Between Paris and Rome

The border that divided Slovene territory was decided in Paris, London, Rome and Belgrade. The Slovenes of the Littoral followed events from afar: through letters sent from Paris by their compatriot in the Yugoslav delegation, and through rare journeys to Rome and San Remo.

A voice from Paris

Dr Otokar Rybář, former chairman of the Trieste National Council, was a member of the Yugoslav delegation at the peace conference. He wrote regularly to Josip Vilfan, who had taken over the leadership of the Slovene nationalists at home. His letters, preserved in Vilfan's papers, offer a unique view from inside. As early as spring 1919 he reported that the French supported the Italians because of the Rhineland, that the Czechs were harming the Yugoslav cause and that “nobody knows that Kobarid is Slovene”, because Italian propaganda drowned out everything else. He advised the people of the Littoral not to prepare “for the worst”, since that would show that Yugoslavia was ready to give way.

In April 1919 President Wilson proposed a compromise line from the Karavanke over Nanos and Učka to the river Raša. Rybář wrote that the fate of the Littoral was sealed: “We demanded a plebiscite, but they do not answer us, they do not even hear us; it is worse than Brest-Litovsk.” He asked the people of Trieste to send complaints and material on the violence of the occupying authorities.

What could be done at home

In Ljubljana the Office for the Occupied Territory collected reports from the Littoral, sent them to the delegation in Paris and the government in Belgrade, and cared for refugees. It had a network of trusted agents and couriers who carried mail across the demarcation line. Realising that the conference would not settle the question in Yugoslavia's favour, politicians of the Littoral met in Trieste on 3 August 1919 and merged all Slovene parties into a single political society, Edinost, chaired by Josip Vilfan.

In summer 1919 Rybář reported that all the memoranda on violence had been to no avail: “Unfortunately nothing can be done here … Our position towards Italy would be splendid if we had at least three divisions along the Italian border.” In August he admitted that the Wilson line, which would give the Gorizia region and the Vipava valley to Italy, was “immovable”.

The ultimatum of January 1920

Since Italy and Yugoslavia could not agree, Britain and France presented Yugoslavia with an ultimatum on 14 January 1920: accept the Wilson line and a free Rijeka with a territorial link to Italy, or the Treaty of London would be enforced. Yugoslavia rejected the ultimatum, and Wilson condemned it. Rybář then put down a bitter insight: “With his Fourteen Points, in which the Slovenes believed as in the Gospel, Wilson did us almost more harm than the Italians with their pretences, because he convinced our people that no effort was needed.”

He also drew attention to a pamphlet by two Italian diplomats, G. A. Borgese and G. Paterno, written as early as 1917. It showed that the Yugoslav Committee had been ready to give way on territorial demands in order to achieve the union of the South Slavs in one state. “Our Littoral was lost before we ever came to Paris,” Rybář concluded.

“And our innocents thought that an age of justice and freedom would now begin.” Otokar Rybář, February 1920 · after Kacin-Wohinz 1972, p. 291

San Remo: a demand for a plebiscite

In April 1920 the Allied prime ministers met in San Remo. The Italian parties of Trieste sent an “Adriatic mission” there with a memorandum meant to be a kind of plebiscite of the population. Edinost pointed out that only 59 of the 650 municipalities of the Julian March had signed it, and even these were run by commissioners appointed by the occupying authorities.

Edinost sent its own delegation to San Remo: Josip Vilfan, Karel Podgornik and Ulikse Stanger for the Istrian Croats. On 26 April they handed the Italian prime minister Nitti, who chaired the conference, a letter demanding that the population be called upon “to decide its political fate by a regular plebiscite”. They delivered it at the Villa Devachon while the conference was in session. It was the first and only direct appeal of Slovenes and Croats from the occupied territory to the peace conference. No answer came.

“The competent factors”

When Vilfan was invited to talks in Rome in January 1920, Rybář advised him not to go: negotiations had to be conducted by “the competent factors”. In September 1920 a delegation of Edinost visited Prime Minister Giolitti for the first time, but it did not speak about the border; it asked only for justice for a national minority. The Ljubljana office assured Foreign Minister Trumbić that the delegation had done nothing to prejudice “our cause”.

The author concludes that from the start the people of the Littoral were merely an object of negotiation, not only for the great powers but also for their own delegation and government. This subordination later grew into the deep attachment of the Littoral's population to “Mother Yugoslavia”, which seemed to them the only salvation.

Sources

• Kacin-Wohinz, M. (1972): Primorski Slovenci pod italijansko zasedbo 1918–1921, pp. 212–232, 287–296.
• Historical Archives Ljubljana: papers of Dr Josip Vilfan (correspondence with O. Rybář).
• Krizman, B., Hrabak, B. (1960): Zapisnici sa sednica Delegacije Kraljevine SHS na Mirovnoj konferenci u Parizu 1919–1920. Belgrade.