On the silliness of the Illyrian theory and the myth of the "noble savage"

Contrary to one of the usual narratives one will likely encounter when researching the sad recent history of Dalmatia - that the Italian intellectual class during the Risorgimento was composed of anti-Slav chauvinists motivated by hatred for the "native" Slavs - Italian and other European historians and linguists contributed in no small part to the perpetuation and spread of the many myths underpinning Croatian nationalism and Yugoslavism. A passage from one of the polemics of linguist Graziadio Ascoli is illustrative both of the romantic sympathies and factually suspect conception of history held by many Italian and other European intellectuals in the late 19th century:

"...Italians compose by a large margin the majority of the population of Zara, of the modest capital of the province or Kingdom [of Croatia], by which name it was called even by reigning Venice; and it is, in the eyes of the Slavs, as if the capital of France was populated by Englishmen or the capital of Hungary by Romanians. The [Slavic] indigenous people, all told, no longer tolerate these colonizers, whose presence disheartens them: they understand that, were they to assimilate themselves with them, they would disappear, as the Hellenes of Magna Grecia disappeared before the Italics. And the threat is summed up in the shout heard from the Uskoks: Chase them into the sea!"

The irony in these assertions is twofold.

Firstly: the indigenous people of Dalmatia are those known collectively to history as the Illyrians, Indo-Europeans who in antiquity lived not only on the eastern shore of the Adriatic but also settled upon its western shore, in Puglia. Obviously (contrary to the romantic delusions of 19th century Croatian nationalists whose "Illyrian theory" claimed that the entire Slavic people originated in Dalmatia), even if one discounts or attempts to diminish the effect of the later Roman conquest of Illyria and the settlement of Roman veterans in the province - who themselves were forcibly assimilated with the Slavs, had their names changed by Slavic clergymen and later by communist bureaucrats, and were forbidden from using their own language - and the speakers of the dialects of Puglia that what remains of the ancient Illyrians can be found.

A more apt comparison than Sgr. Ascoli's might be to ask how the Greeks felt during the final siege of Constantinople, and how they feel today when they see one of the many History Channel programs sponsored by the Turkish government, claiming the works of their ancestors as "Turkish history;" or, if the reader will pardon the reference, what it was for the children of Elrond to be reduced only to Rivendell, the Last Homely House before the East, and to know that even that last stronghold of their people must soon perish.

Secondly, as is now accepted by all but a few Slovenian and Croatian fringe theorists, the ur-heimat of the Slavs was a marshy, infertile land in what is now Ukraine and western Russia. Neither the South Slavs nor their language are indigenous to the Balkans; they first arrived in the former province of Dalmatia in the 7th century, though Thomas the Archdeacon writing in the 13th century says that at first the Slavs only crossed the Dinaric Alps to raid and pillage and then returned to their own villages, and it was some time before they permanently settled in coastal Dalmatia.

Far from being an endangered "indigenous population" in Dalmatia, the South Slavs first arrived as opportunistic scavengers; as looting and destroying towns and cities already devastated by the Huns, Goths and the ill-fated reconquest of Justinian, and the defenses of which were left in a state of ruin by the ruling Goths at the time of the Slavic invasion, can hardly be called conquest. Croatian Wikipedia editors have appended virtually every article dealing with the former Roman towns of Dalmatia with a copied-and-pasted statement to the effect that "Croatians conquered and rebuilt the settlement in the 7th century," in an effort to ennoble the wanton destruction of their forefathers. Unfortunately for them, 17th century Latin Dalmatian historian Lucio Giovanni, one of the first scientifically-minded historians of the modern age (and whom they insist, of course, was a Croat), writes that after being reduced to rubble by the Slav invaders, the former homes of the actual indigenous inhabitants were never rebuilt and left uninhabited.

Then, in the late Middle Ages, as the Ottoman Turks advanced through eastern Europe, Slavic refugees came pouring over the mountains and were allowed by the Venetian oppressor - whose disdain for them was so great as to name a dock (Riva degli Schiavoni) after them in Venice - to resettle in Dalmatia. There is, of course, no Dock of the Venetians in any Croatian city in honour of a republic that not only allowed the current occupiers of Dalmatia to settle there in the first place, but at Lepanto destroyed the fleet of the empire before which the various South Slavic chiefdoms and kingdoms had capitulated centuries earlier.

