Cold War Trieste

Preface

The initial inspiration for this book stemmed from a question I sought to answer during my graduate studies, “What happened to Adriatic irredentism?” To address this inquiry, I delved into one of irredentism’s most critical goals: making Trieste Italian. During this exploration, I immersed myself in the history of the multilingual Adriatic city situated on Italy’s eastern border, and my study revealed the intricacies of government-driven identity politics and patriotism in border regions. This subject became pivotal in crafting my dissertation, whose research forms the foundation of this book. Over the course of eight chapters, I recount a political history of Italy’s disputed border with Yugoslavia, Italian nationalist discourse, and the shifting political meaning of Trieste’s Italianità amid the larger Cold War backdrop from 1945 to 1975.

Today, border politics within and outside Europe remain contested, the strength of nationalism as a political creed has reemerged, and the continuing conflict between Russia and Ukraine highlights the role that borderlands play as perpetual centers of conflict or peaceful cohabitation between adjacent communities.

As 2025 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the 1975 Osimo Treaty that officially settled Italy’s eastern border, this book supplements the extensive literature that has increasingly concentrated on this subject since the early 1990s. Through a diverse array of primary sources from Italian and American archives as well as press, diaries, and organizational records, this book narrates a political history of Trieste, a contested border city, and its surroundings, particularly the northern Istrian region between 1945 and 1975. Methodologically, it underscores the contribution of state and non-state entities in shaping Italy’s approach to the disputed border, including émigré and patriotic groups. Therefore, this study challenges traditional state-centered approaches in history. This scrutiny of crucial documents from Italian government bodies such as the Office of the Border Zones also reveals the relevance of an issue often considered insignificant in Italian and Cold War politics post-1954: the year Trieste returned to Italian rule. Moreover, the book’s study of local, national, and international records reaffirms the importance of the Triestine territory as a contentious sociopolitical space that witnessed both Cold War containment and détente, and it ultimately fills a lacuna in historical studies. It highlights the intricacy of power dynamics between the central government, its local extensions, political parties, and an array of entities and associations whose views and interests revealed the endurance of Italian nationalism after World War II and the complexity of the Cold War’s evolving logic. Ultimately, it illustrates how changes to border policy and the representation of the border’s Italianità diminished local loyalty toward the nation-state and enabled the resurgence of both political localism and autonomist desires.

In investigating the sociopolitical complexities and multi-faceted nuances of the Triestine case, this book also highlights the significance of tragic events such as the foibe within the public debate that accompanied the resolution of the border dispute. It also demonstrates how these events ultimately contributed to the broader understanding of the politics of memory in Cold War Italy. Over the years, these themes, alongside my personal experiences, have deepened my fascination with this disputed border region and its transformation from a barrier into a bridge during the Cold War. Having grown up in Trento, a northern Italian city situated about 40 miles from the German-speaking South Tyrol region, I have always been captivated by the concept of otherness, and I have frequently been exposed to the narrative of being Italian in contrast to the “German” neighbor. Hence, through the pages of this book, I embarked on a personal journey into the conceptual portrayal of a borderland community where state-led politics of identity expose the risks linked to utilizing ethnic and ideological factors to reclaim contested lands. I hope that readers, too, will not only gain a deeper understanding of these complex issues but also reflect on the broader implications that the politics of identity hold for their future.

Fabio Capano

February 2026

Acknowledgements

It seems nearly impossible to even attempt to identify all of the support I have received over the years. Here I can only begin to express the gratitude that I owe to the many wonderful people that I have met during my studies as a graduate student at West Virginia University, during my archival research in and outside the United States, and through my academic and professional career in the Washington DC area.

I owe a great debt of gratitude to Peter Lang and Dr. Laurel Plapp, Senior Acquisitions Editor, for her confidence in this project and for offering me the opportunity to share this work with readers. I would like to extend a special thanks to Dr. Katia Pizzi, Editor of Peter Lang’s Cultural Memories series, for her support and insightful guidance throughout the book proposal and publishing process. I also cannot express my gratitude enough to Dr. Tobias Greiff for his continuous support and friendship over the years, especially when serving as a Visiting Scholar-Practitioner at the College of Professional Studies at George Washington University. Access to the Gelman Library and its resources was especially critical in reviewing the most recent scholarship on the subject and the timely completion of this book.

