The article deals with the methodological and epistemological characteristics of Slovenian and Italian historiography, engaged in the study of the history of the Italian-Slovenian border area in the ...19th and 20 centuries; among the findings about these practices are their tendency to keep the debate within the paradigm of national-defence discourse, their being trapped in a practice of asymmetric portrayal of political entities and the tendency to simplify the complex multi-ethnic historical reality of the area. However, the study also brings to light some features of historiographical discontinuity that could, providing a more thorough cross-comparison between different historiographical practices, contribute to rising above this ethno-centric understanding of history.
Autobiographical sources, fragments of memoirs and correspondences, and individual oral narratives, collected in the 1980s, enable a research of female Slovenian refugees from Gorizia and So?a ...region, who found themselves on both sides of the front, in Austrian and Italian context, during the First World War. Individual narratives, although succinct, highlight the centrality of women, mothers or older sisters, from their ability to use and complement state subsidies to becoming interlocutors for the authorities, depending on the place of the transfer. The war loosened social control over women, yet not all benefited from these new spaces of autonomy. The Slovenian intellectuals from Trieste and Gorizia, who during the war became public champions of the suffering of the displaced and refugees, especially of the plight of mothers-refugees, became refugees themselves after the war when the former Litoral region became part of Italy and fascism ascended. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
The increasing radicalization of political life in most countries in Europe lends special relevance to studies of the antifascist legacies on the continent. This insightful collection of essays is an ...in-depth review of antifascism in Slovenia, setting it in the context of related movements elsewhere in Europe. The period treated by the 19 essays comprises the interwar period, World War Two, and the post-war decades. The comparative and transnational perspectives advanced by the volume change our understanding of antifascism. The essays deal with the right-wing but also left-wing instrumentalization of antifascism, with a particular focus on the communist and post-communist periods. The authors point out that antifascism comes in various strains, whether inspired by liberalism, social democracy, communism, monarchism, anarchism, or even Christian conservatism. The contributors bring to light several overlooked antifascist actors, campaigns, and organisations, mostly in Slovenia and the Adriatic area.
ABSTRACT IN ENGLISH: A survey of contents published on the internet has shown that the designation »Italian-Slovene border« or »confine italo sloveno«, together with related designations of both ...sides of the border, is very much present in entrepreneurial and economic relations, whereas the designation of the border indicating only one, »our« side, is prevalent in texts of historiographical provenience and in political journalism. It is already evident from a quick overview of search results that references to the eastern border in Italian texts and references to the western border in Slovenian texts are not only of geographical nature, but they also indicate a politically and nationally connoted nomenclature promulgating one-sided representations of the border. One example of incorrect historical onomastics is analysed as an indication of ethnocentric discourse, in which national affiliation is understood as a synonym of cultural affiliation and a national border as a rigid cultural boundary that also separates the members of one nation from the members of another along cultural lines. From the second half of the 19th century onwards, concealment of plural origin became a national defence mission of historians who devoted themselves to the history of border areas. In the Central European area, to which the northern Adriatic region belongs, the assertion of the autochthonism of one's own nation turned into a historiographical effacement of its neighbours. Amidst competitive relations between nations in the second half of the 19th century, national historical narrative became a political tool in the hands of the national elite and proved to be especially useful in consolidating one's own forces while excluding others. Although the first departures from historiography in the service of national defence already occurred at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Angelo Vivante), the nationally-focused border history continued to prevail both among Italian and Slovenian historians of Venezia Giulia until the 1980s. Its influence is also manifest in the Slovenian-Italian historical reports, which is the result of long-term reconciliation of Italian and Slovenian historians and provides a uniform account of Slovenian-Italian relations. Nevertheless, as crucial as this achievement may be, it should not be exempt from critical scrutiny: with regard to moving beyond the ethnocentric presentation of history, Maria Todorova rightfully claims that historical legacy must be subject to critical evaluation, especially when it imposes a dichotomous understanding of border societies or when it hinders mutual recognition of the other. An accurate determination of an observation point, both in terms of research perspective and level, is - following the explanations of Michael Werner and Bénédicte Zimmermann - one of the key principles of histoire croisée, a historiography that deals with crossing, interchangeable views, and takes the deliberate exchanging and supplementing of observation perspectives as an opportunity for an as much complex understanding of historical events as possible, but also as a departure from »`intellectual' imperialism and strategies of political domination« (Werner, Zimmermann). Discussions published in this issue of Acta Histriae, which vary in their thematic focus and methodological approach, provide a convincing demonstration that alongside the historiography, which aims at strengthening the idea of historical continuity, a historiography concerned with border areas and their pluralities has emerged, a historiography that does not efface multi-faced border identities, and a historiography that incorporates historical writings on the Slovene-Italian border into interdisciplinary studies of border areas or the so-called border studies.
In historical dictionaries, anti-fascism is, as a rule, defined as a political and ideological opposite of fascism. The entry Italian anti-fascism in Dizionario di Storia, which was published by ...Mondadori in 1993, offers a twofold understanding of anti-fascism in the inter-war period. At first, anti-fascism was identified with the resistance of the workers’ movement and left-wing parties—although compromised by uncertainties and inner conflicts—to squad Fascist violence, while after 1922 decisive anti-Fascist attitudes emerged also among members of parliament of the liberal-democratic parties and with the withdrawal of the People’s Party ministers from Mussolini’s government.
In Beyond Revisionism: Rethinking
Članek obravnava prisotnost slovensko govorečega prebivalstva v Trstu v 18. stoletju in v prvi polovici 19. stoletja. S pomočjo mestnih kronik in drugih virov dokumentira rabo slovenščine v tržaških ...cerkvah in osvetljuje značilnosti trgovske kranjske diaspore. Odmiranje starih tradicionalnih vedenjskih vzorcev, ki jih je obvladovala stanovska logika - ta v Trstu v prvi polovici 19. stoletja ni kaj dosti upoštevala ne etničnega izvora ne verske pripadnosti posameznikov -, je šele v drugi polovici 19. stoletja začela nadomeščati logika nasprotujočih si nacionalnih taborov. Prehod od stanovske logike k nacionalno formiranim taborom je bil počasen, saj so se še v drugi polovici 19. stoletja med sabo trlepredmarčne in pomarčne vrednote. Vrednostni sistem stanovske, starorežimske družbe je sobival obporajajočem se nacionalizmu in novih ideologijah, v katerih so seprepoznavale meščanske in delavske elite.
