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An exhibition in Koper on the communist massacres in Slovenia in June 1945
The exhibition curated by historian and publicist Jože Dežman "The Cave under Macesnova Gorica - The Slovenian Katin" is set up at the Franciscan Monastery in Koper, which bears witness to the summary executions committed in the immediate post-war period. The exhibition is set up by the historian who was Head of the Government Commission for the issue of hidden burial sites, associated with mass executions and clandestine burials that occurred during and after the Second World War, in the spaces granted by the Franciscan Monastery. The excavations in the Cave in question took place from April to September 2022. The executions instead took place between 2 and 10 June of...
The Jugolire of Zone B during the Yugoslav occupation of Venezia Giulia
In the final phase of the Second World War, the eastern border provinces were not liberated like the rest of Italy by Anglo-American troops, but the IX Corpus of the Yugoslavian Liberation Army arrived and it was a bloody "liberation" that the city of Zara had already experienced in November 1944 and that manifested itself in Gorizia, Trieste, Fiume and Istria from May 12st (entry into Trieste of the Yugoslavian vanguard) to June 1945th XNUMX, when the Belgrade agreement came into force, with which a provisional demarcation line was established pending the peace conference. In these Forty days, a political purge was carried out that did not concern...
Beyond the barrier, freedom
It is 1952 and Mario, an eight-year-old boy, lives along the coast of the Istrian peninsula. His time is divided between the Italian school and the stories of his great-grandmother Mati, which speak of a distant time: of the two world wars, of life in the fields, of a family that grows and changes. What Mario does not yet know, however, is that his life is destined to change radically. After the Habsburg and then Fascist domination, Istria is in fact destined to experience another occupation: that of Tito's Yugoslavia. A new phase of life then begins for Mario. The idyll of a rural life guided by ancient family traditions is replaced by that of the regime,...
“The Socialist Abyss” by Gabriella Chmet presented in Trieste
Five years after the novel La guerra di Giusto, my new narrative/memoir L'abisso socialista. Memorie di una ex Yugoslava is published by Luglio Editore in Trieste. The most difficult book, the most painful, the story of a life that defines an entire existence. No, I'm not exaggerating, I'm aware of having touched the most delicate chords, of having put my finger in a wound that has never completely healed. The story that spans the second half of the twentieth century and ends in the present day, is the story of Tito's Yugoslavia, of his parable as god-master of a nation built with iron and fire on a purely ideological basis....
Mothers in Tito's Gulag
David Grossman tells the tragic story of Panić Nahir (Vera) and her daughter, Tiana Wages (Nina), in the former Yugoslavia Panić Nahir, in the novel Life Plays with Me by David Grossman (Mondadori, translated by Alessandra Shomroni) is simply called Vera. Her daughter Nina, in reality, is Tiana Wages. Eva had asked David Grossman to write her story and that of her daughter. And the Israeli writer had agreed to tell it in turn and reinvent it, in his own way. When the book was written, in February 2019, Eva was no longer there. So her story, well known in the former Yugoslavia, tears away the veil of darkness on Tito's gulags and, in particular,...
Goli Otok, the broken memory
At dawn, Goli Otok is pale. Gray. An anonymous island against which the oily waves of the Kvarner break. Looking at it from the mainland you can't see any kind of vegetation; you can't see either trees or shrubs. From the water emerges only a stretch of livid and sterile rock. In the summer the sun dries everything, in the winter the wind freezes what remains. In the eternal chase between life and death, it is always the latter that wins on Goli Otok. Looking at it, men have begun to call it in many ways: some have called it "bald", others "naked". But the most suitable adjective, perhaps, is "secret". The back of the island, a high cliff...
Dreaming of freedom
Gabriella Chmet recovers her memories as a teenager growing up in Tito's Yugoslavia, painting a merciless and ironic fresco of a nation that no longer exists and of its god-master. It was certainly not the (alleged) lack of flavors among the yogurt jars, as former Croatian president Kolinda Grabar Kitarović once declared, that made life in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia insipid and bitter. The relatives of the thousands of people who disappeared into thin air, the hundreds of thousands of Julian-Dalmatian exiles forced to leave everything to save themselves, the many political persecuted (and interned), or how many escaped... know something about it.
Slovenian independence also meant the end of a communist dictatorship
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 that the people of Trieste, Gorizia and Polesine lived on 12 June 1945, when the occupation by Tito's partisan forces ended. The events of the eastern border would still have been long before at least Gorizia and Trieste returned to all intents and purposes within 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...
Slovenia and Croatia still fighting over Istria
Wars in the former Yugoslavia, 30 years later: Ljubljana demands a corridor to access international waters, Zagreb does not accept the arbitration ruling Thirty years ago, on June 25, 1991, the decade of wars in Yugoslavia began. Slovenia and Croatia declared themselves independent, but the fascist-communist president of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic, did not accept the dismemberment of the former dictatorship of Tito, who had died ten years earlier. The conflict with Slovenia was resolved in ten days with a few dozen deaths. The Serbo-Croatian war, on the other hand, lasted four years, involved Bosnia and was extremely bloody: almost one hundred thousand deaths. Finally, in 1999, the Kosovo appendix: to liberate the...
The Origins of the 1953 Balkan Pact
Yugoslavia has always been unique among the satellite countries of the Soviet Union. The Balkan state, unlike the others, immediately tried to find its own determination under the strong pressure of Tito, even competing with Moscow. The Yugoslav model was considered dangerous and even, in some respects, not fully socialist. On the other hand, the Soviets were seen as oppressors. What marked a deep rift between the two countries was Belgrade's refusal to build a federation with Bulgaria. Following numerous warnings issued by Stalin, on 28 June 1948 the Yugoslav Communist Party (PCY) was expelled...