Finally, Croatians from Slavonia were shipped to Dalmatia by the thousands by the Hapsburg monarchy during the 19th century for the purpose of displacing and diluting the Italian population, whose compatriots across the Adriatic had been rebelling against crown authority for decades and finally freed themselves from Austrian rule between 1860 and 1870. The "Austrian Slavs," as the Croatians, Slovenians, Czechs and Slovaks were then known, were considered loyal to the crown since they had fought for the emperor during the uprisings of 1848. The idea of a Tripartite Monarchy of Austria, Hungary and a "Slavia" comprising all the territories held by the Austrian Empire claimed by the pan-Slavist movement had currency not only among Slavic nationalists but also within the Hapsburg nobility and military establishment. The Italian territories held by the Hapsburg crown were considered to be of critical strategic and economic importance, as they constituted the Empire's only point of access to the Mediterranean. And to the end of ensuring their continued attachment to the crown, these lands were Germanized and Slavicized as was convenient.

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To understand why Italian and western intellectuals in general would sympathize with Slavic nationalists in Dalmatia is not difficult; indeed it is easier than the mental gymnastics required to subscribe to the myth of genocidal, proto-nazifascist Italian irredentists vs. poor, oppressed Slavs who just happened to have the ruling class of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Russia and the rest of Slavic Europe supporting their cause.

In the mid-to-late 1800s, the Slavs of central Europe, who had lived under foreign rule for centuries - and in the case of the Croatians and Slovenians, had never developed a written culture of their own - suddenly became an object of fascination and intense sympathy in the West, particularly after rebellions against the empires and certain atrocities committed by the Turks in Bulgaria were widely publicised in the press. The various romantic-sounding but ultimately completely ahistorical forms of nationalism then fermenting in the Balkans gained enthusiastic supporters in western academic circles.

Reading the numerous travel diaries published by visitors to Dalmatia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries during the height of Slavophilia in the West, one detects that the sympathetic bourgeois authors of these early travel guides considered the Slav and Morlach villagers of the Dalmatian hinterland to be "noble savages" uncorrupted by civilization, and that their enthusiasm was largely due to the discovery that such "rustic" people were to be found in western Europe.

The so-called "noble savage" (who is obviously a caricature) is exempt from the rules of conduct and morality by which civilized men are bound - he is not capable of committing crimes because in his primitive state he does not know better, and his acts of barbarity, far from being blameworthy, are cause for sympathy, as being a "noble savage" there is no criminal impulse in him. If a noble savage commits atrocities it is only because he has been oppressed and deprived of his rights by corrupt civilized people, and therefore is an object of sympathy in any situation, no matter how criminal his actions would be considered were they carried out by a civilized man.

It should not be seen as a surprise, then, that the 19th century urban bourgeoisie, suffering collectively from the modern maladies of neurosis and alienation and seeking some antidote to the crushing monotony and immorality of the modern society its own class had created, would enthusiastically take up the banner of the pan-Slavist movement, according to the same self-loathing cultural logic out of which emerged communism, that other, more famous invention of disaffected bourgeois pseudointellectuals.

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Though by the early 20th century the "Illyrian theory" was already long-discredited, still one finds that many prominent academics supported its primary implication: that although even after a century of Croatian terrorism - aided and abetted by the Austrian police - the Italian character of the Dalmatian cities was evident to any visitor, and anthropologists considered the colourful costumes and ornaments of the Slavic villagers to be Asiatic in origin, Dalmatia was nonetheless a "Slavic land," and to paraphrase a disturbing passage in Frenchman Charles Yriarte's travel diary, soon destined to be cleansed of the corrupting influence of Italian civilization by the Slavic race which would soon occupy all the land from Siberia to the Adriatic.

One finds that here as well as in the writings of other pan-Slavist sympathizers there is a sort of bizarre inversion of the Monroe Doctrine, and not a few echoes of the alleged virtues of the barbarian exalted by the (also then in vogue) atavistic German völkisch movement. By virtue of the mystical characteristics attributed by these academics to the Slavic nations as a whole (excluding Poland, which, by reason of its historical statehood, its people's orthodox Catholicism and their antipathy for Russia and its autocratic government, was seen as irretrievably lost to civilization), the expansion of the Slavs into territory they had hitherto never occupied was not only their right, indeed such was seen as desirable, even necessary for a western civilization in need of a Jüngerian cleansing by fire.

