ricmanje (San Giuseppe della Chiusa) in the Diocese of Trieste and Capodistria. The local priest, Monsignor Požar, asked permission to introduce the Glagolitic missal. His request having been rejected, the situation ended up turning into a real schism, with the defection of Ricmanje to Eastern Orthodoxy.<br />
<br />
In conclusion and in summary, glagolism resurfaced after 1848 and was even admitted into Italian dioceses where the liturgical innovation was imposed by Slavic nationalists who held ecclesiastical offices, which deeply hurt both the national and religious feelings of Italian Catholics, who were forced to embrace foreign rites of dubious conformity with Catholicism.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: medium;">VI. Habsburg Caesaropapism: Oppression of the Church and Hostility Towards Italy</span></b><br />
<br />
The ecclesiastical policy of the Habsburg Empire was well summarized by Ugo Mioni, a priest, historian and journalist born in Trieste in 1870:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“The Habsburgs are always equal. Caesaropapism is inherent to them; instead of occupying themselves with the vital interests of their states, they always have to bother the Church. They appear as Catholics externally, but try to insert themselves into the Church's affairs; they pose as guardians, but want to keep the Church chained and yoked to the wagon of the State. It doesn't matter if the chains are made of gold; they are still chains, and always weigh much more than those of iron. It is better to have an open persecution than to have caesaropapism and a state protection which seeks to exercise power over the Church.” <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[5]</span></blockquote>
This same judgment had already been articulated by, among others, Geremia Bonomelli, Bishop of Cremona, who had this to say about the Habsburgs' ecclesiastical policy: “They were guards who imposed gold chains; gold chains, it is true, but they were chains nonetheless.”<br />
<br />
In essence, the Habsburg Empire claimed to be the “protector” of the Church. In this way, however, they were able to subordinate certain ecclesiastical institutions to the will and impositions of their political power. Emperor Joseph II, who went so far as to dictate how many candles were to be lit in churches, and who gave his name to the heretical caesaropapistic religious policy known as Josephism, is the most well-known representative of the habitual policy of Habsburg Vienna. During the Risorgimento, the Habsburg authorities did not hesitate at all to persecute and murder Italian clergy because they were patriots. According to the same imperial officials, the clergy of Lombardy-Venetia had patriotic ideas. For example, Baron von Aichelberg wrote:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Day by day, almost hour by hour, the revolution was gaining ground in all provinces... The priests behaved worse than the others, demonstrating with incredible insolence that they were at the head of the revolutionary movement: they are most responsible for the incitement and influence on the lower classes, especially the peasantry. … The rich are like beggars, the bishop just as well is like the most horrible monkey, all carry the Italian cockade.” <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[6]</span></blockquote>
For this reason, many priests were murdered and imprisoned during the repression of Radetzky. The most famous case (not the only one!) was that of Don Enrico Tazzoli, who was tortured by the imperial police, ritually deconsecrated (on special order of Pius IX, in response to pressure from the Habsburg imperial government, which was done by scraping away the skin on his fingers), hanged in Belfiore and finally buried in unconsecrated ground. During the First World War, the Empire did not hesitate to deport many priests from Trentino to concentration camps (<i>lager</i>), while Monsignor Celestino Endrici, the Archbishop of Trento, was imprisoned in the fortress of Heiligenkreuz.<br />
<br />
In addition to these acts of persecution, Habsburg ecclesiastical policy was usually hostile to Italians since 1848. The Emperor saw to it that in the episcopal sees in Julian Venetia, a region with an Italian majority, Slavic bishops were appointed, all of them ardent nationalists who invited a large number of Slovenian and Croatian priests from the hinterland in order to Slavicize the local churches. These bishops imposed radical changes in the local liturgy, adopting “Glagolitic”, which involved the use of Church Slavonic, and sometimes even advocating such decisively pro-Orthodox ideas such as schism from Rome: this, however, did nothing to alter Imperial policy. In Trentino-Alto Adige, the supposedly “Catholic” Empire permitted the activity of pan-Germanist associations which had anti-Catholic and Protestant tendencies (such as the <i>Tiroler Volksbund</i>), causing the reaction and the indignation of the Bishop of Trento, Celestine Endrici, and also the Catholic politicians of Trentino, including Alcide De Gasperi, who condemned the appearance of such anti-Italian and anti-Catholic policies (for example, an editorial in the <i>Voce cattolica</i> on February 1, 1906 said: “we must defend ourselves against those who undermine the Italian character of our land”).<br />
<br />
In fact, many Slavs and many South Tyroleans believed there was a strong connection between Italianity and Catholicism in light of historical ties (Catholicism is inconceivable without Roman heritage), therefore hostility towards Italy as a nation also took on the aspect of hostility towards the Church of Rome.<br />
<br />
The anti-Italian alliance between the Habsburg Imperial power and the Yugoslav nationalists manifested itself most clearly in the forced Slavicization of institutions, rites, and activities of the Catholic Church in Julian Venetia and Dalmatia, resulting in a very serious situation in which Catholic ecclesiastical institutions were manipulated and used by the Habsburg state for its own ends.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: medium;">References</span></b><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">1. cf. Moritsch A., “Der Austroslawismus. Ein verfrühtes Konzeptzur politischen Neugestaltung Mitteleuropas”, Vienna 1996.<br /><br /> 2. M. Lacko, “I Concili di Spalato e la liturgia slava”, in A. Matanić (editor), <i>Vita religiosa, morale e sociale ed i concili di Split (Spalato) dei sec. X-XI. Atti del Symposium internazionale di storia ecclesiastica, Split, 26-30 settembre 1978</i>, Padua 1982, pp. 443-482.<br /><br /> 3. Jedin (editor), <i>Storia della Chiesa</i>, volume IV, 1978; M. Uhlirz, <i>Jahrbücher des deutschen reiches unter Otto II und Otto III</i>, Berlin 1954; H. Ludat, <i>Slaven und Deutsche im Mittelalter</i>, Cologne-Vienna 1982; M. Gallina, <i>Potere e società a Bisanzio</i>, Turin 1995, pp. 167-1740.<br /><br /> 4. cf. Vittorio Fragiacomo, “La liturgia glagolitica in Istria”, Pagine Istriane, gennaio-giugno 1986, Rivista trimestrale di cultura fondata a Capodistria nel 1903 (Genova, 1986), p. 49-51; J. Martinic, “Glagolitische Gesànge Mitteldalmatiens”, Regensburg 1981.<br /><br /> 5. Ugo Mioni, <i>Pio VI: il pellegrino apostolico e il suo tempo</i>, Alba, Pia Societa San Paolo, 1933, p. 60.<br /><br /> 6. Sked, <i>Le armate</i>, cit., pp. 116-117.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6653813795681370244.post-30263508245019806552019-09-12T23:46:00.003+02:002023-09-17T10:37:03.201+02:00The Revisionist Statements Made by Croatian President Grabar-Kitarović(<b>Full article:</b> <a href="https://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2019/09/diplomatic-crisis-between-italy-and.html">Diplomatic Crisis Between Italy and Croatia: New Provocations, Revisionism and Hypocrisy</a>)<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ov6jEMFr3Ck/XXrvc_K6xvI/AAAAAAAAHBw/leGg7euUqR0jIUM2JyuLKnM_AzAhlkmVwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Kolinda%2BGrabar-Kitarovi%25C4%2587%2B%2528Twitter%2529.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="356" data-original-width="629" height="181" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ov6jEMFr3Ck/XXrvc_K6xvI/AAAAAAAAHBw/leGg7euUqR0jIUM2JyuLKnM_AzAhlkmVwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Kolinda%2BGrabar-Kitarovi%25C4%2587%2B%2528Twitter%2529.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Tweet by Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, President of Croatia</span></b></td></tr>
