Austrian History Yearbook (2021), 52, 182–200 doi:10.1017/S0067237821000011 ARTICLE The Battle for Post-Habsburg Trieste/Trst: State Transition, – . Social Unrest, and Political Radicalism (1918 23) Marco Bresciani Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Florence, Florence, Italy Email:
[email protected] Abstract In spite of the recent transnational turn, there continues to be a considerable gap between Fascist studies and the new approaches to the transitions, imperial collapses, and legacies of post–World War I Europe. This https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms article posits itself at the crossroads between fascist studies, Habsburg studies, and scholarship on post- 1918 violence. In this regard, the difficulties of the state transition, the subsequent social unrest, and the ascent of new forms of political radicalism in post-Habsburg Trieste are a case in point. Rather than focusing on the “national strife” between “Italians” and “Slavs,” this article will concentrate on the unstable local rela- tions between state and civil society, which led to multiple cycles of conflict and crisis. One of the arguments it makes is that in post-1918 Trieste, where the different nationalist groups contended for a space character- ized by multiple loyalties and allegiances, Fascists claimed to be the movement of the “true Italians,” iden- tified with the Fascists and their sympathizers. Accordingly, while targeting the alleged enemies of the “Italian nation” (defined as “Bolsheviks,”“Austrophiles,” and “Slavs”), they aimed