And as Sgr. Ascoli - who according to the popular narrative, as an Italian irredentist, is supposed to have been a nazifascist Slavophobe - seems to have regarded as inevitable and even desirable, Zara and all of Dalmatia was "cleansed" of its two thousand years of Latin civilization, and its native inhabitants literally "chased into the sea;" the fortunate into exile without their property, illegally confiscated by the communist junta of Tito; and the less fortunate to their graves.

Dalmatia, as their historian Giovanni Lucio defined it - the "Patria of Dalmatians, Romans, Latins" - no longer exists. It has been mutilated beyond recognition, except in the memories of its people.

And yet, condemned to ignoble exile as they have been, the Dalmatians have thrived everywhere they have gone, and they have thrived so because they are the true people of that land; having been "chased into the sea" has not destroyed them, because they are of that fierce Illyrian race that made their home on both its shores; they are the Roman legionaries of a thousand triumphs; it was they who made the final doomed march from Salona at the twilight of an age; they are the heroes of Rhodes, of Famagusta, of Lepanto, and into exile they have carried with them the two thousand years of Latin life which is Dalmatia: and neither the crying "Uskoks" nor any other mortal power can steal it from them.

Quotations from Giovanni Lucio, "Father of Croatian historiography," on the history of Dalmatia

 If one visits the Wikipedia page of 17th century Dalmatian historian Giovanni Lucio (Latin: Ioannes Lucius), one will read that he is widely regarded in Croatia as "the father of modern Croatian historiography". By the dogged efforts of Croatian Wikipedians, the neologism "Ivan Lučić," invented in the late 19th century, even takes precedence over the name Giovanni Lucio, by which the author signed himself.

As is often the case, the Croatian claim to Giovanni Lucio is an unintentionally amusing one. The Lucii were an old Venetian patrician family, of which the Dalmatian Lucii were only one branch; but more to the point, "Croatian historian" Lucio - a notably thorough and scientifically-minded historian, by 17th century standards - in his History of Dalmatia and in Particular of the Cities of Traù and Sebenico, published in Venice in the year 1674 A.D., slaughters some of the most sacred cows of the aforementioned modern Croatian historiography, whose myths are all too often propagated by foreign journalists and academics.

One of the fundamental claims of Croatian nationalist historiography is that by the early Middle Ages, at latest, the inhabitants of the cities of Dalmatia were primarily (or, as some insist, entirely) Slavic-speaking Croats.

Here is what the "father of modern Croatian historiography" has to say in the preface (pg. 16, in the linked archive.org scan) about the language spoken by Dalmatians in his time:

"I, Giovanni Lucio son of Pietro, having collected the memory of all that which, from the most ancient times until the past century, has occurred in that part of Illyrium, which after the decline of the Roman Empire was called the Kingdom of Dalmatia and Croatia, have published it under that same title; in which work having found convenient to examine many writings of various Greek and Latin authors, I did avail myself of the ancient Roman language which among the literate of divers nations is common.

 

"Now having to write the Memoirs of Traù my Patria, I have wished to avail myself of the modern, or vulgar, which as much Italian as Dalmatian can be called; thus having taken care to use only words that are understood by Dalmatians, I will be pardoned if I do not write in the Tuscan manner."

 

He then repeats himself with even more clarity on page 26:

Because not all understand the ancient Roman language, commonly called Latin, in which I explained these things, I will repeat some of them here in this modern Roman language, called Italian (as opposed to the other, also Roman languages, which in their own Provinces are named Spanish, French and Vallachian) which is also called Dalmatian (since now, just as in the past, it is used here as it is in Italy, as further on will be proved) so that in this language also these records that are found in Traù may be understood...

 

...The name Dalmatian or Roman from then on belonged only to seven cities: three situated upon the Isles, in olden times called Flanatico, now called the Quarnaro, which are Ossaro, Veglia and Arbe; and four upon the continent, which are Zara, Traù, Spalato and Ragusi.

 

Lucio describes the Italian idiom in which he writes - so many centuries after Dalmatia is alleged to have been expunged of Latins - as the Dalmatian volgare, the language spoken by himself and his Dalmatian compatriots. Here and throughout the work, Lucio takes pains to emphasize that the name Dalmatian refers only to Romans and their descendants, and to distinguish between them and Slavs. When referring to the various South Slavic peoples collectively he uses the term Slav, and when discussing them individually, refers to them as Croats, Serbs, Narentines and Bosnians.

