44/1 - Qualestoria. Rivista di storia contemporanea. Anno XLIV, N.ro 1, Giugno 2016

Il «goriziano» (Goriška), the border area between Slovenia and Italy, has been (and still is) a place of contested memories, where different groups construct their identities on different, very often opposing interpretations of the region’s past events. What for one side is a source for memory building, sinks for the other into oblivion, what one side celebrates, the other forgets. The territory was ravaged by acts of violence in both the First and Second World Wars, as well as in postwar years. Younger generations are reminded of the past chiefly through memorials, crypts and military burial grounds, silent witnesses to the atrocities that the twentieth century inflicted on the region. The monuments, (hi)stories and preserved narratives that construct the national heritage act on the 20th century as ruptures of history, requiring all the collective groups to collaborate and accept different constructions of memory, interpretations of the past and our own complex story.

The article deals with youth work units – brigades of the Venezia Giulia zone A after the Second World War, mostly in the year 1946. The Union of antifascist youth of the Venezia Giulia organized these work brigades in order to participate in youth work campaigns in Yugoslavia. Youth work units of the zone A were presented by the pro-Yugoslav forces as a manifestation of the people’s desire to unite Venezia Giulia with Yugoslavia. The participation of Italian youth in these brigades represented only a part of the complex relationship between the Slovenian and the Italian anti-fascist movement in this territory. The principle of Italo-Slavic brotherhood had guaranteed the ideological basis of this cooperation. In fact, the brotherhood had been regarded as a precondition for the affiliation of young Italians in the work brigades. Sent from Venezia Giulia zone A to the fields of youth voluntary work in Yugoslavia in 1946, these bi-national brigades can be considered as the most direct and intense form of implementing the policy of the Italo-Slavic brotherhood, as well as one of its greatest trials.

On the basis of court records on abortions and infanticides of the Court of Trieste, this article tries to reconstruct a small part of the history of extramarital affairs in the Trieste Region during the second half of the long 19th century. The analysis is primarily based on the comparison of the circumstances and reasons why unmarried women were committing these (then) crimes. The article focuses particularly on the role of their (extramarital) partners. The dynamics of the relationship between the defendant and her partner may in fact differ substantially depending on whether there was an abortion or an infanticide. During the trials for infanticide, the child’s father is, except in very rare cases, completely absent (the child who was killed immediately after birth by the mother or that was not offered the necessary help is often a result of sexual intercourse with strangers, for example soldiers), while in cases of abortion he is involved in the hearing and often tried as the “instigator” or “offender.” In addition to relations with extramarital partners, the defendants’ motives differ according to the wide social context. As for infanticides the main motive for the crime is the shame of extramarital conception and the obvious consequence of forbidden sexual relations, it is usually they themselves who decide to leave the community where they had conceived. By fleeing, they try to avoid public humiliation, since they have no one to protect them. They are normally women from the lowest social classes without property and with little chance of getting married. The disapproval of others (including parents) and the fear of dishonour prove to be the main causes also in cases of abortion, while the social status of these women, in comparison to that of infanticides, is more heterogeneous. Less frequent is also the act of escaping. (It can be assumed that it is the compassion of other women who are sometimes even prepared to help them to terminate the pregnancy that ties them to the family environment.) The findings in legal acts of course only partly correspond to reality. The credibility of the investigation procedure (and of the testimonies in court) is always uncertain. Despite this, such sources give us the opportunity to analyse (at least partially) the social relations that are, due to its intimate nature, (otherwise) hardly traceable.

The so-called dikle – girls from the region of Slavia friulana who used to work in Italian cities as housemaids in many cases didn’t understand their work as «maledet», cursed and «schiavitù», slavery. At least this is what they tell us today, long decades later when the experience, meanings, testimonies have been covered by a lot of ubiquitous dust; the dust we cannot completely blow away, clean, remove in order to come to the original sparkle (of the original experience). And yet, this is the only voice – no matter how muted – that can stand up against the voice of authority that has resounded for half a century. Some girls, as personal testimonies tell us, were also looking for an «adventure», a change in life, at least partial financial, economic independence, they wanted and tried (at least partly) to shake off the shackles of a patriarchal family, to replace hard farm work with the more attractive duties of an urban household, wanted to get to the city where they could admire and desire shiny shoes in the window, although they usually couldn’t afford them.