We remember the days in November 1953 when the police forces of the Allied Military Government of Zone A of the Free Territory of Trieste repressed demonstrations for Italianness, resulting in deaths and injuries. We share this text from the website of the National League of Trieste by the late Professor Giuseppe Parlato, former President of the Scientific Committee of the Multimedia Documentation Center of Julian, Istria, Rijeka, and Dalmatian Culture.

The Trieste uprising of November 1953

The events of '53 represent a unique development of much more complex phenomena, rooted in the conclusion of the war and diplomatic relations. Historians have long recognized the centrality of international politics as the primary key to understanding the events. To consider them merely a logistical issue, a problem that, despite having the city of Trieste as the center of the insurrection, was confined to the Julian capital, today constitutes a perspectival error that distorts the very perception of the episode. And yet, the events of '53 remain in the collective imagination as a local event, whose exceptionality and dramatic nature have been attributed exclusively to the specific situation in Trieste.

It is therefore not surprising that there is a marked discrepancy in perception and memory of the events, depending on whether the issue is viewed from Trieste or from any other Italian city. While it is natural that in the Julian city the memory of the tragic events of 1953 is still vivid, and the pathos still strong when it comes to judging them, it is far less natural that in the rest of Italy the issue, at the level of public opinion, is far less felt, in many cases even ignored. Likewise, it is substantially overlooked in the major historical works that are considered the most up-to-date today: for example, the "History of Republican Italy," published by Einaudi and edited by Francesco Barbagallo, devotes a single line to the incidents in Trieste, citing "the bloody incidents of November between Italian demonstrators and the Allied police." Even more significant is the absence of any reference in Lanaro's volume, which deals at length with Pella's policy towards Trieste without mentioning the events of November. In the important "History of Italy," edited by Giovanni Sabbatucci and Vittorio Vidotto, Versori provides a brief reconstruction of the events in his essay on foreign policy; more substantial and detailed, finally, are the references to the events dedicated to Aurelio Lepre and Simona Colarizi. All the more so, it's difficult to find more than a few lines on the Trieste events in high school or university textbooks.

The reconstruction of events, and their interpretation, is therefore entrusted, on the one hand, to specialists in international relations and, on the other, to scholars who have dealt with them mainly from a local perspective.From the classic De Castro to Pupo, from Valdevit to Dassovich, from Novak to Spazzali, from Chicco to Sema. The scholars just mentioned are responsible for more innovative insights into the analysis and study of the Trieste question.

Paradoxically, what's striking is the difficulty in making the conclusions of this research understood by the general public. Finally, let's not forget the important memory of Paolo Emilio Taviani, Minister of Defense in the Pella government.

In this very particular context, in which the image of the Trieste question is still, all things considered, marginal with respect to the evolution of the Italian political framework, we must not forget the difficulty in finding effective documentation for the complete reconstruction of events Many archival collections have disappeared or are effectively classified, while only in recent years has it been possible to successfully access British and American sources. These difficulties and the sources yet to be discovered are carefully addressed in the essays in the exhibition catalog, which do not claim to fully reconstruct the roots and evolution of the innovative events that positively transform the commemorative occasion of the fiftieth anniversary into a moment of reflection free from ideological and political constraints.

There are essentially three elements that the essays in question suggest to the reader's reflection. First, thethe complexity of the matter, in which internal issues are intertwined with broader international issues; if the precise reconstruction of the events – but in the future it would be necessary to keep in mind the long-term nature of the issue, including in the analysis the riots of 1952, which, moreover, were even more violent than those of the following year, even if the human toll, fortunately, was much less tragic – is in fact acquired, their interpretation and above all the connection that the Trieste events had with the internal dynamics of Italian political evolution is still largely to be studied. Secondly, it emerges from the essays in the catalogue that the the events of '52 and '53 are anything but marginal with respect to the Italian political situation: indeed, it appears increasingly clear how Trieste is becoming – willingly or unwillingly – a sort of "political laboratory" in which The local communist left faces the Trieste question in opposition to the "traitor" Tito, thus modifying the positions taken prior to the Yugoslav "rift" from the Soviet Union; the Christian Democratic center, moreover, found itself managing the issue by largely freeing itself from the opposition between De Gasperi and Pella, emphasizing the crucial need for Trieste's return to Italy compared to the perspectives of those who would use the issue to establish a new political balance in Rome, or those who, to counter this prospect, did not hesitate to weaken Italian diplomatic action; finally, the monarchist and MSI right wing expected the Trieste question to be a moment of national redemption and the possibility of a return to the political game through the forceful evocation of an issue, that of irredentist, which was highly engaging at the level of public opinion and led to the birth of a militancy that, until a few months earlier, seemed utopian.

Thirdly, the documentation contained in the essays gives the reader the conviction that The Trieste question is being discussed by the entire population, beyond the schematisms and political perspectives it evokes, as we have seen: the desire to reduce the attendance of one hundred and fifty thousand people—out of a population of 250—at the victims' funerals by interpreting it as a manifestation of revanchism or, worse, resurgent neo-fascism, constitutes a perspectival error of considerable magnitude. And while it is necessary to seriously and rigorously explore the complexities of the situation, the historian must simultaneously keep in mind the true perception that the people of Trieste had of the events and the true meaning they gave them: that of an action that, while at times openly subversive of the "established order," was directed toward a normalization that had as its ultimate goal the definitive acquisition of the city by the nation of which it felt an integral part. It is with this in mind that the Trieste municipal administration will follow up the exhibition and conference on the events of 1953 with other events on 1954, that is, on the moments that led to the "second redemption." This will be done with the same critical, problematic, scientifically rigorous spirit, while simultaneously respectful of the feelings and hopes of those who were involved.

Giuseppe Parlato

Source: National League - 03.11.2008