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In addition to the diplomatic note issued by the Croatian Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs in protest against the erection of a statue in Trieste dedicated to Italian poet Gabriele D'Annunzio, on September 12th, 2019 the President of Croatia Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović posted the following highly provocative message on Twitter:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Rijeka [Fiume] was and remains a proud part of the Croatian Fatherland, and the erection of a monument in Trieste extolling irredentism and occupation is unacceptable.”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">(“<i>Rijeka je bila i ostaje ponosni dio hrvatske Domovine, a podizanje spomenika u Trstu kojim se veliča iredentizam i okupacija su neprihvatljivi</i>.”)</span></blockquote>
In the first place, the statue is not a monument to irredentism, nor to any imagined occupation. As was already pointed out by the communal assessor Giorgio Rossi, the statue depicts that of a reflective if not melancholic D'Annunzio—not that of a heroic soldier or man of action. The statue has nothing to do with ideology nor with territorial aspirations; it is a harmless monument to one of Italy's most celebrated poets of the last two centuries.<br />
<br />
In the second place, Fiume was never “a proud part of the Croatian Fatherland”. This is nothing more than shameful historical revisionism which seeks to justify the Yugoslav occupation and annexation following World War II, and the tearing away of this ancient Italian city from Italy. In her attempt to indite and accuse Italy, with all of her faux outrage, the Croatian president hypocritically sustains Croatia's own imperialist territorial ambitions and incites provocations against Italy.<br />
<br />
It would be good for President Grabar-Kitarović if she would first consult historical records and census data before making any pronouncements. In 1918 Fiume and its environs counted 28,911 Italians (62.5%) and 9,092 Croats (19.6%); in the city itself there were 14,194 Italians (83.3%) and only 2,094 Croats (12.3%).<br />
<br />
Fiume traces its origins back to the Romans, who founded the original city with the name <i>Tarsatica</i>. Throughout the Middle Ages, the citizens clung to their Roman roots, continuing to adhere to Roman law and institutions, and continuing to speak the Latin language. The city later became a free commune, following in the same footsteps as Trieste and the other medieval Italian communes.<br />
<br />
Since the 15th century the official language of Fiume was Italian; the city's municipal statutes were drawn up in Latin and Italian; and in order to partake in the social, commercial and cultural life of the city, one had to speak Italian. All the archives and historical documents of Fiume are written in Latin and Italian; not a single document was ever written in Croatian or any other language.<br />
<br />
When in 1776 Maria Theresa of Austria attempted to incorporate Fiume into the Kingdom of Hungary, through Croatia, she was met with protests by the inhabitants of Fiume, so that only three years later, in 1779, Fiume was proclaimed a <i>corpus separatum</i> or separate body of the Crown of St. Stephen, entirely separate from Croatia. In 1848 Croatian soldiers under Josip Jelacic invaded Fiume; the ensuing 19-year military occupation was strongly opposed by the native inhabitants.<br />
<br />
Jelacic himself promised to respect the Italian tongue of Fiume. However, when an attempt was made to introduce Croatian into schools, the city of Fiume protested, sending an address to Emperor Franz Joseph on January 31st, 1861:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“...it would be superfluous to demonstrate what is universally known, that is, that the Italian language has always been spoken since Fiume existed, which is the country's own language, being the language of school, court, commerce, every public and private discourse, and one of the principal elements to which can be attributed the degree of her culture and progress, both commercial and industrial.”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">(“<i>...sarebbe superfluo dimostrare ciò che è universalmente noto, esser cioè l'idioma italiano da secoli in Fiume la lingua della scuola, del foro, del commercio, di ogni pubblico e privato convegno; insomma essere la lingua del paese, ed uno dei principali veicoli a cui attribuire devesi il grado di sua cultura e del suo progresso commerciale e industriale</i>.”)</span></blockquote>
In 1867, following the Austro-Hungarian Compromise, the city's autonomy was restored and the Croats evacuated. In 1918, with the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Fiume voted in favor of union with Italy, and afterwards welcomed D'Annunzio's entry into the city with celebrations.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7B9olYuCQL3RAywQTl5YNmfAdg-UlBAf2k3ceJt76cycd8vjaDKpow3aD7idzttIdZbYITTOxuF_gmXQCmApQVbEFTeJ4oFbKqInv3nCSUefV7gv5_kichZ4lnHF0OE2WweXe4Emuqu4/s1600/Fiume_D%2527Annunzio_1920.png" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="136" data-original-width="186" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7B9olYuCQL3RAywQTl5YNmfAdg-UlBAf2k3ceJt76cycd8vjaDKpow3aD7idzttIdZbYITTOxuF_gmXQCmApQVbEFTeJ4oFbKqInv3nCSUefV7gv5_kichZ4lnHF0OE2WweXe4Emuqu4/s1600/Fiume_D%2527Annunzio_1920.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Residents of Fiume cheering D'Annunzio<br />and his Legionaries, September 1919</span></b></td></tr>
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These are unassailable facts of history. A three-year incorporation into the Kingdom of Hungary and an unpopular 19-year military occupation of an Italian city: that was the grand sum of Croatia's connection to Fiume prior to its annexation to Communist Yugoslavia after World War II.<br />
<br />
To suggest that Fiume was “a proud part of the Croatian Fatherland”, not only in light of its ancient history but especially in light of all that occurred there just a few decades ago – massacres, thefts, ethnic cleansing – is one of the most dishonest, appalling, insulting and provocative statements issued by a head of state in recent memory.<br />
<br />
This sort of historical revisionism and blatant disregard for historical facts on the part of Croatian leaders is nothing new, however. One only needs to recall the incident of 2011, when former Croatian president Stjepan Mesić went to China to inaugurate a museum dedicated to the “Croatian explorer” Marco Polo, sparking protest and outrage in Italy. Just a few months later, Croatia then went to war against the United Kingdom after Croatian tourist bosses and local authorities laid claim to King Arthur, proclaiming him too a “Croat”.<br />
<br />
Nonetheless, the statement made today by the current President of Croatia is one of the most shocking and offensive to come out of the modern Croatian state. Above all it is an insult to the <i>Fiumani</i>, that is the Italians of Fiume, who are the historical soul of the city, spanning some two millennia; theirs was the language of the city, theirs was the culture, theirs were the institutions, the traditions, the toponyms, the squares, the streets, the stones, the very foundations; indeed, Fiume was and rightfully remains <i>their</i> city.<br />
<br />
To read more about the recent controversies, see the full article: <a href="https://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2019/09/diplomatic-crisis-between-italy-and.html">Diplomatic Crisis Between Italy and Croatia: New Provocations, Revisionism and Hypocrisy</a><br />
<br />
<b>See also:</b><br />
<br />
<a href="http://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-italian-language-returning-to-fiume.html">The Italian Language Returning to Fiume?</a><br />
<a href="http://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2017/11/response-to-croatian-statements-on.html">Response to Croatian Statements on Bilingualism in Fiume</a><br />
<a href="http://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2018/07/castua-massacre-exhumations-completed.html">Castua Massacre: Exhumations Completed After 73 Years</a><br />
<a href="http://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2017/02/quotes-on-italianity-of-fiume.html">Quotes on the Italianity of Fiume</a><br />
<a href="http://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2014/12/statement-of-alexander-oldrini-on-fiume.html">Statement of Alexander Oldrini on Fiume</a><br />
<a href="http://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2014/10/statement-of-ernest-papich-on-fiume.html">Statement of Ernest Papich on Fiume</a><br />
<a href="http://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2014/12/statement-of-fiorello-la-guardia-on.html">Statement of Fiorello La Guardia on Fiume</a><br />
