A Late Friendship: Italian-Yugoslav Relations In The Second Half Of The 20th Century (1947-1992) (original) (raw)
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Abstract: The article describes relations between the Yugoslav and Italian government in the period between 1945 and 1947 in connection with the Trieste issue. Th e Trieste crisis erupted on 1 May 1945 between Yugoslavia and the Western Allies and went on to cause a conflict between the Great Powers. The entry of Yugoslav troops into Trieste reawakened the old territorial dispute between Yugoslavia and Italy. Th e trial of strength ensued in which both sides employed different tactics. Keywords: Yugoslavia, Italy, Trieste, Great Powers, foreign policy.
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At the close of the Second World War in Europe, the Communist Partisan forces of Josip Broz Tito rushed to occupy the Venezia-Giulia region surrounding the Istrian city of Trieste, which they intended to seize from Italy. Although Winston Churchill pleaded for an Anglo-American show of force against the Partisans, whom he portrayed as Soviet proxies, Harry Truman initially saw Tito's move as part of a local nationalist dispute in which he refused to entangle American troops. Within two weeks the president changed his mind and nearly went to war with his Yugoslav allies. Historians have generally agreed with Vojtech Mastny that the Trieste crisis was "the first postwar confrontation between East and West." Roberto Rabel, for instance, calls Trieste "an early step on the road to containment," and John Whittam considers it the first "success for the Western Allies in. .. the Cold War." Although Acting Secretary of State Joseph Grew and others in the State Department and Office of Strategic Services (OSS) briefly joined the British in depicting Tito's land grab in the bipolar terms of the Cold War, the objectives of the two Western allies were quite different. Whereas the British aimed to protect their Mediterranean sphere of influence and the balance of power in Europe from what they perceived to be Soviet encroachment, the Truman administration sought primarily to enforce the multilateral, neo-Wilsonian world order envisioned by the Americans at Yalta. As Truman acknowledged at the time but later obscured in his memoirs, it was in fact Stalin's cooperation with the West and refusal to underwrite Tito that encouraged the president not only to confront the Yugoslavs with force but also to resist taking a harder line against the Soviets. Stalin's intervention actually deepened the suspicion
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In the fall of 1945, Allied Headquarters in Trieste drafted and circulated a report recounting the experiences of Italian soldiers and civilians living under Yugoslavian occupation (1943-1945). In Trieste, one of the largest cities in the province of what is now Friuli-Venezia Giulia, the Yugoslavian occupation, known as the “Forty Days,” lasted just over a month from 1 May to 12 June 1945 — while in the former eastern borderlands of Istria, Dalmatia and Zara, partisan warfare and Yugoslav occupation had progressed sporadically for almost two years following the Italian armistice with Allied forces in September 1943, culminating in the official Yugoslavian annexation of these regions in 1954. This essay will examine the frameworks of understanding and multifaceted geopolitical concerns which impacted both the development of the Allied investigation and subsequent responses to the report’s findings —namely, the silencing of public discussion of these events in an effort to secure postwar peace in the newly established border region. As will be discussed in this essay, the investigation and eventual “submersion”1 of these atrocities occurred within the context of two important postwar movements—the "defascistizzazione" of Italy and the escalation of tensions preceding the Cold War. This essay argues that the Allied investigation was, in fact, a part of the process of “submersion”—pursued in an effort to gain information about the Yugoslavian position, to appease and diminish discussions of these events, and to control narratives in order to protect the Allied position in the region. Although the Allied governments did achieve a favourable solution to the border dispute in 1954, resulting in the Italian administration of Trieste and Venezia Giulia, the “submersion” of these events and limited response to the persecution and expulsion of ethnic Italians in the zones of Yugoslavian occupation were ultimately counterproductive in establishing any long-lasting resolution or effective process of reconciliation between the border region and the Italian state, or amongst the Italian, Slovenian and Croatian communities living within and across the border.
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The Trieste Crisis of 1945 has generally been misinterpreted as a preview of Cold War containment, in which Stalin and Tito purportedly worked together against joint Anglo-American efforts to insure that Trieste would remain with Italy. In fact, Britain and the Soviets cooperated to thwart Yugoslav claims to Trieste in tacit conformity with their "percentages" agreement, and with a similar traditonal European conception of imperial spheres of interest and the balance of power. Driven more by moralistic ideological imperatives, American policy in the Trieste Crisis of 1945 aimed primarily to enforce a new multilateral neo-Wilsonian world order they had envisioned at Yalta and at Dumbarton Oaks. Their joint use of force against Tito thus masked a profound conceptual difference in British and American aims later papered over in a spirit of Cold War solidarity. Far from vindicating Wilsonian values, the resolution of the Trieste Crisis of 1945 was arguably a victory for traditional European Great-Power diplomacy and a testament to the utility of the Percentages Agreements. The apparent American misreading of Stalin's cooperation against Tito in the Trieste Crisis as progress toward a new multilateral world order would only add to their later confusion as Stalin subsequently consolidated his own sphere of interest. For their part, the Yugoslavs were incensed that Stalin would sell out his Yugoslav socialist brothers for the sake of British and Soviet interests. The significance of Tito's contemporary public condemnation of the Soviet role in the Trieste Crisis, which contributed to their public split three years later, has been almost completely missed in the historiography. Also missed, has been the profound difference in British and American conceptions of international relations that would arguably later surface in the Suez Crisis, and in American commitments of force, including ground troops, to areas of realtively minimal material interest to the United States.
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After the 1917 Corfu Declaration several Italian political circles adopted a warm approach towards Yugoslav unity. Following Mazzini’s ideas, democratic interventionists had claimed since the beginning of the war a policy based on the national principle. They were eventually joined by more conservative sectors, which believed the international context had radically changed since 1915 and therefore it was necessary to make a general reappraisal of Italy’s war aims. They favoured a deal with Serbia and the Yugoslav Committee in order to destabilize the Austrian Empire and agree a mutually acceptable definition of the common border. Minister of Foreign Affairs Sonnino instead believed that Italian war aims had been fixed once and for all in 1915 and refused both direct talks and a reappraisal of Italian war aims. Lacking a bilateral deal with Serbs/Yugoslavs, Rome finally found itself helpless at the peace negotiations, when Paris and London backtracked from the promises made in 1915.
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Considering the breaches, rifts and different currents within the communist camp during the Cold War period, this article takes on a chapter of communist interparty relations during the early Cold War period. It analyses relations between Italian and Yugoslav communists in the border region that was to become the “Free Territory of Trieste” (FTT). Similarities and discrepancies on positions regarding international questions related to this very region are at the centre of analysis. Furthermore, the Soviet influence over decisions taken in Rome and Belgrade is portrayed. By doing so the article demonstrates that the communists, both in Italy and Yugoslavia, developed specific tactics and concepts in the disputed region, all the while carefully observing Moscow’s attitude and sometimes skilfully attempting to persuade the communist centre of the validity of their respective arguments.