I would also like to thank my mentors who have trained me as a historian: Dr. Joshua Arthurs and Dr. Robert Blobaum. Their remarkable suggestions and expertise were invaluable over the course of my graduate research and writing process, which laid the foundation for this book. I also owe enormous thanks to the other members of this Dissertation Committee. Dr. James Siekmeier’s expertise in the Cold War and Dr. Antonio Varsori’s vast knowledge of post-war Italy in international politics were critical in researching the topic. Finally, I would like to honor Dr. Katherine Aaslestad, who was not only a member of my committee but also an incredibly influential mentor during my graduate studies. Dr. Aaslestad helped me gain a deeper understanding of Trieste’s historical trajectory, and her personal and scholarly legacy continues to this day.

I am especially grateful to the scholars, colleagues, and peers with whom I have shared rich discussions. From my undergraduate years at the University of Trento to the writing of my manuscript, Dr. Mark Gilbert has represented a continuous source of inspiration and constant support to my interest in history. I must also share my sincere gratitude to Raoul Pupo, Roberto Spazzali, Anna Millo, Massimo Bucarelli, Diego D’Amelio, Maura Hametz, Borut Klabjan, Federico Tenca Montini, Giuseppe Parlato, Andrew Demshuk, and Mirjana Morosini, all of whom have expanded my understanding of the Adriatic region. In Trieste, I owe a special thanks to Ravel Kodric for his input on Triestine politics and former Christian Democrat Giorgio Tombesi for granting me access to his private papers as well as his time for an interview.

I would also like to acknowledge the personnel at numerous libraries and archives, especially the staff of the Library of Congress and the National Archives in Maryland. I also would like to sincerely thank the staff of the State Archives in Rome as well as the State and Municipal Archives in Trieste. In Rome, I especially would like to express my sincere appreciation to the personnel of the Office of the Border Zones and its archivist, Dr. Stefania Mariotti, the Historical Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Gramsci Institute, the Luigi Sturzo Institute, the National Association Venetia Julia and Dalmatia and his secretary Fabio Rocchi, the Ugo Spirito Foundation, the Nenni Foundation, the Historical Archives of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, the Italian Army Archive, and the National Library in Rome. In Trieste, I would like to thank the personnel of the Archive of the Local Dioceses and the Coloni family for granting me access to Sergio Coloni’s papers. I also would like to thank the personnel and archivists of the Attilio Hortis Library, Enrico Neami and the Istrian Union, the National League, the Regional Institute for the Istrian, Fiuman, and Dalmatian Culture, the Institute for the History of the Liberation Movement in the Friuli Venetian Region and its librarian, Fulvia Benolich. In Trento, I would like to give special thanks to the personnel of the History Museum Foundation.

Finally, I must acknowledge my family and friends for their continual support and encouragement. My parents deserve special recognition. Even though my studies have taken me far away from our home in Northern Italy, my parents, Gregorino Capano and Carla Tasin, have always encouraged me to pursue my passions and have taught me the true value of hard work. The one debt, however, that I must acknowledge beyond all others is to my wife, Danielle, whose unwavering love, patience, and support have been a constant source of strength. To my children, Rocco, Marissa, and Lucia, your joy, laughter, and boundless energy have been a reminder of what truly matters in life. This book is as much yours as it is mine.

Abbreviations

A.M.G. Allied Military Government

A.M.I. Associazione Mazziniana Italiana (Italian Mazzinian Association)

A.N.I.I. Associazione Nazionale Italia Irredenta (National Italian Irredentist Association)

A.N.V.G.D. Associazione Nazionale Venezia Giulia e Dalmazia (National Association Venetia Julia and Dalmatia)

C.I.P.E. Comitato Interministeriale Programmazione Economica (Interministerial Committee for Economic Planning)

C.L.N. Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale (National Liberation Committee)

C.N.C. Centro Nazionale di Coordinamento per la Difesa Zona B e Istria (National Center for the Coordination of the Defense of Zone B and Istria)

C.S.C.E. Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe

D.C. Democrazia Cristiana (Christian Democratic Party)

E.D.C. European Defense Community

F.T.T. Free Territory of Trieste

G.C.G.T.T. General Italian Government for the Territory of Trieste

L.P.T. Lista per Trieste (List for Trieste)

M.S.I. Movimento Sociale Italiano (Italian Social Movement)

N.A.T.O. North Atlantic Treaty Organization

P.C.I. Partito Comunista Italiano (Italian Communist Party)

U.A.I.S. Unione Antifascists Italo Slava (Slavic-Italian Anti-Fascist Union)

