47/2 - Qualestoria. Rivista di storia contemporanea. XLVII, N.ro 2, Dicembre 2019

The goal of this work is to analyze nationalist and Neo-fascist organizations established in the territory of Friuli and Venezia-Giulia in the immediate postwar period. These associations, that mainly gathered together former soldier but also common citizens, aimed to defend and legitimate the Italian rights over Friuli Venezia-Giulia region that was still under the Allied control and whose future was uncertain. Among these groups, was not uncommon the presence of ambiguous organizations set up by former members of the Fascist regime formations. Most of these groups acted on their own initiative, but some of them, like the Osoppo Association, were directly linked to the Italian institutions. Therefore, this research pursues the goal of analyzing the protagonists, the organization and propaganda strategies carried out by the different players that were operating in the Italian Eastern border area during the complicated period that followed the Liberation and ended with the Peace Treaty.

Once the diplomatic battle for Gorizia/Gorica was lost in the aftermath of World War II, the new communist authorities in Belgrade hastily decided in 1946 to build the «Ersatz» administrative, economic and cultural center of the Slovenian-populated region of northern Littoral (severna Primorska). Adopting principles of Western pre-war modern-ist urbanism (Le Corbusier’s The Athens Charter), Nova Gorica, as the nascent town was called, intended to become an ideal environment for the «new working man», a showpiece of socialism vis-à-vis «crumbling» capitalist landscape on the other side of the newly settled border, conveying also the message of anti-fascism and national lib-eration struggle. However, after Tito’s split with Moscow when new conflicts erupted along Yugoslavian eastern borders, the erection of the «lighthouse» of socialism on the western border became a task of secondary importance for the authorities in Ljubljana and even less in Belgrade. Using materials from archives in Nova Gorica, Ljubljana, and Belgrade, this article sheds light on the relationship between the authorities at local and republican level concerning this prominent project. It shows how the authoritative decision about radical modernization was imposed by the top communist decision-makers in close collaboration with the architects, who considered themselves the teachers of the new way of life. Eventually, this millenarian mission failed in a couple of years, leaving further development of the new urban center of the border region to the initiative of local political and economic elites, which shaped the town.

Sport was one of the battlefields of the political and ideological conflicts that marked life in Trieste and the «Area A» of TLT, not only in relation to football and cycling but also in less popular disciplines. Starting to the recent works of Archambault, Sbetti and Zanetti Lorenzetti, this paper aims to deepen, in the broader context of the revival of Italian sport post-WWII, the reconstruction and conflicts of Trieste sport. In particular the focus is on Sports institutions (sometimes in a sutonomic and coordinated manner and some-times in a conflictual way): they have played an active role in defending of Italianness. To complete this paper, the auhors made use of secondary literature and direct sources. In particular the archives of Giulio Andreotti, of «Zone di Confine» Office, of Precidency of Council Minister, IOC and CONI as well as the most important national newspapers.