<a href="http://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2018/05/statements-of-lawrence-yates-sherman-on.html">Statement of Lawrence Yates Sherman on Fiume</a><br />
<a href="http://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2014/10/statement-of-l-vaccaro-on-fiume.html">Statement of Leopold Vaccaro on Fiume</a><br />
<a href="http://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2014/12/statement-of-s-cotillo-on-fiume.html">Statement of S. A. Cotillo on Fiume</a><br />
<a href="http://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2015/10/statements-of-gino-speranza-on-istria.html">Statements of Gino Speranza on Istria, Fiume and Dalmatia</a><br />
<a href="http://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2018/05/statements-of-senator-lawrence-yates.html">Statements of Lawrence Yates Sherman on the Treaty of London</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6653813795681370244.post-59064861471521141572019-09-12T22:44:00.001+02:002023-09-17T11:21:11.948+02:00Diplomatic Crisis Between Italy and Croatia: New Provocations, Revisionism and Hypocrisy<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOCk8TfZVVT4Iz544xfLKZiJT5DytDbKeyEfgfJrWWYnTA3MnLfUecGkIoZQ8lVJ9HBLXhsjgCVT0WAEi9xusE47VmA2E9bEgNFxZYsB8_8SYHdP7zCQzLChYL3r6Kh7mEdef-n7hHs48/s1600/D%2527Annunzio.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="596" data-original-width="686" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOCk8TfZVVT4Iz544xfLKZiJT5DytDbKeyEfgfJrWWYnTA3MnLfUecGkIoZQ8lVJ9HBLXhsjgCVT0WAEi9xusE47VmA2E9bEgNFxZYsB8_8SYHdP7zCQzLChYL3r6Kh7mEdef-n7hHs48/s320/D%2527Annunzio.jpg" width="290" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Gabriele D'Annunzio</b></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">(<i>Written on September 12, 2019; updated on September 13, 2019</i>.)</span><br />
<br />
As we speak, a new diplomatic crisis is unfolding between Italy and Croatia.<br />
<br />
The issue revolves around the inauguration of a new statue in Trieste dedicated to Gabriele D'Annunzio, an Italian poet and soldier of the First World War. In addition to issuing a diplomatic protest condemning the statue, provocative statements of a historical revisionist nature were also posted by the Croatian president Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović on Twitter.<br />
<br />
<b>Historical Context</b><br />
<br />
Without going back to the world wars or to the conflicts of the 19th century, which have been – and perhaps always will be – enormous strains on Italian-Croatian relations, not only between the States but between the peoples themselves, the more immediate causes of this current crisis can be traced back to March 24th 2016, when it was announced that Fiume-Rijeka had been chosen to be the European Capital of Culture in 2020 by the European Union.<br />
<br />
Following this announcement, in 2017 the <i>Lista per Fiume</i>, a regional political party in Croatia, proposed a bill to reintroduce bilingual Croatian-Italian signs in the city of Fiume. On November 4, 2017 a round table discussion dedicated to the subject was held in Fiume, attended by both Italian and Croatian representatives.<br />
<br />
Certain Croatian politicians seized the opportunity to depict Fiume as a “multicultural city” with “a diverse history”, which, to say the least, was a gross historical inaccuracy, not to mention insulting to the local Italian community, which once formed a majority in this city until the period between 1945 and 1954, when 90% of Fiume's population was lost as a result of the forced exile of 54,000 Italians, after the city had been occupied and then annexed by the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.<br />
<br />
The tendency of Croatian politicians to depict Fiume as a multicultural city was seen by some as an attempt to downplay the city's Italian past. Various discussions, debates and polemics then followed among the politicians in Croatia, among members and representatives of Fiume's Italian community, as well as among social media and mass media outlets.<br />
<br />
During that same month the silence was finally broken concerning the massacre of Italians at Castua by the Yugoslav Secret Police in May 1945 – part of the Foibe Massacres. In July 2018, after 73 years, the excavation of the <i>foiba</i> of Castua was finally completed, unearthing the remains of seven victims from the 3 meter deep pit. The remains were subsequently delivered to the Italian Consulate in Fiume, before being sent to Italy in October 2018, where a ceremony was held in Udine.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, in September 2018, the proposal in favor of restoring visual bilingualism had been finally approved. For the Italians, long-awaited vindication and reconciliation seemed to be in the air.<br />
<br />
Then, in February 2019, Antonio Tajani, President of the European Parliament, became the target of an international smear campaign when, in his ceremonial speech at Basovizza, near Trieste, in commemoration of the victims of the Foibe Massacres and the Julian-Dalmatian Exodus, he said:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“<i>Long live Trieste, long live Italian Istria, long live Italian Dalmatia, long live the Italian exiles, long live the heirs of the Italian exiles!</i>”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">(“<i>Viva Trieste, viva l'Istria italiana, viva la Dalmazia italiana, viva gli esuli italiani, viva gli eredi degli esuli italiani!</i>”)</span></blockquote>
The Croatian and Slovenian press, together with several politicians, including the prime ministers, organized a media campaign – which was immediately picked up by the international press – depicting Tajani as a “Fascist”, misrepresenting his words as “declarations of territorial aspirations”, accusing him of “falsifying history” and demanding his resignation from the European Parliament.<br />
<br />
The politicians of the two Balkan countries then proceeded to justify the violence and crimes committed by the Yugoslavs at the end of World War II, blaming it on Fascism and referring to the genocide of Italians merely as a “reaction” to Italian crimes – a false Communist narrative which has been frequently reiterated so as to justify the ethnic cleansing of Italians from their own homeland.<br />
<br />
<b>Current Crisis: The Statue of D'Annunzio</b><br />
<br />
Entirely unrelated to those events – but which has now become part of the same matrix of polemics – is the statue of Gabriele D'Annunzio, unveiled today in Trieste.<br />
<br />
Gabriele D'Annunzio was an Italian poet, journalist, playwright and soldier. Already famous and widely popular as a poet, he became even more popular for his exploits during World War I, particularly his Flight Over Vienna and the Buccari Mockery. Immediately after the war he gained greater notoriety on the international stage when he marched on Fiume.<br />
<br />
In 1918 the city of Fiume had voted and declared itself for union with Italy, which however was firmly opposed by Great Britain and France. In 1919 D'Annunzio led a group of Italian legionaries into Fiume to oppose the Franco-British occupation and to prevent the city from potentially falling into the hands of the nascent Kingdom of Yugoslavia. There he established the Italian Regency of Carnaro, a small Italian city-state which survived until late 1920. In 1924 Fiume was formally united with Italy.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RS9fc70ZP64/XXr2HfXtJzI/AAAAAAAAHB8/p0OC261TGn0DJNC9tnjUaD6wk07jkRPQACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Statua%2Bdi%2BGabriele%2BD%2527Annunzio%2B-%2BTrieste.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="582" data-original-width="658" height="176" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RS9fc70ZP64/XXr2HfXtJzI/AAAAAAAAHB8/p0OC261TGn0DJNC9tnjUaD6wk07jkRPQACLcBGAsYHQ/s200/Statua%2Bdi%2BGabriele%2BD%2527Annunzio%2B-%2BTrieste.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Statue dedicated to Gabriele D'Annunzio<br />Inaugurated Sept. 12th, 2019 in Trieste</span></b></td></tr>
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D'Annunzio was considered a fairly non-controversial figure in Italy and was near universally revered – indeed there are schools and streets named after him all throughout Italy – until earlier this year, when it was decided to dedicate a statue to him in Trieste; then, over night, D'Annunzio suddenly became a villain according to the polemics of the political Left, who denounced D'Annunzio as a “Fascist” and opposed the erection of the statue.<br />
<br />