U.A.R. Ufficio Affari Riservati (The Office of Confidential Affairs)

U.N. United Nations

U.Z.C. Ufficio Zone di Confine (Office of the Border Zones)

Introduction

“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.”¹ With these words Winston Churchill signaled the beginning of what became known as the Cold War.² By 1946, Trieste/Trst/Triest, one of the Habsburg Empire’s principal port cities of the nineteenth century, had become a pivotal geopolitical center at the southern tip of the divide between the Western and Eastern blocs.³ Even though historians have since unveiled the porosity of the Iron Curtain, public discourse in post-war Italy depicted Trieste as the ultimate Italian city and a bastion against Soviet communism.

Indeed, when Italian President Giuseppe Saragat visited Trieste to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the armistice ending World War I in November 1968, the event was locally celebrated with a 55-page edition of the Triestine newspaper Il Piccolo and a mass demonstration of 80,000 veterans.⁴ In his public speech, Saragat portrayed World War I as “the last war of national Risorgimento.”⁵ Saragat stressed that in 1918, the image of the Italian soldiers entering Trieste became “the symbol of Italian national unification.”⁶ The Italian president’s speech reaffirmed Trieste’s distinctive role within national political discourse and portrayed the city’s incorporation within national borders as the fulfillment of Italian irredentist aspirations in the Adriatic.

At the time of his speech, these ambitions had been deeply challenged by events that followed World War II. Indeed, after 1945, Trieste and northern Istria became symbols of a shattered nation and objects of an international dispute known as the Trieste question.⁷ In 1954, the London Memorandum (Memorandum of Understanding) ended the provisional Allied and Yugoslav military occupation of Zones A and B of the Territorio Libero di Trieste [Free Territory of Trieste, hereafter F.T.T.], a planned entity that was never established.⁸ At this time, Zone A and the city of Trieste returned to Italian administration while Zone B of the F.T.T. (northern Istria) remained under Yugoslav administration. Due to the provisional nature of the agreement, the eastern Italian border remained an unsettled issue for two decades until a solution was finally found with the Osimo Treaty in 1975.⁹ This bilateral treaty established the definitive state border between Italy and Yugoslavia and ended the Trieste question almost 30 years after the Paris Peace Treaty of 1947.¹⁰

Nonetheless, the Trieste question was used by a wide network of Italian political actors to reassert territorial sovereignty over Italy’s northeastern border and shape public perceptions of Italian nationhood or Italianità [Italianess] in the twentieth century. In drawing on Sabina Donati’s interpretation of Italianità as “the collective phenomenon of national belonging, sometimes distinguishable from, more often blurred with, other identities of the self,” this book suggests that Italianità can be best understood as a dynamic rather than a static territorial or cultural expression of national identity.¹¹ Author Borut Klabjan explains this fluid sense of belonging and identification through his study of memory landscape.¹² Likewise, Katia Pizzi has investigated Trieste’s elusive identity via the city’s memorialization in Cold War movies, brilliantly unveiling the laminar nature of an urban space in which the national dimension regularly confronted the transnational dimension to define its glocal.¹³ Similarly, this book investigates the polyglot city and its territory’s projected identity during the border dispute by examining public discourse and political responses to the state’s changing patriotic rhetoric in post-war Italy. As Manlio Graziano suggests, borders are areas of perpetual contact and “one of many political objects; they are multidimensional and multifunctional in nature, and their political, legal, social, moral, and even psychological footprint changes in time and in space.¹⁴ In the late nineteenth century, Trieste and its surroundings became zones of disputed territorial sovereignty and political conflict among people, norms, and ideologies; over time, the symbolism of each of these elements changed, helping shape the fluid ideas of Italian nationhood that hardly fit within notions of “imagined communities.”¹⁵

In building upon Pizzi’s extensive work on Trieste, this book explores whether evolving meanings of ideas of nationhood aligned with the polarizations of the Cold War, a geopolitical context that ultimately influenced the city’s memory landscape in and outside Trieste.¹⁶ Thus, the Triestine case not only becomes an invaluable window into the constructed meaning of ideas of nationhood or Italianità in post-war Italy but, more broadly, it also offers powerful insight into the political use and memorialization of contested, non-militarized, and peripheral borderlands in Cold War Europe.¹⁷ In telling a political history of Italian nationhood in Cold War Italy, this book demonstrates that the Italian government utilized the alleged Italian identity of Trieste and its surrounding areas to further a nationalist agenda and reassert territorial sovereignty over the northern Adriatic region during the favorable context of the early Cold War years until 1954. Afterwards, it publicly reframed the border’s image from being a stronghold of Italianess and Western democracy into a bridge toward the socialist world, a political process that influenced new localized meanings of Italian nationhood and generated either nationalist or pro-independence sentiments among Triestines.

