The Yugoslav tanks leaving and the flags with the red star being lowered are scenes that bring to mind not only the independence of Slovenia, whose thirtieth anniversary is being celebrated these days, but also the days experienced by the people of Trieste, Gorizia and Polesine on 12 June 1945, when the occupation by Tito's partisan forces ended.

The events on the eastern border would still take a long time before at least Gorizia and Trieste would fully return to the borders of the Italian Republic, while Pola itself, the rest of Istria, Fiume and Zara continued to suffer the persecution of Italianness and the liberticidal grip of the consolidation of the communist dictatorship which would lead to the exodus of 90% of the native Italian community.

The Istrian, Fiume and Dalmatian exiles could carry little baggage with them, but many were the fears, the anguish and the mourning left as a legacy from having experienced the regime that Tito was building. It was precisely this direct knowledge of Tito's terror that made the Adriatic exiles sympathize with the liberation of other peoples, such as Slovenians and Croats, from communist oppression, but in the world of the Adriatic diaspora another awareness had also arisen: that Yugoslavia would not survive its father-master for long. In fact, during the nineties, in a more or less bloody manner the republics of the Federal Republic would each go their own way.

Even imagining this scenario, the Istrian, Fiume and Dalmatian exiles were against the Treaty of Osimo, because waiting for the death of the despot of Belgrade would have allowed Italian diplomacy to work from a position of strength. On the other hand, in the 1990s there was not even the strength to force Slovenia and Croatia, successor states for territorial competence, to renegotiate the terms of the compensation provided for by this Treaty and which Yugoslavia had just begun to pay.

Despite the climate of good neighborliness that today binds Rome, Ljubljana and Zagreb, we remember that there are still issues inherent to the Italianness of the Adriatic inherited from the communist regime that must be resolved with bilateral agreements.

Renzo Codarin
President of the National Association of Venezia Giulia and Dalmatia