By: Gašper Blažič
The University of Trieste will confer honorary doctorates on former President of the Republic Borut Pahor and current President of Italy Sergio Mattarella during its centenary celebration in spring. According to the university’s rector, Roberto Di Lenarda, this will be an opportunity for reckoning with the past in the spirit of reconciliation. Pahor has already expressed his gratitude to the university on social media, as reported by the STA . According to the leadership of the University of Trieste, one of the highlights of the reconciliation collaboration between the two presidents was in July 2020 when, one hundred years after the fascist burning of the National Hall in Trieste, they jointly attended the signing of a document transferring ownership of the building to the Slovenian minority.
Although it may seem lately that the now former president, Borut Pahor, continues to carry out presidential duties, putting Nataša Pirc Musar in an uncomfortable position – she has faced several notable setbacks in the past year in the presidential role – many will still recall the events from three and a half years ago. At that time, Pahor, still in the role of the president of the republic, in collaboration with his Italian counterpart, achieved significant progress in resolving unresolved historical issues with Italy. The return of the National Hall in Trieste – a symbol of Slovenian identity in the now Italian multicultural city without a hinterland – was a significant milestone that also dealt a blow to extremists of all kinds. This included members of the partisan association who irrationally attacked Pahor and accused him of high treason for paying respects at the foiba, where, they claimed, there were never any bodies. On the day of Pahor’s visit to Italy, there were protests in Ljubljana, even from the “Jenulla supporters” who accused Pahor of nothing less than rehabilitating fascism, without considering that Slovenian communists, after the war, filled Karst pits with bodies of all nationalities: Slovenes, Croats, Italians, Germans, etc. One of these pits is located near St. Socerb, in the immediate vicinity of Socerb’s pit (with an underground chapel) and Socerb Castle. For many years after the war, they continued to dump biological and other waste into that pit to conceal the traces of crimes against humanity.
And ultimately, these degenerate actions largely contributed to the fact that post-war Yugoslavia ultimately lost Trieste and Gorizia. The Paris Peace Conference in 1947 did allow the return of the majority (!) of the Primorska region to the mother country (then the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia), except for the Free Territory of Trieste, which was abolished in 1954. Zone A (Trieste and its surroundings) was assigned to Italy. The fundamental unresolved issues between Yugoslavia and Italy were only conclusively addressed with the Osimo Agreements in the late 1970s, more than thirty years after the end of World War II. However, after Slovenia gained independence and during its integration into the European Union, Italy introduced conditions related to the supposedly unresolved status of Italian migrants who left Istria after the war. Many will also recall the commotion caused almost 20 years ago by the infamous film “Srce v vodnjaku” (“Heart in a Well”), which seems to have been set up as a trap for the first government led by Janez Janša by Italian ideological friends within our partisan association. Similar to the propaganda demands of the now deceased Carinthian provincial governor Jörg Haider in 2000 after the annulment of the AVNOJ decisions, the film stirred controversy. The late Primorska publicist Pavel Ferluga would refer to them as the Italian red and black left.
Just incidentally: that movie was in its own way controversial because it virtually equated Slovenes with Slavic “titi”, thereby cleverly concealing the core issue of post-war events. It was clear that Italian Blackshirts and Yugoslav Redshirts were actually much closer than we were taught in schools and through the media. Many found themselves in both roles: first in a black shirt (with a tassel down to the waist) and then in “people’s committees”, where they practiced their fascist “anti-fascism”. It seems that the current Prime Minister, Robert Golob, is now modelling himself after this.
I present this brief overview of Slovenian-Italian historical pains, which both extremes often abuse, only because of an event that happened practically just before the announcement that the University of Trieste will confer honorary doctorates on both former presidents. I am talking about the initiative of Primorska MPs (only coalition ones, to be clear!) to change the law regulating national holidays, namely by replacing the “Return of Primorska” holiday with the “Annexation of Primorska”.
Firstly, this is not the first attempt of its kind. In my memory, the transitional left is attempting this for the third time in recent years to cause significant harm to Primorska. As known, the first two attempts failed when the National Council vetoed, and then coalition MPs did not gather enough votes to override that veto. In this story, the main initiator was now former SD parliamentary member and current MEP Matjaž Nemec, who referred to the fact that Primorska residents never mentioned that day as a “return” but always as an “annexation”. Well, it is entirely possible that such a term was indeed used in the past, but apparently, they are unaware of how foolish they make themselves look.
The fundamental historical fact is that Primorska was indeed annexed – and to Italy! This happened shortly after the end of the First World War when the Austro-Hungarian Empire had already collapsed, and the great powers were dividing the spoils of war. Due to the fact that the Kingdom of Italy had switched sides during the war and joined the Allies (and according to the secret agreement in London), it was entitled to a significant portion of the collapsed Habsburg monarchy, which it quickly occupied. The infamous Rapallo border then became the internationally recognised border between the two kingdoms (Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes – later Yugoslavia). Although not a genuine annexation (Anschluss) from an international legal perspective, it was clear that this was an extremely unjust story linked to backroom dealings between the great powers, which was certainly not in the spirit of Woodrow Wilson’s self-determination of nations. In the case of Carinthia, which became part of the new Austrian Republic, it was less controversial due to the plebiscite, where many Slovenes in Carinthia saw the new Austrian state as a lesser evil than the Yugoslav (actually Serbian-expanded) one. However, this Austrian First Republic was forcibly annexed to Hitler’s Third Reich in the late 1930s. In other words, “Painter Adi” annexed it (!) to his empire and disregarded all existing international legal agreements. When the remaining Slovenian territory was occupied in 1941, the territories were effectively divided and annexed (!) by four countries: Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, their then ally Hungary, and a very small part by Pavelić’s NDH, which was essentially a puppet state of the Third Reich. It is true that Mussolini’s regime was already defeated during the war, but this meant only German occupation of the until-then Italian-occupied zone (the so-called Ljubljana Province) and practically the entire Italy (including Primorska!). Interestingly, during the same period, defeated Italian units with their artillery helped partisans brutally annihilate class enemies (who, according to the communist interpretation, were Italian allies!) in Grčarice and Turjak. Only this bloody tragedy actually led to the establishment of the Slovenian Home Guard.
At this juncture, let me remind you of Hungary, which, in the Treaty of Trianon in 1919, lost a considerable amount of its former territory, including Slovenian Styria (Prekmurje, but excluding Porabje). Since 1919, the people of Prekmurje have been commemorating the unification with their homeland – not annexation. Therefore, if the coalition manages to enforce the term “annexation” with the proposed law, Slovenia would, in a way, be offering its head to Italy on a platter! Clearly, such proposals also indicate a tactic of diverting attention and reflect the lack of ideas from the current government, which seems unsure of how to wield its power.