This book is chronologically organized into eight chapters. The first chapter begins by briefly tracing the evolution of Trieste’s Italian identity from Adriatic irredentism to the immediate post- World War II years. It focuses on the diplomatic, sociopolitical, and ethno-ideological aspects of the border dispute at the southeastern edge of the Iron Curtain, which was portrayed as a clash between both Italian and Slav civilizations and democracy and communism. The chapter shows that, building on ideas of Italian irredentism, nationalist rhetoric continued to significantly influence the views of the Republic’s new governing elite who opposed both communist and independent political solutions to the territorial dispute and strived to reassert Italian rule over the F.T.T. The views of the Italian government in the immediate post-war years largely mirrored those of the Italian community in and outside Trieste, revealing the legacy of nationalism as a political ideology in Cold War Italy after two decades of fascist rhetoric within the Italian public. The chapter concludes by analyzing the impact of the 1948 Tito–Stalin rift on the Trieste question and its legacy on the city’s prolonged politicization.

Chapter 2 investigates the Allies’ changing strategy toward both Italian and Yugoslav territorial claims of the contested border. In studying this issue, it proposes a reconceptualization of Cold War politics in the Adriatic that underscores both resistance and compliance to the bipolar logic for junior partners such as Italy and Yugoslavia.¹⁸ Thus, it investigates Italy’s resistance to Washington’s dictated partition of the contested border and the adventurist strategy of its Christian Democratic–led coalition government that, in an eruption of nationalism, facilitated the explosion of the right-wing violence that crossed Trieste in 1953. It also narrates the political process that led the Italian government and its Yugoslav counterpart to reluctantly accept the terms of the London Memorandum of 1954 after years of diplomatic negotiations, Allied military government, state-led nationalist propaganda, and political violence.

Chapter 3 examines Trieste’s complex transition from an Allied to an Italian administration in the mid-1950s and its impact on local ideas of Italian nationhood. Although the transition was initially welcomed with mass celebrations, popular enthusiasm dwindled over time. Rome’s failed attempt to relaunch the economy of Trieste significantly weakened popular confidence in the central government and increasingly debilitated its rhetoric of political patriotism and economic modernization. While discussing how this process facilitated the return of past sentiments of municipalism in the city, this chapter ultimately offers a glance into the complex relationship between rulers and ruled in post-war Italy. Finally, it demonstrates how the economic marginalization of the Triestine territory and the alteration of its border significantly disrupted popular and political loyalty toward its central authorities.

Chapter 4 further discusses the narrative of regime change in Cold War Trieste after the 1954 London Memorandum and examines the city’s symbolic transformation from a wall into a bridge toward the Socialist world through the lenses of the Istrian diaspora.¹⁹ Although massive Istrian migration from Zone B had been used by Rome to advance Italian claims toward the contested border in the immediate post-war years, the London Agreement inaugurated a new political season in Italian–Yugoslav relations. Differently from the former government’s confrontational approach, it now demanded accommodation and cooperation with Tito’s regime. Within this new political framework, the irredentist hopes of the Istrian émigrés toward Zone B and their pressing demands for the defense of their cultural and linguistic rights under Yugoslav administration were increasingly perceived by Rome as a needless source of tension with Tito’s regime. Thus, while the Istrian diaspora became a source of contempt within the new Italian policy of amicizia adriatica [Adriatic friendship], it also exposed the complexity of the state’s responses to mass immigration and, above all, its lasting impact on both lives of the émigrés and their trust toward state institutions.

Chapter 5 investigates Trieste’s evolving political landscape and geopolitics through the lenses of the complex relationship between the political experiment of the center-left coalition government and Trieste’s political reality.²⁰ At this time, the central government had definitively abandoned any residual irredentist ambitions toward Zone B in favor of a more progressive and conciliatory policy that aimed to gradually recognize Yugoslav territorial sovereignty of northern Istria. Contrary to the aggressive sentiments that pervaded significant fringes of the local public in Trieste, the Christian Democratic–led coalition government and the Socialist Party fully embraced the idea of international negotiations to resolve the border dispute with Yugoslavia. In this context, the appointment of a Slovene representative with a Titoist past within the local council of Trieste spurred ethno-political violence, underscoring the enduring strength of nationalism and anti-Slovene attitudes within the local Italian community.