Next, it is a point of faith among Croatian nationalist historians that in the former Republic of Ragusa, moreso than any other Dalmatian city, the population was entirely Slavic-speaking (Croat) by the 10th or 11th century, and at absolute latest by the 14th century, the time of the foundation of the Republic. That not a single document was written in a Slavic language during the five centuries of Ragusan independence does not seem to be viewed as an issue; though, as they themselves occasionally admit, such circumstance does present a significant barrier to the Croatian historian who has not studied Italian.

With regards to such, the "father of modern Croatian historiography" on page 537 writes:

"It was mentioned at length in the other work and also in the first book of the present work, how the Croats occupied that part of Dalmatia, that extends between Istria and the river Cetina, and the Serbians the rest until Durazzo. Thus the Croats come to border against Zara, Traù and Spalato, and the Serbians with Ragusa: four cities, which on the mainland conserve the name of Dalmatians, Romans, or Latins."

Not only does Lucio emphasize that the inhabitants of Zara, Traù, Spalato and Ragusa are "Dalmatians, Romans, Latins;" he says that Croats didn't even live near the area of Ragusa, but rather that bordering Ragusa was the country of - horror of horrors - Serbians! As if to rub salt in the wounds of his fellow modern Croatian historians, again here Lucio clearly distinguishes between Dalmatians - among whose number he includes himself, and in whose language he clearly states he is writing - and Slavs.

Finally - at least for the purposes of this piece - most works dealing with the history of present-day Croatia published in recent years, whether authored by Croatians or Anglophones, repeat the false claim that "Croatian" Dalmatia was brought under Venetian domination by force in the 15th century. Arguably, this is the ur-myth and certainly among the first and most blatantly ahistorical falsehoods upon which Croatian nationalism has been built.

This is what the "father of modern Croatian historiography" has to say on pages 24-25 about how it was Dalmatia first came under Venetian influence:

Then subsequently the Dalmatians approached Charlemagne, and once more were made to return under the Greeks until the rule of Michael II the Amorian, by reason of whose incompetence [they were] abandoned, and having brought themselves to freedom, were required to align themselves with Venice so as to defend themselves together from the offenses of the Saracens, and Slavs; and though [once having] become Emperor Basil the Macedon sent the navy to the Gulf in aid of the Dalmatians; nevertheless, so as not to have to make war against Saracens and Slavs together he contented himself by [having] the same Dalmatians send a particular tribute to the Slavs, so as to be able to resist more easily the Saracens; but the possessions of the Empire declining even more after the death of Basil, and the Slavs, having removed themselves from the Empire of the Franks, daily occupying more islands from the Dalmatians, these (the Dalmatians) were required by reason of their weakness to turn to the power of the Venetians, which from day to day became more potent, as has been described..."

And again:

 …The Doge of Venice, Pietro Orseolo II, in response to the offenses of Slavs in the Gulf of Venice around the 1000th year of Christ, went with his fleet to Istria, then to Dalmatia, where he was received by the Dalmatians; and having taken several places from the Slavs, they were forced to make peace with him, and to abstain from piracy in the sea. And since by the Dalmatians he was hailed as liberator, and acclaimed by them Prince of Dalmatia, from that time the Doges of Venice assumed the titular lordship of Dalmatia…

According to Lucio, his fellow modern Croatian historians are 4-5 centuries off the mark, as here he describes the rapprochement between Venice and Dalmatia as taking place as early as the 9th century, and the assumption by Venice of the title to Dalmatia by around the year 1000 A.D. Worse, he describes it as an alliance entered into voluntarily by the aforementioned "Dalmatians, Romans, Latins," who did not have the strength alone to defend themselves against the attacks of Saracen and Slav pirates after the decline and disappearance of Byzantine sea power in the western Mediterranean. 

One does wonder how Lucio could have come to be seen as the father of Croatian historiography when the former was sober, scientific, and by culture and language Italian, while the latter is none of the three.

Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Wikipedia's Twilight Zone

 The term "wikiality" was famously coined by comedian Stephen Colbert when, live on his satirical late-night show The Colbert Report, he deliberately added false claims to several Wikipedia entries, and encouraged his viewers to do the same. Colbert explained that he loved Wikipedia because "any user can change any entry, and if enough other users agree with them, it becomes true," with "wikiality" being defined, essentially, as truth by consensus, or in Colbert's words, "a reality that we can all agree on: the reality we just agreed on."

