14 - G. E. R. Geyde, "Reflections on Trieste" (1946)

G. E. R. Geyde, “Reflections in Trieste”, The Nation, October 5, 1946

Trieste, September 18. The immediate reaction of anyone emerging for a time from the gray monotony of partitioned, grim, and hungry Austria into the material comforts of Trieste is that of a schoolboy on holiday. The shop windows are full of good things—at high prices—purchasable without ration cards; the restaurants are as good as were pre-war restaurants in a town of this size anywhere. Coming from a country without one open restaurant or a shop selling anything which anybody could conceivably make use of, one deliberately shuts one’s eyes to realities and relaxes for twenty-four hours.

Few people capable of rational thought could stay in Trieste much longer without discomfort. For here in this narrow territory of Venezia Giulia one is presented with a concentrated sample of the bitter fruits of our victory over fascism. Nowhere is the naked reality of power politics more shamelessly revealed; nowhere does propaganda more openly distort day-to-day developments to give a picture far removed from reality. The strident insistence of the propagandists has apparently succeeded in convincing the masses of the population that the issue is one of racial self-determination as between Slav and Latin. In reality, of course, the issue is whether the magnificent harbor of Trieste is for the first time in history to fall under “Eastern” instead of “Western” control. Ultimately the decision will vitally affect the future set-up in the Central European states. For as Mussolini conclusively proved, he who holds Trieste can bring irresistible economic pressure to bear on the political development of these states, especially Austria and Hungary, whose ability to import and export depends on Trieste and their communications with it. Hence the lavish, cynical, and unscrupulous efforts of the propagandists; hence also the unreality of “Western”-controlled A. M. G.’s efforts to maintain full impartiality between Latin and Slav. By its very constitution A. M. G. is bound to favor some form of Latin solution—or at least to prevent a solution which would give the East a stranglehold on Central Europe.

The issue of East versus West has long swamped the racial divisions. I have seen dozens of large-scale pro-Tito demonstrations where the Italian Communists shouts of “Vogliamo Tito!” completely drowned the Slovene Communist cries of “Zhivel Tito!” Many local Slovenes, on the other hand, as well as refugees from Tito’s Yugoslavia—among them, of course, reactionaries, but also many who are simply non-Communists—are working eagerly for any solution other than the incorporation of Trieste in Communist Yugoslavia. In the mountainous, unfertile region which makes up Venezia Giulia, the population is almost entirely Slovene. Hence the colored maps supplied by the Tito propagandists are based on space—and are able to prove conclusively that nearly the whole area of Venezia Giulia is Slovene. But this hinterland is very sparsely populated; the crowded town and ports are almost all Italian. Hence the maps supplied by Colonel Fonda and his pro-Italy propagandists of the anti-fascist Italian resistance movement are based on population—and show great blobs of Italian color. Neither suggests the existence of a quiet, nonpolitical “man in the street” who, irrespective of race, remembers only that life for him, or for his father, was more peaceful, and money made more easily, when Trieste fulfilled its natural function as the port serving the central and southeastern areas of the extinct Austro-Hungarian monarchy. These are the people who stand—but not very vociferously—behind the “Free State of Venezia Giulia.”

There can be no question that the Slovenes, flushed with victory and revolutionary fervor, are the more aggressive. The Italians are for the most part depressed by defeat and anxious about the future, though of late they also have turned to violent methods. One cannot forget that it was Tito who announced on March 26 last that he would “resist with full energy” any unfavorable findings of the Boundary Commission, or overlook the continuous Slovene incitements against the A. M. G. and the recent shooting down of American planes which had inadvertently crossed the boundary line. I was at the American frontier post just outside Gorizia a fortnight ago when the commander of the Yugoslav air force unit which had shot down these planes arrived to hand over the victims’ remains to General Moore, commanding American troops in Venezia Giulia. Accompanying the remains was Ambassador Paterson from Belgrade. While the ceremony of handing over took place, a member of Mr. Patterson’s party told me that they had been five hours on the way from Ljubljana—a journey taking normally little over one hour—because the Yugoslavs had insisted on going round by side roads so that their military preparations would not be seen. What, asked the Americans, are the military preparations which Tito is making on Venezia Giulia’s frontiers, and why are they so secret as to necessitate shooting down American planes?

The local press is useless as a guide to realities. According to the Communist and pro-Tito press, everyone, whether Italian or Slovene by race, who does not believe that this territory should be handed over to Tito or will not sign on the dotted line to this effect is a “fascist.” The pro-Italian press is less stultifying to read, but in its columns no Communist can be anything but a traitor. For the Titoists, A. M. G. is, of course, a neofascist administration; curiously enough they do not see anything incongruous in the fact that a neofascist administration allows them to make this accusations.

The Communist charge that A. M. G. is pro-fascist is worth serious examination, if only because it can be found repeated in the “party line” wherever Britain or America plays a role in the administration of occupied territory. At first sight it is just silly. In Zone A of Venezia Giulia the pro-Tito Communist Party—it entitles itself the Italo-Slovene Anti-Fascist Front—has a gigantic party apparatus, functioning quite openly, and an extremely violent press. At the moment the “war of nerves” takes the form of constant street demonstrations demanding the cancelation of warrants for the arrests of the leaders of the recent illegal—because purely political—general strike, who are now sitting comfortably in the Tito-governed Zone B. Nevertheless, A. M. G.’s scales are weighted against the “Yugo-Communists.” Two months ago the Communists violently broke up the “all-Italy” bicycle race when it reached Trieste, and fired on the police. That same night Italian mobs in revenge wrecked sixteen Yugo-Communist centers. The impartial, British-trained V. G. police, largely Italian, looked on—so the approachable and very reasonable new Communist leader in Trieste, Babtich, told me. When I tackled A. M. G. about it, they admitted that the V. G. police had shown a deplorable “lack of courage.”