Chapter 6 further discusses the interdependencies between economics and politics of identity by suggesting that the government’s failed plan to restore the competitiveness of Trieste’s port decisively undermined local dreams of economic prosperity and significantly boosted popular animosity among Triestines in the 1960s. While most of the country was enjoying the benefits of the so-called Italian Miracle, Trieste struggled economically and socially, proving that it hadn’t truly recovered from its war experience. Thus, in October 1966, after the decision was made to give priority to Genoa’s shipbuilding industry over Trieste by the Interministerial Committee for Economic Planning (C.I.P.E.), pre-existing political distrust and political animosity manifested in a series of mass strikes and protests throughout the city. Local social unrest ultimately deepened the fracture between the post-war Republic and the city, anticipating the rise of regionalist movements in Italian politics. Viewing the protests as a mirror of the latent tension between Rome and Trieste, this chapter provides useful insight into the complex relationship between local politics and the government-sponsored rhetoric of Italian nationhood.

Chapter 7 examines the role of international politics in accelerating Italy’s definitive recognition of Yugoslav sovereignty of northern Istria. It analyzes the political legacy of the Prague Spring to demonstrate how widespread fear of Moscow’s aggressiveness transformed Tito’s regime into an invaluable buffer between the Adriatic border and the Soviet bloc. Furthermore, it investigates the Italian–Yugoslav diplomatic negotiations over the border dispute within the broader context of political relaxation in East–West relations. Although both factors played a pivotal role in making any change to the 1954 configuration of the Adriatic border politically unfeasible, this chapter also emphasizes the increasing discrepancy between the views of the Christian Democratic–led coalition government and those of significant segments of the Triestine community, which strenuously resisted Adriatic détente. Within national public opinion, the border dispute had become a marginal issue; however, as the chapter demonstrates, the political costs of renouncing Italy’s formal sovereignty over Zone B remained significant inside Trieste.

Finally, the last chapter analyzes the impact of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe on the resolution of the territorial dispute and highlights the residual resistance to its resolution, particularly among the Istrian émigrés. It also discusses the central government’s decision to conduct secret negotiations with the Yugoslav government and shows that the agreement leading to the Osimo Treaty was facilitated by a set of international and domestic political factors. While shedding light on the diplomatic context that led to the final settlement, this chapter focuses on the unpredictable sociopolitical backlash that the economic terms of the Osimo Treaty and years of governmental rhetoric sparked in Trieste and its surrounding areas. Within this context, the local protest movement Lista per Trieste [List for Trieste, L.P.T.] became the first political party to defeat the Christian Democratic Party in municipal elections in post-war Italy. Its electoral success came to symbolize the victory of political populism and heightened local criticism against what was locally depicted as a corrupt, indifferent, and inefficient central government. This local reading of Roman politics exposed the weakness of the coalition government’s patriotic rhetoric for Trieste and revealed the complex relationship between the city’s heterogeneous geopolitical past and its projected Italianess.

In studying the transforming meaning of Italian nationhood through the lenses of the northern Adriatic dispute, this book explores three main themes: state-led politics of identity in Cold War borderland, the resilience of nationalist sentiments in post-war Italy, and political responses to regime change in Cold War Italy. First, in drawing on recent approaches that have shifted the focus from the diplomatic toward the social, political, and cultural dimension of the conflict, this book highlights the influential role that Cold War ideology played in shaping both local and national views of the Yugoslav neighbor.²¹ Although scholars have extensively studied the Trieste question as an issue of Cold War diplomacy, only a few have examined its long-term significance and political implications for Italy, especially after 1954. As Sabina Mihelj demonstrates, Italians in Trieste effectively thought of those living across the demarcation line as uncivilized, atheist, and “Slavo-Communists.”²² This stereotype, which recalled past views of a “civilized” Western Europe and barbaric Eastern Europe, strongly affected the representation of the “Slav” in and outside the border city of Trieste. Through the book, I emphasize how this Cold War mapping reinforced both nationalist claims of Italianità and the symbolic representation of Italy’s northeastern border as a bulwark against Yugoslav communism. As a result, it fueled political antagonism toward Tito’s Yugoslavia and hindered the process of Adriatic friendship.