Though Wikipedia's policies state that entries should reflect the consensus of experts on a given topic, in practice articles of relatively minor importance usually reflect the consensus of a small number of editors, who maintain "watchlists" of articles they have contributed to in the past so that they can receive notifications when those articles are edited - and do what they can to ensure that these entries continue to reflect their own points of view. Editors of this breed seem to maintain an arsenal of preferred references, usually pointing to obscure print tertiary sources, non-peer reviewed articles and generally material of dubious scholarly value at best, and simply copy and paste these links as "sources" between the articles over which they have appointed themselves guardians, the result being that frequently the alleged sources for a statement in an article are only tangentially related to the particular assertion being made.

In my academic career, when the topic of using Wikipedia for research has been raised, instructors have usually advised that students scroll to the references cited at the bottom of articles and look at those, while the body of the article should be used only as a "starting point" for research. In practice, however - and I have seen more clear instances of this than I can count among my own friends and classmates alone - journalists and students are writing against deadlines, and often don't have the time (or are just too lazy) to pore through academic literature, and simply use the body text of Wikipedia articles as sources and when necessary paste the reference cited at the bottom of the Wikipedia page into the bibliography of their papers, without having actually examined the source provided. In this way misleading claims and outright fictions originating on Wikipedia itself are spread across the internet by lazy journalists.

Furthermore, it should also go without saying that just because a certain book or online article that a particular editor has consulted and cited contains a certain claim, does not make the claim necessarily true - often the talk pages of articles prove highly enlightening with regards to the validity and accuracy of sources, as does taking a glance at the edit history, where one can that see that often a small handful of users have been responsible for the vast majority of changes to a given article, and act as gatekeepers preventing others from substantially changing the text.

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As also discussed a number of times by the blog Istria Fiume Dalmatia, the English-language Wikipedia is host to often truly bizarre arguments and edit wars concerning historical figures and places in and around the former Yugoslavia. As a general rule, the talk page of a given article will be the site of heated debate over whether the individual in question was Serbian or Croatian (or in the case of places, whether a given settlement or region was historically part of Serbia or Croatia), even, or perhaps especially, when the individual in question was demonstrably of neither ethnicity.

Even stranger than the edit wars and arguments over sources and authors, and what prompted the writing of this blog post, is the practise of adding completely fictionalized family background information, of such a nature that it could only have been invented on the spot by the editor, to biographies of people from regions of Italy bordering or now part of the former Yugoslavia.

As to the motives behind this aberrant behaviour, one can only speculate, and I have a difficult time understanding exactly what satisfaction is derived from tricking people into believing that a given figure was Serbian, Croatian or Slovenian when these editors really know he or she was not. Usually one comes across these claims in articles about figures who are relatively obscure within the scope of Italian sport, art, architecture, etc., or in articles that only people with a specific interest in public figures of South Slavic nationalities would ever have reason to visit.

As an example of the latter, the article "Slovene minority in Italy" for several years included world-famous former soccer player Paolo Maldini and his late father Cesare, born in Trieste, among in its list of "famous Slovenians" living in Italy, and, in fact, both father and son are still listed on the page "Italian people of Slovene descent."

However, this claim that the Maldini family is of Slovenian origin originated in a sourceless Wikipedia edit - it claimed that the family's name was "Mladenich" and was changed to "Maldini" during the fascist period. Both Cesare and Paolo Maldini have been the subject of biographies and given literally thousands of public interviews in none of which, obviously, there is any trace of a mention of any sort of Slovenian or Slavic origins; and amusingly, if I recall correctly, the source referenced by the article "Slovene minority in Italy" was a link to the section of Cesare Maldini's Wikipedia article with the fabricated claim inserted by the anonymous editor. This is, I believe, the very definition of a circular argument.

Italians with names ending in "ich" in particular are magnets for the insertion of these strange and often unintentionally amusing nationalist fantasies. For example, one reading the Wikipedia entry on former Internazionale and Italian national team defender Tarcisio Burgnich in 2017 would have "learned" that "Burgnich has Croatian roots on his father's side, since the city of Udine was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire before World War I." The problem is that the linked article provided as a "source" of course made no mention of Burgnich's alleged Croatian roots and Udine, of course, was reunited with Italy in 1870, not after the First World War, and has never been home to any significant Slavophone population - though, once again, somewhat amusingly, the usual small number of doggedly determined Slovenian editors have managed to insert into the article on Udine the same kind of self-referencing and vague insinuations present in the entries on virtually every single town and village in Friuli and Venezia Giulia, that the city is actually Slovenian.