Croatia too has now decided to join the fray. On September 12th, 2019 the Croatian Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs issued a diplomatic protest condemning the statue, inexplicably referring to D'Annunzio's defense of Fiume as an “occupation” and even going so far as to imply that the monument is “Fascist”. The diplomatic note delivered to the Italian embassy in Zagreb reads:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“The Republic of Croatia strongly condemns the unveiling of the monument in Trieste, on the exact date of the 100th anniversary of the occupation of Fiume. Although it is a decision of local and not state authorities, it not only undermines the excellent neighborly and friendly relations between the two countries, but, moreover, it pays tribute to an ideology which is completely at odds with European values.”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">(“<i>La Repubblica di Croazia condanna fermamente la scoperta del monumento a Trieste proprio nel centenario dell’occupazione di Fiume. Nonostante si tratti di una decisione delle autorità locali e non di quelli statali, essa va a minare gli ottimi rapporti di vicinato e d’amicizia tra i due Paesi e, inoltre, rende omaggio a un’ideologia completamente in contrasto con i valori europei</i>.”)</span></blockquote>
Evidently, the leaders in Zagreb think that Fiume was a Croatian city. They speak of an “occupation”, as if it were a Croatian city whose sovereignty had been violated and trampled upon by foreign invaders, whereas, in reality, Fiume was predominantly inhabited by an Italian population, which, in the face of a crumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire (formally dissolved on Oct. 31, 1918), had exercised its right to self-determination by voting in favor of union with Italy. The only occupiers at that time were the French, British and American troops who attempted to impede the wishes of the Italian city.<br />
<br />
It should also be noted that under D'Annunzio's Regency there were no persecutions, no criminal acts to speak of; the Croatian minority was not harmed. On the other hand, do we really need to remind Croatia once again of what occurred under the Yugoslavs during and after their invasion of 1945? If ever there was a true and proper occupation in the history of Fiume, it was the Yugoslav occupation at the end of World War II, which saw massacres, persecutions, forced annexation and the near total ethnic cleansing of an entire city.<br />
<br />
Furthermore, the note falsely characterizes the statue as a “tribute to Fascism”, which is not only false but preposterous and borders on the delirious. Gabriele D'Annunzio had achieved worldwide fame and respect as a poet and man of culture long before Fascism existed. At any rate, D'Annunzio's later political opinions do not negate his previous literary and intellectual merits, just as it does not negate the merits and contributions of other great men, such as Guglielmo Marconi, Enrico Fermi and Nobel Prize-winner Luigi Pirandello – all of whom held pro-Fascist sentiments.<br />
<br />
The statue itself depicts a reflective Gabriele D'Annunzio, contently sitting on a bench and reading a book. More importantly, despite his sympathies for the movement, D'Annunzio in fact was never a member of the Fascist Party. Meanwhile, those responsible for the statue's inauguration are very far from being Fascists: Roberto Dipiazza, the mayor of Trieste, is centre-right and is politically closer to the centre-left than to the Far Right. In short, there is nothing Fascist nor ideological about the monument.<br />
<br />
Moreover, if we are to speak about tributes to ideology, then what are we to say of the numerous statues in Croatia dedicated to Josip Broz Tito, who was responsible for massacres, genocides and other heinous crimes against German and Italian civilians, not to mention Slavic clergy? Why do we not speak of the dozens of streets and squares dedicated to him throughout Croatia? In August 2017 Google data showed that there were no less than 276 squares, streets and waterfronts named after the Communist dictator in the former Yugoslav states, 35 of which are located in Croatia.<br />
<br />
The same Yugoslav Communist dictator who was responsible for the massacre of at least 652 Italians in Fiume, today has monuments, streets and squares named in his honor throughout Croatia. And yet the same Croatian government which permits this, has the audacity to protest against the dedication of statue to a soldier-poet whose only “crime” was entering that same Italian city which, in accordance with the principle of self-determination, had proclaimed itself united to Italy.<br />
<br />
The Croatian government's supreme hypocrisy and total obliviousness of itself is revealed and put on display once again. This is a nation which still has yet to face the horrific crimes of its recent past – which, among other things, includes ethnic cleansing, genocide, mass theft of private property and lands, destruction of monuments and eradication of Italian symbols, in addition to a grotesque rewriting of history and usurpation of cultural heritage – previously met with decades of denial or silence, but today met with justification and refusal to offer compensation.<br />
<br />
This small, former Communist country – which only became a country 28 years ago – has the arrogance to protest and accuse Italy of provocations, solely for dedicating a statue to its national poet. When and if the Republic of Croatia finally decides to eliminate all the monuments to its former Communist dictator, changes the names of all the streets and squares dedicated to him, and at last compensates the ignored victims of Istria, Dalmatia and the Quarnaro, perhaps then Croatia will earn the right to protest. Until then, they have no right to lecture others.<br />
<br />
<b>Revisionist Statements of the Croatian President</b><br />
<br />
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In addition to the diplomatic note, on September 12th, 2019 the President of Croatia Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović posted the following highly provocative message on Twitter:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Rijeka [Fiume] was and remains a proud part of the Croatian Fatherland, and the erection of a monument in Trieste extolling irredentism and occupation is unacceptable.”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">(“<i>Rijeka je bila i ostaje ponosni dio hrvatske Domovine, a podizanje spomenika u Trstu kojim se veliča iredentizam i okupacija su neprihvatljivi</i>.”)</span></blockquote>
In the first place, the statue is not a monument to irredentism, nor to any imagined occupation. As was already pointed out by the communal assessor Giorgio Rossi, the statue depicts that of a reflective if not melancholic D'Annunzio—not that of a heroic soldier or man of action. The statue has nothing to do with ideology nor with territorial aspirations; it is a harmless monument to one of Italy's most celebrated poets of the last two centuries.<br />
<br />
In the second place, Fiume was never “a proud part of the Croatian Fatherland”. This is nothing more than shameful historical revisionism which seeks to justify the Yugoslav occupation and annexation following World War II, and the tearing away of this ancient Italian city from Italy. In her attempt to indite and accuse Italy, with all of her faux outrage, the Croatian president hypocritically sustains Croatia's own imperialist territorial ambitions and incites provocations against Italy.<br />
<br />
It would be good for President Grabar-Kitarović if she would first consult historical records and census data before making any pronouncements. In 1918 Fiume and its environs counted 28,911 Italians (62.5%) and 9,092 Croats (19.6%); in the city itself there were 14,194 Italians (83.3%) and only 2,094 Croats (12.3%).<br />
<br />
Fiume traces its origins back to the Romans, who founded the original city with the name <i>Tarsatica</i>. Throughout the Middle Ages, the citizens clung to their Roman roots, continuing to adhere to Roman law and institutions, and continuing to speak the Latin language. The city later became a free commune, following in the same footsteps as Trieste and the other medieval Italian communes.<br />
<br />
Since the 15th century the official language of Fiume was Italian; the city's municipal statutes were drawn up in Latin and Italian; and in order to partake in the social, commercial and cultural life of the city, one had to speak Italian. All the archives and historical documents of Fiume are written in Latin and Italian; not a single document was ever written in Croatian or any other language.<br />
<br />
When in 1776 Maria Theresa of Austria attempted to incorporate Fiume into the Kingdom of Hungary, through Croatia, she was met with protests by the inhabitants of Fiume, so that only three years later, in 1779, Fiume was proclaimed a <i>corpus separatum</i> or separate body of the Crown of St. Stephen, entirely separate from Croatia. In 1848 Croatian soldiers under Josip Jelacic invaded Fiume; the ensuing 19-year military occupation was strongly opposed by the native inhabitants.<br />
