‘Peace in Security’ and the ‘Bridge Border’. The Italian Centre-Left and Yugoslavia in resolving the Question of Trieste

Abstract

The essay presents several ideas regarding the management of the ‘Adriatic Question’ in the period following World War II. It focuses particular attention to the strategies of the political centre-left, of ‘Moroteism’, and of ‘border Catholicism’ aimed at overcoming the legacy of the conflict and achieving normalisation of Italo-Yugoslav relations after the return of Trieste to Italy in 1954. The analysis reconstructs the conciliatory path of two bordering states, formerly divided by fierce national, political, and ideological rivalry. Drawing a parallel between the choices made centrally and those made locally, the work furthermore examines the connection between Aldo Moro’s ‘Ostpolitik’ and the line taken by Trieste’s Christian Democrats, both of which sought to put an end to controversy on the eastern border - following the so-called ‘defence of Italianness’ (1945-1954) - in a situation characterised by a lowering of tensions between the blocs, by the reorganisation of international Communism, and by the multilateralism of the Helsinki Conference. The aim of the paper is therefore to shed light on how and with what consequences Moro’s ‘Peace in Security’ and the ‘Bridge Border’ strategy - the leading principles of the Julian Christian Democrats throughout the 1960s and 1970s - established on the one hand a relationship of collaboration with Tito’s Yugoslavia (culminating in the Treaty of Osimo in 1975) and on the other designed a new political, economic, and national function for the peripheral region of Venezia Giulia, whose sovereignty had long been contested and which had been severely penalised in the aftermath of the Second World War.