One fairly creative fabrication could recently be found in the entry for Italian commercial artist Marcello Dudovich, a native of Trieste. The edit history reveals that an anonymous editor originally had inserted the claim that both of the artist's parents were Serbian, and left it that; however, it seems that another editor felt this version of the fantasy wasn't convincing enough, and changed it to say that his mother was an Italian from Trieste, but his father was a Serbian from Kotor (Cattaro), Montenegro.

Dudovich's father Antonio was from Dalmatia; but from Traù (Trogir in Serbo-Croatian) rather than Cattaro. "Serb" Antonio Dudovich was an ardent Italian irredentist who fought alongside Giuseppe Garibaldi, had his portrait painted wearing the red uniform of the Garibaldini and named his second daughter Itala (lit. "Italian girl").

These are only a few of the most egregious examples I've personally come across - depressingly, I wouldn't be surprised if there are dozens or even hundreds more. These editors seem to be dissatisfied with their countries' own histories, and so feel the need to pretend to themselves that their neighbours' achievements are actually theirs. Inserting something into a Wikipedia article does not, of course, make it so, but I suppose these people must find some solace in thinking that if enough people read and repeat what they've written on Wikipedia, it'll be sort of, almost like it's actually true.

Giornata del Ricordo 2019 - In memory of Luigi "Barzula" Russignan, 1933-2016

One of the more prominent members of Toronto's community of Istrian, Fiuman and Dalmatian exiles was Luigi (Gino) Russignan, native of Isola d'Istria. The company bearing the Russignan family's nickname - Caffè Barzula - is Canada's best-selling brand of espresso coffee, and a fixture in the homes of Toronto's half-million Italian-Canadians. Gino's great-grandfather was nicknamed "Barzula" - in reference to a large pork chop (Istro-Venetian: "briziola," Italian: "braciola") eaten by the elder Russignan to celebrate the successful sale of a herd of beasts.

Born March 11th, 1933 at Isola d'Istria, then part of the Kingdom of Italy, along with approximately 350,000 other Italian natives of Istria, the Quarnero and Dalmatia, Russignan's family was forced into exile by the communist government of Josip Broz Tito. The Russignan family, again, like so many other exiles, settled in Trieste, which was then under Allied military occupation.

In April of 1960, Gino Russignan and his wife Gigliola departed for Canada: they arrived at Halifax's Pier 21 on May 1st, and from there proceeded by train to Toronto. During the train journey, Gigliola asked for a cup of coffee: unthinkable as it may seem today, at the time espresso coffee was completely unknown in Canada, and all Gino was able to procure for her was a cup of tea. According to Gigliola, from this experience was born the idea of starting the first coffee roasting company in Canada, and thus, in 1964, in a small location on College Street, in Toronto's first "Little Italy," was born Caffè Barzula.

(photo: Voce Giuliana)

It would seem that Russignan inherited his business savvy, as well as his interest and expertise in coffee. In Isola d'Istria his grandmother had run a grocery store, his father had been a wine dealer, while his grandfather had been a coffee importer and roaster.

For his work not only as a pioneer in Canada's coffee industry, but also for his involvement in the Italian-Canadian community and philanthropy, Russignan was granted the title of Commendatore of the Italian Republic, and was also recognized and granted honours by his adopted country, Canada. Gino "Barzula" passed away on Oct. 23, 2016 at the age of 83.

That pleasant Dalmatian city, where every trace has been erased [Pt. II]

(Excerpt from a longer article by Sergio Rizzo and Gian Antonio Stella published in Corriere della Sera, June 17th, 2010)

Link to Part I

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[..] as the historic meeting at Trieste between Italian President Giorgio Napolitano and his Slovenian and Croatian counterparts Danilo Turk Ivo Josipovic demonstrates, something has begun to change. Enzo Bettiza - born in Spalato to an Italian father and a Slavic mother, and raised by a Serbian nanny who filled his head with tales of "the amazing duels between Marko Kraljevic and the Turk with three arrow-shooting heads" - wrote that the "time to forget a history that is among the cruellest and most oppressive between the jagged borders of Europe" may have finally arrived.

Undeniably, it is difficult to forget. For the Slavs, because after having long been fond of us (worth reading is Zdravka Krpina's "Italy in the eyes of Croats") they were forced to submit to unbearable nationalist injustices during the 20 years of Mussolini. And even moreso for us: 350,000 forced from Istria, the Quarnero and Dalmatia, according to the figures of Fr. Flaminio Rocchi, author of the book considered, correctly or not, as a sort of Gospel by the exiles; subjected to cruel acts of revenge in the final phases of the war, culminating in the murders of thousands; denied the right even to remember the Venetian and Italian culture and art in places that were called Cittanova, Albona, Rovigno, Capodistria, Umago...