<br />
Jelacic himself promised to respect the Italian tongue of Fiume. However, when an attempt was made to introduce Croatian into schools, the city of Fiume protested, sending an address to Emperor Franz Joseph on January 31st, 1861:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“...it would be superfluous to demonstrate what is universally known, that is, that the Italian language has always been spoken since Fiume existed, which is the country's own language, being the language of school, court, commerce, every public and private discourse, and one of the principal elements to which can be attributed the degree of her culture and progress, both commercial and industrial.”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">(“<i>...sarebbe superfluo dimostrare ciò che è universalmente noto, esser cioè l'idioma italiano da secoli in Fiume la lingua della scuola, del foro, del commercio, di ogni pubblico e privato convegno; insomma essere la lingua del paese, ed uno dei principali veicoli a cui attribuire devesi il grado di sua cultura e del suo progresso commerciale e industriale</i>.”)</span></blockquote>
In 1867, following the Austro-Hungarian Compromise, the city's autonomy was restored and the Croats evacuated. In 1918, with the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Fiume voted in favor of union with Italy, and afterwards welcomed D'Annunzio's entry into the city with celebrations.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7B9olYuCQL3RAywQTl5YNmfAdg-UlBAf2k3ceJt76cycd8vjaDKpow3aD7idzttIdZbYITTOxuF_gmXQCmApQVbEFTeJ4oFbKqInv3nCSUefV7gv5_kichZ4lnHF0OE2WweXe4Emuqu4/s1600/Fiume_D%2527Annunzio_1920.png" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="136" data-original-width="186" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7B9olYuCQL3RAywQTl5YNmfAdg-UlBAf2k3ceJt76cycd8vjaDKpow3aD7idzttIdZbYITTOxuF_gmXQCmApQVbEFTeJ4oFbKqInv3nCSUefV7gv5_kichZ4lnHF0OE2WweXe4Emuqu4/s1600/Fiume_D%2527Annunzio_1920.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Residents of Fiume cheering D'Annunzio<br />and his Legionaries, September 1919</span></b></td></tr>
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These are unassailable facts of history. A three-year incorporation into the Kingdom of Hungary and an unpopular 19-year military occupation of an Italian city: that was the grand sum of Croatia's connection to Fiume prior to its annexation to Communist Yugoslavia after World War II.<br />
<br />
To suggest that Fiume was “a proud part of the Croatian Fatherland”, not only in light of its ancient history but especially in light of all that occurred there just a few decades ago – massacres, thefts, ethnic cleansing – is one of the most dishonest, appalling, insulting and provocative statements issued by a head of state in recent memory.<br />
<br />
This sort of historical revisionism and blatant disregard for historical facts on the part of Croatian leaders is nothing new, however. One only needs to recall the incident of 2011, when former Croatian president Stjepan Mesić went to China to inaugurate a museum dedicated to the “Croatian explorer” Marco Polo, sparking protest and outrage in Italy. Just a few months later, Croatia then went to war against the United Kingdom after Croatian tourist bosses and local authorities laid claim to King Arthur, proclaiming him too a “Croat”.<br />
<br />
Nonetheless, the statement made today by the current President of Croatia is one of the most shocking and offensive to come out of the modern Croatian state. Above all it is an insult to the <i>Fiumani</i>, that is the Italians of Fiume, who are the historical soul of the city, spanning some two millennia; theirs was the language of the city, theirs was the culture, theirs were the institutions, the traditions, the toponyms, the squares, the streets, the stones, the very foundations; indeed, Fiume was and rightfully remains <i>their</i> city.<br />
<br />
<b>Other Controversies</b><br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jjWrPUJNLrk/XXsRmBFyAhI/AAAAAAAAHCU/wu6yTZOL_CYCbesHeviQuq4V70WVPKmCQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Idraulici%2B-%2BFiume.png" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="481" data-original-width="375" height="185" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jjWrPUJNLrk/XXsRmBFyAhI/AAAAAAAAHCU/wu6yTZOL_CYCbesHeviQuq4V70WVPKmCQCLcBGAsYHQ/s200/Idraulici%2B-%2BFiume.png" width="140" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Governor's Palace, Fiume<br />September 12th, 2019</span></b></td></tr>
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While all this was taking place, on the early morning of September 12th, 2019, in the city of Fiume-Rijeka, a group of unknown individuals hung a large flag of the old Kingdom of Italy over a gate outside the former Governor's Palace (today a museum). Croatian police immediately removed the flag. Four Italians were arrested and are being criminally charged with “disturbing the peace”, simply for posting a flag.<br />
<br />
According to Cristiano Puglisi of “<i>Il Giornale</i>”, responsibility was assumed by a mysterious patriotic group called “Gli Idraulici”. Several Croatian media outlets falsely labeled the group a “Neo-Fascist” front, despite the group having no ties to Fascist ideology.<br />
<br />
The same media outlets exaggerated the episode to absurd heights, depicting the raising of the old royal Italian banner as a great “scandal” and “Fascist provocation”, and stoking fear in the minds of its Croatian readers to such an extent that they began to entertain delirious conspiracy theories in the comments sections anticipating an Italian invasion and declaration of war against Croatia.<br />
<br />
In reality, the act was done by a small group of patriots with no connection to the current Italian government nor to Fascism. “Il Talebano”, an Italian identitarian group close to “Gli Idraulici”, stated on its website:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Today, on the 100th anniversary of the Fiume Enterprise [<i>impresa di Fiume</i>], we wanted to show that now just as then some Italians do not surrender. We wanted to show that there are still Italians who are not willing to accept being represented by a puppet government that does not defend national interests. By a government that instead of defending its borders and its citizens opens its doors to invaders. By a government of men and women who do not know beauty, courage, daring, dignity. Today a group of Italians raised the tricolor outside the Governor's Palace of Fiume.”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">(“<i>Oggi, nel centenario dell’impresa di Fiume, abbiamo voluto dimostrare che ora come allora alcuni Italiani non si arrendono. Abbiamo voluto dimostrare che esistono ancora italiani che non sono disposti ad accettare di essere rappresentati da un governo fantoccio che non difende gli interessi nazionali. Da un governo che anziché difendere i propri confini e i propri cittadini spalanca le porte agli invasori. Da un governo di uomini e donne che non conoscono bellezza, coraggio, audacia, dignità. Oggi un gruppo di Italiani ha issato il tricolore sulla facciata del Palazzo del Governatorato di Fiume</i>.”)</span></blockquote>
In an unrelated controversy earlier this year, in June 2019, three Italian youths filmed themselves draping an Italian flag over Tersatto Castle (<i>Castello di Tersatto</i>), just outside the city of Fiume. They later clarified on their Facebook page:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“It was not a hostile act towards the Croats, but a curious, romantic, adventurous and fascinating enterprise. ... As an Italian I feel for Italian Fiume, it is as if a part of the family has been torn from us. We will no longer bow our heads before historical injustices!”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">(“<i>Non un atto ostile nei confronti dei croati, ma un impresa curiosa, romantica, avventurosa e affascinante. ... Da italiano sento Fiume italiana è come se una parte della famiglia ci fosse stata strappata. Non abbasseremo più la testa davanti alle ingiustizie storiche!</i>”)</span></blockquote>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tYr491eP_vs/XXs2viiIE1I/AAAAAAAAHCg/vlADezOpfWco9n-Jfwho5guXKr1TAlC-QCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Castello%2Bdi%2BTersatto%2B-%2BBandiera%2Bitaliana.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="307" data-original-width="772" height="127" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tYr491eP_vs/XXs2viiIE1I/AAAAAAAAHCg/vlADezOpfWco9n-Jfwho5guXKr1TAlC-QCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Castello%2Bdi%2BTersatto%2B-%2BBandiera%2Bitaliana.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Italian flag over Tersatto Castle near Fiume, June 2019</span></b></td></tr>
