Fascism in Trieste did not come from nowhere. It grew out of an irredentism that had lost its goal with the Italian occupation, out of the bourgeoisie's fear of the “Bolshevik” and “Slav danger”, and out of the money of Trieste's shipowners, insurers and banks. When Mussolini took power in Rome in October 1922, fascism had already been master of the situation in the Julian March for more than a year.
Fascism had become “the only organised force for the defence of Italianness and of the social order”.
Irredentism without a goal
Before the war the Italian liberal nationalists ruled Trieste thanks to the Austrian electoral system and lived on the slogan of “redemption”. When redemption came in November 1918, they lost their programme. The Fascio nazionale fell apart within weeks; the new liberal party Rinnovamento found no followers. The post-war period favoured the socialists: until mid-1920 the Socialist Party dominated all political life in Trieste.
The nationalists took the initiative. The Trento-Trieste society, led in Trieste by Bruno Coceancig (later Coceani, prefect of Trieste and German collaborator in the Second World War), spread the belief that Slovenes and Croats were “peoples without history”. Alongside it operated the armed unit Sursum corda, with about 500 young men who had been too young for the war and wanted to prove their patriotic zeal on the street. They were backed by the intelligence office of the governorate and by the military commands.
The first attack: August 1919
When carabinieri attacked a procession of workers' children returning from an outing on 3 August 1919, the workers of Trieste went on general strike. Nationalists, the Sursum corda unit, arditi, officers and carabinieri tried to attack the printing works of Il Lavoratore and the workers' hall. When the workers defended them, they attacked the Slovene Narodni dom, the editorial office of Edinost and the Slovene school in Via Acquedotto. The very first attack was both anti-worker and anti-Slovene; that became the rule.
A flame in Trieste
The first Trieste fascio di combattimento was founded on 20 May 1919, at a meeting attended by few. On paper its programme was left-wing: it spoke of “justice and freedom”, of reforms and of votes for women. Its members were mainly immigrants from the Italian interior (regnicoli), demobilised soldiers and some of the city's youth. Fascism got its real momentum from D'Annunzio's march on Rijeka in September 1919. For the first time it united all Italian national currents, from nationalists to republicans; the Trieste fascists adopted D'Annunzio's outstretched-arm salute and the cry “eia, eia, alalà”. Money collected for the legionnaires in Rijeka they spent on their own organisation.
In February 1920 the fascists called the first meeting of all Italian parties in the Teatro Verdi, which demanded that the Treaty of London be carried out. With that they became the leading force of the national bloc. In spring 1920 the lawyer Francesco Giunta came from Florence and led the Trieste fascists in the years that followed. On 12 May 1920 armed squadre were founded in Trieste, among the first in Italy.
Who paid
From the start the movement was backed by Trieste capital. Its supporters included the Cosulich shipbuilding family, the industrialists' association, insurers, banks, forwarding agents and trading houses; the insurance company Assicurazioni Generali provided the fascists with their headquarters. The Trieste Chamber of Commerce expected a strong state to open the way for economic penetration of the Balkans. In October 1920 Gaetano Salvemini accused it of hoping that a new war with Yugoslavia would bring about that state's collapse.
The authorities stand by
General Civil Commissioner Antonio Mosconi followed fascism with open sympathy. In his memoirs he wrote that the authorities and the fascists acted as “two parallel, independent forces” with the same aim. His deputy Crispo Moncada, who stood in for Mosconi during the general strike of September 1920 while Mosconi was on holiday in Cortina d'Ampezzo, became the first fascist prefect of Trieste in 1922. According to Mosconi's report, the Sassari Brigade, which had shelled the barricades at San Giacomo, had almost entirely joined the fascist organisation by October 1920.
Rapallo and the bloody Christmas
The Trieste fascists did not accept the Treaty of Rapallo, because it left Dalmatia to Yugoslavia. When the Italian army drove D'Annunzio out of Rijeka in December 1920, they promised help to the legionnaires but avoided a fight by getting themselves arrested. The historian Claudio Silvestri called it a “tragicomic farce”. But the crisis was brief. In January 1921 Trieste hosted the first regional fascist congress in Italy, addressed by Mussolini. In the elections of May 1921 the national bloc under fascist leadership won eight seats; the Trieste clericals were the only ones in Italy to join it.
In spring 1921 workers' halls and Slovene and Croatian national halls burned, the fascists set fire to the printing works of Delo and Il Lavoratore, and they staged punitive expeditions against Slovene and Croatian villages. Workers and peasants defended themselves locally: in Proština, in Marezige and in Labin, where the miners proclaimed the “Republic of Labin” for a good month.
“If the homeland lives with Signor Giunta, down with the homeland!”
Sources
- Kacin-Wohinz, M. (1972): Primorski Slovenci pod italijansko zasedbo 1918–1921, pp. 130–174, 341–347, 379–382.
- Silvestri, C.: studies on the beginnings of fascism in Trieste (cited in Kacin-Wohinz 1972).
- Mosconi, A. (1924): I primi anni di governo italiano nella Venezia Giulia. Bologna.
- Giunta, F. (1931): Essenza dello squadrismo. Rome.