Gianni Duiella, 82 years old, "Zaratino for a half-millennium," remembers well those years of laceration, when his family was split in two, between those who chose to leave everything to remain Italian and those who stayed, like himself: "Many Italians were made to 'disappear.' Without trial. It's true, here there are no Foibe and the communist partisans had to make do. So they tied a stone around their necks and threw them into the sea. As happened to Nicolò Luxardo, owner of the famous Maraschino factory, drowned off the island of Selve with his wife, Bianca. How many Italians were murdered in Zara remains unclear. Duiella thinks about 300. Coen guesses 500. Flaminio Rocchi writes of 900 killed [editor's note: by the time Tito's partisans entered Zara the city had already been reduced to ruins by a lengthy Anglo-American bombing campaign, and most of the population had already been forced into exile].

Nevertheless, the same Zaratine exiles, like Ottavio Missoni, Lucio Toth, Giorgio Varisco, would like to rebuild, once and for all, a decent and respectful relationship with the Croatians of today's Zara: "We can't continue throwing the wrongs we've done to one another in each other's faces for centuries: it serves no purpose. We must look forward, for the good of our grandchildren, for the good of our Zara." To clarify: nothing should be erased, as memory allows one to understand the errors of the past, so that they aren't repeated. But even if [former communist partisan and former secretary of the Italian Communist Party] Napolitano has acknowledged that there was "the aim of annexation on the part of the Slavs, which prevailed at the 1947 peace treaty talks and which assumed the sinister form of ethnic cleansing," it is necessary to move onward. Also because, as Paolo Mieli remembers, as recounted in Paolo Simoncelli's book "Zara, Two Sides of the Same Coin," about how the city was not awarded the Gold Medal for Military Valour after the Allied bombings [translators note: every other city in Italy that suffered heavy bombing during the war was awarded the Medaglia d'oro al valore, Italy's highest military honour], the wrongdoing was not limited to one side.

Proof enough is the never-ending and torturous affair of reparations to exiles. The crux of the matter? Goods and property illegally confiscated after Marshall Tito siezed power were returned to their original owners after the breakup of the Socialist Republic. Naturally, it was difficult, for the new Slovenia and Croatia, who had decided to join Europe, espousing liberal values, to hold onto nationalized property.

The only ones not to have their property restored were the Italian exiles. Some defected illegally (some via Umago, or Bibione) while others were forced to sign away all their belongings before being allowed to emigrate. Taking for example, again, the story of the Luxardo family: their factory was perhaps the largest plant in Dalmatia, but the arrival of Tito's troops put an end to everything. The two oldest brothers, Pietro and Nicolò Luxardo, were killed, the factory destroyed by bombings. Maraschino, a famous liquor made with marasca cherries, survived, but in a new location at Torreglia, in the province of Padova, where the surviving family members had been forced to flee.

In the new, but shattered, Yugoslavia, the factory ended up in the hands of an Austrian of Slavic origins: [but under his ownership] it was a failure, so much so that he ended up distributing the shares of the new "Maraska" Company to the employees. Franco Luxardo narrates: "At a certain point we received a coded message: a sort of invitation to take the situation back in hand. But it proved impossible. Not least because of the difficulty of tracking down all the scattered shares, but also for a more concrete reason: we were producing more with only 30 employees [in Torreglia] than they could with 250."

That pleasant Dalmatian city, where every trace has been erased

(Excerpt from a longer article by Sergio Rizzo and Gian Antonio Stella published in Corriere della Sera, June 17th, 2010)

"Zajednica Talijana Zadar." It's written beside the doorbell of the Italian Community of Zara.

But in Croatian?

"It was all done by the City."

But why is there no sign?

"We put one up - in Italian. But someone smashed it the very night of the inauguration," sighs Rina Villani, head of the Italian Community of Zara. She adds that the City of Zara quickly offered compensation for the damage. But soon afterwards, the sign was just as quickly removed by order of the authorities: it disrupted the harmony of Palazzo Fozza. Even though it was made of transparent Plexiglas? It was disruptive. But what about all the storefront signs along the same street - "Plemica Borelli Uliza?" Still disruptive.

