51/1-2 - Qualestoria. Rivista di storia contemporanea. LI, N.ro 1-2, Dicembre 2023

Il presente fascicolo di «Qualestoria» è nato dall’idea di analizzare in chiave comparativa due processi di transizione da un sistema autoritario a uno democratico, mettendo al centro la questione regionale. I due casi considerati sono quello italiano e quello spagnolo, entrambi caratterizzati dal riconoscimento di forme di autonomia speciale a regioni che la rivendicavano per diverse ragioni e in diverse forme.

Exodus has been the theme of much literature since the time of Homer and his Odyssey, not forgetting to mention Virgil's Aeneid or numerous Canti of Dante. But this history of man, marked by the exile of both individuals and entire populations, has never exactly ceased, just as their artistic and literary expressions. Precisely for this reason, the present work deals mainly with authors and works of the 20th century, which draw their material from the lives of those who endured firsthand the experience of exile, turning into literature. In this regard works of Greeks Ilias Venezis and Didò Sotiriu are quoted that tell of "the great catastrophe" of the exodus of Greeks from the coastlife of Anatolia together with Armenians when both peoples were driven from their lands by the Turks. This is followed by other authors and pieces related to a more recent exodus, that of Bosnians, Croats and Serbs fleeing from ex Yugoslavia torn apart of 1991-1995 war, then also referring to Albanian and other writers who fled from totalitarian regimes. The article closes by taking into consideration the authors and works concerning the exodus, which most closely interests Diego Zandel, particularly the exodus of the Italian population, among others, from Istria, Rijeka and Zadar due to the annexation of those territories to Marshal Tito's communist regime.

About fifteen novels are analyzed on the exodus which from 1943 to 1954 affected three hundred thousand Italians from Istria, Fiume and Dalmatia. The theme is the same, namely the reasons why these writers left their homes to cross the border between communist Yugoslavia and the Free Territory of Trieste, governed until 1954 by the Anglo-Americans. But the point of view from which they tell their odyssey is very different, depending on whether the author wrote: before 1975, when with the Treaty of Osimo the borders stipulated in 1945 became definitive; or after 1989, that is, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the 1990s, when those lands were the scene of another war and new exiles; or even after 2004, when Slovenia joined the EU. One can note the passage from a conflict read in cultural and political terms, to one centered on the recovery of a multiple identity, to the point of making the exile a meta-historical category. The story of the women is very different, who instead place themselves from a unique perspective, that of the loss of their home and the dispersion of their family

An Italian piece of the composite European mosaic of forced population displacements that affected Europe after the Second World War as a consequence of the conflict and the opposed redefinition of borders, the Julian-Dalmatian exodus involved the large part of the Italian population of Istria in Fiume and Dalmatia. The contribution, after having analyzed the characteristics, dynamics and directions of the exodus, focuses on the refugees and their arrival in Italy, with particular attention to the assistance policies implemented by the Italian government and to the reception of the population in a still strongly marked by the wounds of war.

The essay analyzes the Ricordi infausti by Emilio Stata, written in 1928 by one of the many Trieste people who fought in the ranks of the Austro-Hungarian Army. The text tells of his war experiences in Galicia and his subsequent imprisonment in Ukraine, a situation on which the Revolution subsequently broke out. Many impressions and stories by the author enrich our knowledge of the war in that sector and the events of the Austro-Hungarian prisoners first in the Tsar's camps, then in revolutionary Russia.