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The action was harshly condemned by the Croatian mayor Vojko Obersnel, who called it a “cowardly act” and declared: “Fiume is a Croatian city and will remain so forever.” The mayor is also less than enthusiastic about the recent decision to restore bilingual signs in the city, but was willing to compromise for the sake of improving Croatia's image before the international community.<br />
<br />
With his long history of opposition to the Italians, it comes as no surprise that the same mayor Obersnel issued a statement today denouncing the statue of D'Annunzio in Trieste, accusing the poet of “imposing Italian power in Fiume” and of committing “a Holocaust of monstrosities”. Earlier today he also participated in the inauguration of a new museum in Fiume dedicated to highlighting the supposed “crimes” of D'Annunzio.<br />
<br />
The lifelong socialist mayor – who last year spent 5.4 € million in public funds to refurbish the former yacht of Communist dictator Josip Broz Tito – has quite a fanciful imagination and inclination towards delusion, to say the least. Gabriele D'Annunzio has never been accused – let alone found guilty – of any crime during his regency.<br />
<br />
To put it in blunt, non-diplomatic terms: these new accusations against D'Annunzio are outrageous lies and fabricated falsehoods unsupported by any scholars outside of recent Croatian polemical circles, who are desperate to rewrite the city's history and deflect attention away from the atrocities committed by their own people in these territories just a few short decades ago.<br />
<br />
Obersnel himself, formerly president of the Croatian Socialist Youth (<i>Savez socijalističke omladine Hrvatske</i>) and a member of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia for nearly 20 years, was born in Fiume in 1957. It would be interesting to discover whether his parents were natives of the city, or whether they were one of the thousands of post-war colonists transplanted by Tito to replace the expelled Italian population. If the latter is the case, then this – together with his strong Communist background – would certainly go a long way in explaining his profound contempt for Italy and his obstinate denial of Fiume's Italian past.<br />
<br />
Finally, late on September 12th, 2019 it was reported that three Italian aircraft belonging to the private company FlyStory, which were partaking in a commemorative flight to Fiume with the prior consent and approval of the Croatian Civil Aviation Agency, were suddenly intercepted: two of the aircraft were blocked upon landing and are still being detained in Fiume; the third aircraft, while still in flight, was ordered to return to Italy by the authorities in Zagreb and its pilot was threatened with being shot down by military fighters if he refused. This so far is the most serious escalation and hostile threat against Italy on the part of Croatia.<br />
<br />
The President of FlyStory stated:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“We found ourselves facing an absurd situation. It was supposed to be a day of celebration, but the Croats reacted badly. ... Rijeka [Fiume] was selected as the European Capital of Culture for 2020, but with this sort of mentality it is truly difficult to understand why.”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">(“<i>Ci siamo trovati davanti ad una situazione assurda. Doveva essere una giornata di festa, i croati invece hanno reagito male. ... Rijeka si è candidata come capitale europea della cultura per il 2020, ma con questa mentalità la vedo veramente dura</i><span style="font-size: x-small;">.”)</span></span></blockquote>
The sudden increase in controversies surrounding Fiume-Rijeka can be traced back to the EU's decision to declare it the European Capital of Culture 2020, and to dissatisfaction with the dishonest and provocative statements which several Croatian politicians have expressed since then towards the city's Italian heritage and history, specifically the tendency to downplay its significance in favor of a multicultural revisionist interpretation of the city's history.<br />
<br />
The senseless press campaign against Antonio Tajani earlier this year undoubtedly also contributed to stoking the flames of hostility between the two countries.<br />
<br />
Now, with the latest diplomatic protest and the military threat against Italian civilian aircraft, it remains to be seen how the Italian government will respond.<br />
<br />
<b>See also:</b><br />
<br />
<a href="http://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-italian-language-returning-to-fiume.html">The Italian Language Returning to Fiume?</a><br />
<a href="http://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2017/11/response-to-croatian-statements-on.html">Response to Croatian Statements on Bilingualism in Fiume</a><br />
<a href="http://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2018/07/castua-massacre-exhumations-completed.html">Castua Massacre: Exhumations Completed After 73 Years</a><br />
<a href="http://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2017/02/quotes-on-italianity-of-fiume.html">Quotes on the Italianity of Fiume</a><br />
<a href="http://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2014/12/statement-of-alexander-oldrini-on-fiume.html">Statement of Alexander Oldrini on Fiume</a><br />
<a href="http://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2014/10/statement-of-ernest-papich-on-fiume.html">Statement of Ernest Papich on Fiume</a><br />
<a href="http://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2014/12/statement-of-fiorello-la-guardia-on.html">Statement of Fiorello La Guardia on Fiume</a><br />
<a href="http://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2018/05/statements-of-lawrence-yates-sherman-on.html">Statement of Lawrence Yates Sherman on Fiume</a><br />
<a href="http://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2014/10/statement-of-l-vaccaro-on-fiume.html">Statement of Leopold Vaccaro on Fiume</a><br />
<a href="http://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2014/12/statement-of-s-cotillo-on-fiume.html">Statement of S. A. Cotillo on Fiume</a><br />
<a href="http://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2015/10/statements-of-gino-speranza-on-istria.html">Statements of Gino Speranza on Istria, Fiume and Dalmatia</a><br />
<a href="http://istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com/2018/05/statements-of-senator-lawrence-yates.html">Statements of Lawrence Yates Sherman on the Treaty of London</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6653813795681370244.post-8436315326740775632019-09-04T18:03:00.000+02:002019-09-04T18:03:46.910+02:00Why Italy Must Have Her Boundary on the Oriental Border of the Julian Alps (1918)<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption"><b>Italy's War For Her Natural Confines</b><br /><br /><i>It has, for centuries, been the wish of the Italian population to reach its natural confine; one war follows another always with the same net, precise and irrevocable aim; Italy wants to reach the Alps; Italy wants to have, in her possession, the doors of her home!</i></td></tr>
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<br />
The coming peace conference will certainly sanction ostracism of any military institution having offensive aims but it cannot but sanction all that shall, instead, be understood to assure the defence of the single states.<br />
<br />
No matter how purely defensive the aim of a military organism of a nation can be, it is to be considered that one must combat in order to defend himself.<br />
<br />
An army, to combat, must first collect itself. The massing of an army is carried out under the protection of the covering troops which are normally dislocated to the menaced frontier.<br />
<br />
The massing is usually effected as near as possible to the menaced frontier, compatibly with the exigences for its security. It is, therefore, generally executed behind a natural obstacle, which guarantees the regular procedure of operations, even in the case of a break through the covering troops.<br />
<br />