What is the situation in Zone B, the part of the formerly Italian territory of Venezia Giulia occupied solely by Tito’s troops? There Tito’s Communists enjoy a totalitarian monopoly of political agitation. I imagine not even Il Lavoratore, the leading Trieste Communist paper, would maintain that any Italian, let alone a Slovene, in this area could allow it to be known that he opposed incorporation in Yugoslavia and remain at liberty for twenty-four hours. For Anglo-American personnel Zone B is forbidden territory, and to the best of my knowledge, only one correspondent has ever been given free access to it. When this correspondent made statements unfavorable to Yugoslavia in his reports, he was requested to leave the country.

However, the indisputable fact that the democratic forms of free political agitation, discussion, and demonstration are liberally accorded in Zone A while a full totalitarian and one-party system operates in Zone B should not deter one from examining further the Communist allegations of reactionary tendencies in the A. M. G. The question is one which arises in all occupied areas. Perhaps we must expect the men we have put at the head of our administrations in these areas to sympathize with the possessing rather than the property-less classes, with the educated—or semi-educated—middle-classes rather than the workers, with the people belonging to a milieu like their own rather than a hitherto submerged stratum now rising with volcanic energy to the surface. With more or less distaste, these conservative officials are trying to face up to a strange new world. They trust it will not last too long: they hope against hope that some day the working masses—decent fellows enough if they do not get ideas into their heads—will duly return to their proper stations. Meanwhile the only thing to do is to keep them unobtrusively in check. And the best way to do this in their eyes is to give discreet support to their opponents.

Since Soviet Russia is working to push its frontiers to Trieste by exploiting pan-Slavism among the Slavs and extremist anti-fascism among the Italian workers, it must be countered by supporting Italians who, let us say, are at least not anti-fascist fanatics. Naturally the other side exaggerates this into “pro-fascism” on the part of the A. M. G. It is not—but there is an inevitable tendency to rely on Italian chauvinism to fight chauvinist pan-Slavism. In Trieste the process has become a vicious circle. Socialist workers who refuse to become the tools of Russian expansion are beaten up by Italo-Slovene Communist “action squads.” They are avenged by Italian squadristi, whose methods closely resemble those of the Black Shirts. Anglo-American administrators, finding the staunchest opponents of Slav aggression in such circles, duly punish their excesses, but with feelings of regret which are certainly absent when they pass sentence on Communist rioters.

For the British, one way of breaking this vicious circle is to appoint men of Socialist convictions to leading posts in the diplomatic service and in those bodies which are administering occupied territories. Too often men who were not merely faithful exponents of the foreign policy of Conservative Britain but personal enthusiasts for the appeasement of Nazism have returned to Europe as servants of the Labor Government. Britain needs to send abroad men who believe in the ideals for which a Socialist Britain must stand and who know that their only real allies are to be found in the Continental Socialist parties. I shall not go into the American system of political appointees, which too often results in some successful businessman or lawyer being “managed” the whole time that he is en poste by his career counselor or first secretary.

Immediate developments in Venezia Giulia are likely to be on the following lines. Despite loud protests from each, both Italy and Yugoslavia seem now to have accepted the principle of a “Free Territory” of Trieste. Yugoslavia, of course, would never seriously oppose any scheme in which Russia had concurred, as Russia did in this case. Yugoslavia and Italy, well-informed local observers believe, are discussing very privately today the exchange of Gorizia (proposed for Italy, with the Yugoslav frontier running almost through its suburbs) for Pola and the Istrian littoral (proposed for Yugoslavia). Over the Monfalcone shipyards (proposed for Italy) there may be shortly more trouble. Although only 10 per cent of the workers there are Slovene, 80 per cent have been in the Slovene-Communist-dominated Syndicato Unico (sic) since the terrific Communist drive against workers who belonged to the pro-Italian Camera di Lavoro.

Some Allied observers are convinced that Russia has tipped off Yugoslavia to abate its intransigence over the whole Trieste question. The reason, they believe, is Russia’s desire to placate the Communists in Italy, who, unlike the Slovene-controlled Italian Communists in Venezia Giulia, are getting more and more restive over the Slovene attitude. These observers believe that Russia is assuring Yugoslavia that all its aspirations, respecting not only Monfalcone but Trieste itself, will be realized anyway with two or three years. I certainly have met nobody in any camp prepared to bet on a longer duration of any “settlement” of the Trieste problem on which the Peace Conference is likely to agree. There is, of course, only one sensible and ideal solution. That is to incorporate Venezia Giulia in an economic group of three politically independent and democratic states—Austria, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia—and to have this group enter into special relations concerning Trieste with both Italy and Yugoslavia. Not one of the implied precedent conditions for this, the only desirable and durable solution, exists today. All that can be hoped for under actual conditions is that East and West will devise a temporary compromise in the shape of a new and more precarious Danzig, to which East will at least concede those “corridor” rights which at the moment it still refuses.