Some may say: Slavic nationalism doesn't enter into it. Wasn't the Italian Community at fault, for translating the street name into Italian as "Via Conte Borelli?" [translator's note: the Borelli family were Zaratine nobles with origins in Bologna, who transferred to Zara approx. 300 years ago]

Professor Gastone Coen, former schoolmate of Enzo Bettiza [translator's note: Bettiza was a famous Italian politician and writer, forced into exile at the end of WWII despite being fiercely antifascist, and at the time adhering to communism] at Spalato, smiles wryly: "Count Borelli, despite his Bolognese origins, was a Croatian patriot."

"Croat" Borelli has been accorded the honour of keeping his Italian surname, while the great Italian scholar Alessandro Paravia,  fierce proponent of the ideals of the Risorgimento, who ended his career as a professor at Torino, has been Croatized as "Alesandra Paravije."

This is Zara, today. Every trace of its past has been carefully erased.

Certainly, the windows of the Benetton Store have cleared the path, at least a little, for a few bars and, particularly, clothing boutiques carrying Italian names. Business is business - and tourists must be catered to. Otherwise: no recognition, zero.

Luigi Federzioni, destined to become President of the Senate and of the Italian Academy, wrote a century ago that, "Venezia never gave birth, in its long and fruitful maternity, to a daughter more resembling herself, nor one more worthy, nor more devoted. Zara is adorable. Zara should be at the forefront of the thoughts of every Italian: for its labyrinth of picturesque alleys teeming with cheerful throngs, for its refined and passionate Venetian-ness."

Accordingly, legend has it that the day the "Serenissima" fell - the 12th of May, 1797 - at the final session of the High Council, Francesco Pesaro shouted at  the Doge, Ludovico Manin: "Pick up your Corno [translator's note: horn-shaped crown, symbol of the Doge's power] and move to Zara!"

And when in Zara they were forced to lower the flags of St. Mark, the following 6th of July, Lorenzo Licini narrates that "so stained by tears were the banners" that it seemed "as if they'd been soaked in water."

Is it at all surprising, then, that, as recounted by Oddone Talpo in "For Italy," so many citizens of Zara were protagonists of the events of the Risorgimento? That Austrian police reports of the period are full of the names of Italian patriots? That there were Dalmatians among the followers of Garibaldi who ran to the defense of the Roman Republic, who fought in the battles of Curtatone and Calatafimi, who fought in defense of the Venetian Republic of Daniele Manin? That one of the two daily newspapers in Zara in mid-century was named "The Risorgimento?"

Certainly, however, despite the 54 bombings ("Zara was the Dresden of the Adriatic," wrote Betizza) carried out by the Allies during the Second World War - possibly based on deliberately false intelligence passed to the Americans by Tito's partisans with the aim of wiping out the last stubbornly Italian stronghold of the Dalmatian coast - a few of the jewels that once made Zara a beautifully serene neighbourhood, with its 72 streets and 15 piazzas, are still here.

Beautiful, like the elegant Venetian Paravia Lodge. Or the Church of San Donato. The Church of San Simeone. The Cathedral of Sant'Anastasia. The Terraferma Gate designed by Sammicheli, dominated by a magnificent lion which survived the chisels of Slavic nationalists. The Piazza of the Five Wells. The walls.

But their original names have all been changed. Their identity has been deliberately erased. It seems as if the threat uttered by Vladimir Nazor - president of the Croatian liberation committee - during a 1944 meeting has been carried out: "Italy made Zara great and beautiful not out of love, but for calculated political ends. We will sweep from our land the stones of the destroyed enemy tower, and toss them into the deep sea of oblivion. In place of destroyed Zara there will rise a new Zadar, which will be our revenge in the Adriatic."

The name of Calle Larga, the ancient avenue of Jadera [translator's note: the ancient name of Zara as recorded by the Romans] built at the order of Augustus Caesar, has been "corrected:" Kalelarga.

To find Italian names in Zara you have to go to the old cemetery, watched over by the Madrinato Dalmatico [translator's note: literally "Dalmatian Godmotherate," a non-profit organization founded in 1979 by Dalmatian exiles that maintains the formerly neglected old cemetery of Zara]. As Ottavio Missoni, longtime mayor of the Community of Zara in Exile, writes: "Zara today exists only in the heart and desperate love of its citizens dispersed throughout the world."

What sense is there in erasing a piece of one's own past and then tailoring it to one's own liking? How many cities would love to be able to boast of a Venetian heritage? What future can there be for a country that "resets" its own memory, to the point of recruiting pleasant, polite young ladies as tour guides who show tourists around the Incoronate, but who don't even know the names by which these islands were once known?