The more rapid is the massing, better it answers its purpose. Such rapidity finds its first factor in the conformity of the nation. It can assist the military organizer with enrichment of the networks of roads (ordinary and railroad) of communication and with opportune dislocation of troops and storehouses, even from peace time, but the power of organization, if it can in some instances remedy, it cannot certainly abolish inconveniences due to the disadvantageous natural conformation of the region. If we examine the massing problem relative to Italy, we observe:<br />
<br />
1) Italy belted by the sea, on three sides, cannot be attacked by earthly means, except across the thick alpine mass. The massing of her army for defensive action, should therefore be executed on the prealpine plain.<br />
<br />
2) Considering Italy's lengthly peninsular form (over 1300 Km, from Reggio Calabria to Udine) the massing demands time in order that the bulk of army, which must needs journey from the southern and insular regions, arrive propitiously, and answer efficaciously to its aim.<br />
<br />
This fact is endangered by the Appennine relief, which by contributing a large natural barrier, limits the communications between southwestern and northeastern Italy. Furthermore such an obstacle prevents a rich railroad organization apt to compensate (with number) the length of the courses, therefore causing scarse reach of trains (due to the slopy and irregular ground to overcome).<br />
<br />
Finally the inconvenient is rendered still more vital as two of the great railroads run along the coastal regions (Adriatic and Tyrennian) and are thereby easily exposed to nautical offense, which can determine their interruption, and what is worse, render their output precarious.<br />
<br />
3) The massing, which will be necessarily slow, will effect itself on the prealpine plain, under the protection of the covering troops methodically spread on the Alpine chain.<br />
<br />
It is, therefore necessary that the Alps lend themselves to easily arrest the first endeavours of enemy invasion, by engaging them for that period of time necessary for the collection of the army, and thus mass against the enemy.<br />
<br />
Now, whilst the Alps form a gigantic barrier to the west, and to the north of the prealpine plain, they have maintained themselves in a much more accessible way to the east.<br />
<br />
Thus, while, owing to the natural obstacle constituted by the Western and Northern Alps, the troops that are in immediate relation sufficing for the construction of the first defences, we could not, however, have with sufficient rapidity, those forces required to ensure the defence of the oriental frontier.<br />
<br />
And, in fact, the line Mt. Tricorno Golfo Quarnero measures well, in direct line, 120 Km. of which but 80 are (Idria Quarnero pass) of easy practicability.<br />
<br />
On such a line a first defence would therefore require, at least 10 divisions, which would impose the stay of many army corps in the reach of this chosen line of defence, so as to arrive there sooner than the enemy.<br />
<br />
A glance at the railroad and ordinary networks of roads in the zone, immediately indicates the impossibility of summoning, in time, troops to the stipulated line if they have not, at least, already reached the Isonzo.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, if we consider the opportunity and feasibility of a similar dense concentration of troops (various army corps) at our oriental confine, we instantly observe that it is not practicable, for we could not, normally, mobilize such forces in this region, even in peace time.<br />
<br />
Being, therefore, unable to place confidence and reliance on a real strong natural obstacle, and, furthermore, being unable to have, immediately, the disposed troops on the locality, it will therefore be necessary to dispose of a more profound zone, in which it will be possible to multiply the obstacles, thereby gaining that time necessary for the massing of the forces.<br />
<br />
Owing to the natural conformity of the ground, it is understood that the massing of the army for the oriental defence cannot be done but on the west of the Isonzo.<br />
<br />
Such a massing certainly requires a score of days. It is therefore necessary that the covering troops assure this period by means of their work.<br />
<br />
For this aim the boundary should fall to the Sava.<br />
<br />
An enemy would then be obliged to renounce to his concentration at the Laibach or Krainberg basins, and in the meanwhile the Italian Army would have all the time necessary to guarantee the safety of the Julian Alps.<br />
<br />
But not being able to pretend this for reasons which appear obvious, it is, at least, essential to control that which takes place in the above mentioned basins, and it is, therefore, necessary to possess the border of the Julian Alps, which we can consider defined from : Passo d'Idria (Idria Pass) Varco di Nauporto (between Longatico and Nauporto) the mountainous line Ljubljanski – Kameni – Vini Vehr-Mt. Pomario (Javornik) Bickagora-Mt. Nevoso.<br />
<br />
On such a line, which shall have to be employed as a line of observation, can be actuated a primary defence, enough to consent to the arrival of the covering troops on the real line of resistance constituted by the stronghold formed by the oriental slopes of the Selva di Ternova, by Mt. Re (Mt. Nanos) Mt. Nevoso, or, should it fall, by Mt. della Vena, Mt. Maggiore.<br />
<br />
But we could not consider this line of resistance as line of confine, inasmuch as it is the only barrier (in a military sense) really efficacious for the support of a good systemization.<br />
<br />
At any rate were this single barrier the confine, it would be prominently exposed to small attacks and would fail to give the nation that security, that it must militarily claim.<br />
<br />
An enemy forestalling us on this line of resistance would in sole march reach Triest, completely isolating Istria from the rest of Italy, and what is worse, in a march he would also be at Gorizia, thus breaking all the Isonzo defences with a sole stroke, and immediately opening an outlet to the plains.<br />
<br />
Recapitulating: if we wish to consent to the Italian Army massing behind the Isonzo to affront an attempted enemy irruption from the oriental door, it is indispensable to have the confine at the line: Passo d'Idria (Idria Pass) Varco di Nauporto – Ljublianski – Vini Vehr – Mt. Pomario (Javornik) Mt. Bickagora – Mt. Nevoso – Mt. Risnjak – Mt. Tuhuvic; for any other arreared line would permit:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
a) the immediate isolation of Istria;</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
b) the immediate fall of Triest;</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
c) the easy and rapid fall of all our Isonzo defences;</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
d) it would consequently compel the Italian Army to mass itself behind the Friuli under the weak protection of the covering troops, and be, in fact, open to invasion.</blockquote>
This is, therefore, the minimum confine, for which Italy must contend with all her forces. Neither could it be objected that with this, Italy would place in an inferior condition the confining state. If we should, furthermore, consider that while Italy, for reasons already exposed, has a forcedly slow massing, the conformity of the confining regions and the predisposed networks of railroads consent to the near state, a much superior rapidity for the execution of such an operation.<br />
<br />
Aside from the assertion that Italy has never had the velleity of expansion over the Alps, on grounds not ethnically hers, or on such of great economic value, the fact still remains that the nation that will confine with us, shall always have in her complete possession, numerous and magnificent lines of defence.<br />
<br />
Thus, even if one of our offensive thrusts in the Laibach Basin succeeded in conquering this, (after having smashed the strong line formed by the Klecica ranges – Visoki – Pasirovan – Krim B) it would result enclosed in the great Alpine « pincers » constituted by Mt. Karavanka to the north, by the Sannthaler Alpen, by the mountainous groups of Cerna, of Velka at north-east, and by the Kumberg Dolgobrdo, Kutschel, Makovec knots to the south-east.<br />
<br />
Analogously, an Italian thrust more to the south, aimed at Reifnitz Agram would hit against an infinite series of heights which extend themselves in chains parallel to one another to the south of Laibach with a north western - south eastern course, stopping an imponent mountainous obstacle which can be considered militarily insuperable, if animated by the presence of a few troops.<br />
<br />
Therefore if Italy should lose the mountainous obstacle of the Julian Alps she has the enemy in her home, moreover, in her plains; vice versa even in the case of her army forcing the Julian Alps she would find herself against a strong high wall of enclosure belonging to the enemy, which in order to arrest the advance has but to close his few narrow doors which constitute the entrances.<br />
