It was his pen that defined Zadar, razed to the ground by Anglo-American bombing in the Second World War, as “the Dresden of the Adriatic”; it was his book “Esilio” (Campiello Prize 1996) that contributed to the knowledge among the general Italian public of multi-ethnic Dalmatia and the exodus of the tormented Italian community that also involved his family; it was his direct knowledge in his native Split of Tito's ferocious communism that led him into politics with staunchly anti-communist positions, first in the Liberal Party and later in Craxi's Socialist Party: this and much more was Vincenzo Bettiza, journalist, writer and politician who died at the age of ninety.

Witness of a century and its tragedies, Bettiza represented the multifaceted culture of Dalmatia, above the criticisms that were leveled at him by those who instead had a more nationalistic approach: twentieth-century heir of the variegated "Dalmatian nation" highlighted by Niccolò Tommaseo, he made the most of the multiplicity of cultures with which he came into contact in his youth (Italian, Slavic and German) becoming, as a correspondent from Vienna and Moscow, one of the most appreciated journalists and essayists regarding contemporary events in Central Europe and Eastern Europe.

His signature appeared on the most prestigious national newspapers, from Corriere della Sera (from which he left in the face of the left-wing editorial line of Ottone and Crespi) to La Stampa (for which he wrote until the end) passing through Il Giornale (of which he was founder together with Indro Montanelli and co-director), Il Resto del Carlino and La Nazione (which he also directed).

In his essays (Communism from Budapest to Prague 1956-1968, The Mystery of Lenin. For an Anthropology of Homo Bolshevicus and The Eclipse of Communism) and in his novels (The Election Campaign, The Ghosts of Moscow) communist totalitarianism was analyzed, denounced and demolished; in the Senate and the European Parliament he tried to unite liberals and socialists against the Soviet totalitarian threat, thus finding himself in the political line of Bettino Craxi.

A free man of great culture, Bettiza was one of the many examples of exiles who, although coming from a condition of well-being but forced by Titoist violence to abandon the lands of the eastern Adriatic in terrible conditions, rolled up their sleeves, did their apprenticeship and were able to honestly conquer positions of importance in Italian civil society.

Renzo Codarin, July 28, 2017