<br />
On the other hand it would suffice to observe an « isometric » map in order to note that the profundity of the mountainous obstacle, respectively to the east and west of the confine minimum to Italy's needs, is all to the advantage of the confining state, inasmuch as at a medium profoundness of 35 km. for Italy, it corresponds, to a medium of about 100 Km. for the eastern confining region.<br />
<br />
Therefore the indicated confine is for Italy, militarily indispensable and is besides a modest request, an equitable division. Following the watershed, it also represents the real limit with regard to the current life materials. On the whole it is a true right of Italy, for with it, she will have realized her national aspirations to the east.<br />
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After four wars for independence, Italy, with such a successful realization of her aspirations, can sheathe her honest sword and stimulate the endeavours of her 40 million intelligent inhabitants, good arid labourous in the work of peace, to which their long standing civilization and renewed vitality conduct them.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6653813795681370244.post-91335818438210423932019-06-06T22:24:00.001+02:002020-01-07T11:52:08.421+01:00The Habsburg Genocide in Dalmatia<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDIOJ5SnF5AXCW0Iu_RMdR6H2F5vajpHpbWI1Jy2a9J5eVafgvbkdsdZLmoOOzk8cETAgHDjkMg-GOYkLR3_lS4uI44Vt41tYQ23zYrwXXRt_rzQ9fvP89fsgaLUzeCEJxZA-vjsJOQiA/s1600/Giovane+esule+italiana.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="296" data-original-width="277" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDIOJ5SnF5AXCW0Iu_RMdR6H2F5vajpHpbWI1Jy2a9J5eVafgvbkdsdZLmoOOzk8cETAgHDjkMg-GOYkLR3_lS4uI44Vt41tYQ23zYrwXXRt_rzQ9fvP89fsgaLUzeCEJxZA-vjsJOQiA/s200/Giovane+esule+italiana.jpg" width="187" /></a></div>
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(<i>Written by Marco De Turris, taken from the blog “L'Italia e' la mia Patria”, September 13, 2010</i>)<br />
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The so-called Austrian Empire (Austria-Hungary after 1866) was responsible for a great deal of persecution, abuse and violence against the Italian nation. We know how this decisively contributed to perpetuating the long state of division of Italy, the colonial possession of its vast territories under foreign rule, the condition of economic exploitation, cultural repression, political oppression and ethnic discrimination of its Italian subjects. However, what is less known is how the Empire planned and accomplished after 1866 a true genocide (in the sense of forced denationalization) to the detriment of the Italian residents in their possessions. An objective and truthful assessment of the Habsburg Empire, founded on the principle of the hegemony of the ethnic Austrian element, can be introduced by recalling the minutes of the decision expressed in the Imperial Council of Ministers on November 12, 1866, held under the presidency of Emperor Franz Joseph. The minutes of the meeting reads as follows:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“His Majesty has expressed the precise order that we decisively oppose the influence of the Italian element still present in some Crown lands, and to aim unsparingly and without the slightest compunction at the Germanization or Slavicization – depending on the circumstances – of the areas in question, through a suitable entrustment of posts to political magistrates and teachers, as well as through the influence of the press in South Tyrol, Dalmatia, and the Adriatic Coast.”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">[See Luciano Monzali, "<i>Italiani di Dalmazia</i>", Florence 2004, p. 69; Angelo Filipuzzi (edited by), “<i>La campagna del 1866 nei documenti militari austriaci: operazioni terrestri</i>”, Padua 1966, pp. 396.]</span></blockquote>
The Imperial decision of Franz Joseph to carry out an ethnic cleansing against the Italians in Trentino-Alto Adige, Venezia Giulia, and Dalmatia, can be found in <i>Die Protokolle des Österreichischen Ministerrates 1848-1867. VI Abteilung: Das Ministerium Belcredi. Band 2: 8. April 1866-6. Februar 1867, Österreichischer Bundesverlag für Unterricht, Wissenschaft und Kunst</i> (Wien 1973); the quote appears in Section VI, vol. 2, meeting of November 12, 1866, p. 297. The quotation in German appears in a section titled "Measures against the Italian element in some territories of the Crown", or rather "<i>Maßregeln gegen das italienische Element in einigen Kronländern</i>":<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Se. Majestät sprach den bestimmten Befehl aus, daß auf die entschiedenste Art dem Einflusse des in einigen Kronländern noch vorhandenen italienischen Elementes entgegengetreten und durch geeignete Besetzung der Stellen von politischen, Gerichtsbeamten, Lehrern sowie durch den Einfluß der Presse in Südtirol, Dalmatien und dem Küstenlande auf die Germanisierung oder Slawisierung der betreffenden Landesteile je nach Umständen mit aller Energie und ohne alle Rücksicht hingearbeitet werde. Se. Majestät legt es allen Zentralstellen als strenge Pflicht auf, in diesem Sinne planmäßig vorzugehen.”</blockquote>
This was followed by a call to all the central offices, giving them the strict duty of carrying out the order according to the will of the emperor. This government decision, made at the highest level by Emperor Franz Joseph and his council, to proceed with the Germanization and Slavicization of the regions with Italian population, Trentino, Venezia Giulia and Dalmatia, "unsparingly and without the slightest compunction", attests unequivocally to the discriminatory and oppressive nature of the Habsburg Empire against the Italian minority: remember however that this is only one example among many of the anti-Italian policy of Austria. This act of the government, directly ordered by the emperor himself, expresses a clear intention to perpetrate an anti-Italian genocide (not in the sense of physical extermination, but in the sense of eradicating national and cultural identity, that would lead precisely to the "death of a people"), which was then actually realized in Dalmatia (Austrian censuses report the reduction of the Italian ethnic group from nearly 20% to just over 2%) and undertaken in Venezia Giulia and Trentino: only the war and the Italian victory prevented the same from happening in these last two regions that happened in Dalmatia, where the Italian presence was eliminated.<br />
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This project, consciously elaborated by the highest authorities of the Habsburg Empire and by the manifest will of Franz Joseph himself, was then carried out against the Italians in a plurality of ways. The rear measures against the Italians were carried out from 1866 until 1918 and were different according to the place, the time, and the authorities (civil or military, central or local) that promoted it. However, they all followed the pattern laid down by a substantial hostility of the Austrian ruling class against the Italians:<br />
<ol>
<li>Mass expulsions (in the first years of the 20th century alone more than 35,000 Italians were expelled from Venezia Giulia);</li>
<li>Deportation to concentration camps (over 100,000 Italians deported during World War I);</li>
<li>Use of Slavic nationalist squads to exercise massive amounts of violence against Italians (with countless acts of violence, bombings, assaults, murders, etc. These actions were often substantially tolerated by the authorities or were not effectively suppressed);</li>
<li>Police repression;</li>
<li>Immigration of Slavs and Germans into Italian territories favored by the imperial authorities, to promote the gradual "submersion" of the native Italians;</li>
<li>Educational and cultural Germanization and Slavicization (Italian school closed, elimination of Italian place names and proper names, prohibition of Italian culture in all its forms: the question of education in Dalmatia in particular was very serious);</li>
<li>Deprivation or restriction of political rights (elections in Dalmatia saw very heavy vote rigging in favour of Slavic nationalists; communes ruled by Italians were dissolved by the Austrian authorities, etc.);</li>
<li>Restriction of civil rights (dissolution of political associations, cultural associations, trade unions, people were arrested or convicted for trivial reasons, etc).</li>
</ol>
There is a wealth of material about all this, both in contemporary sources and in historiography.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com