Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports 2019 Liberation by Emigration: Italian Communists, the Cold War, and West-East Migration from Venezia Giulia, 1945-1949 Luke Gramith West Virginia University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd Part of the European History Commons, Intellectual History Commons, Labor History Commons, Political History Commons, and the Social History Commons Recommended Citation Gramith, Luke, "Liberation by Emigration: Italian Communists, the Cold War, and West-East Migration from Venezia Giulia, 1945-1949" (2019). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports. 3914. https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/3914 This Dissertation is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by the The Research Repository @ WVU with permission from the rights-holder(s). 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LIBERATION BY EMIGRATION: ITALIAN COMMUNISTS, THE COLD WAR, AND WEST-EAST MIGRATION FROM VENEZIA GIULIA, 1945-1949 Luke Gramith Dissertation submitted to the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences at West Virginia University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History Joshua Arthurs, Ph.D., Chair Katherine Aaslestad, Ph.D. Robert Blobaum, Ph.D. James Siekmeier, Ph.D. Maura Hametz, Ph.D. Department of History Morgantown, West Virginia 2019 Keywords: Italy, Yugoslavia, Monfalcone, Adriatic Border, Fascism, Communism, Cold War, Cold War Migration, Iron Curtain, Ideology, Everyday History Copyright 2019 Luke Gramith ABSTRACT Liberation by Emigration: Italian Communists, the Cold War, and West-East Migration from Venezia Giulia, 1945-1949 Luke Gramith In the years after World War II, several thousand Italians from the Italo-Yugoslav borderlands emigrated eastward across the emerging Iron Curtain, hoping to start new and better lives in Communist Yugoslavia. This dissertation explores what these migrants hoped Communism would be and how the experiences of everyday life under the preceding Fascist dictatorship shaped these hopes. It suggests that these Italians envisioned Communist society as one purged of certain social categories—shopkeepers, foremen, and piecework clerks—who had become known as quintessential Fascists due to the way Fascism interwove itself with local power. Marxist doctrine played a relatively minor role in shaping their expectations. Despite being rather mundane in its motivations, this migration was misconstrued as subversive, catalyzing Cold War divisions. Ultimately, the project offers a new, bottom-up approach to early Cold War history, exploring how ordinary people understood, navigated, and shaped this critical period. Acknowledgements This dissertation is the product of the time and effort of many people, some of whom I have known for a long time and others of whom I met during the course of my research. Without their assistance, this project would have emerged in much poorer form, or perhaps not at all. I will do my best to thank each deserving person by name, but I expect I will fall short of distributing recognition as widely as is deserved. The difficulty of the task a testament to the strength of the support networks I have had in my personal life, at WVU, and in the wider history community over the past years. First, I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Joshua Arthurs. He took me under his wing just as I finished my undergraduate studies and gave me steady guidance for seven long years. What I am as a scholar, I owe in large part to his tutelage. Throughout my time at WVU, he always provided me with insightful criticism without being harsh, even though much of my early work likely deserved severity. He constantly pushed me to think about my research in new ways, while also keeping my analysis on point. Readers should be especially thankful that he repeatedly emphasized a need for concision. Without his reminders, this dissertation may have ended up twice as long and half as good. It was the right choice, and I probably could have done more to take his sound advice. It was and is a privilege to be his first doctoral advisee. Special thanks also go out to Dr. Katherine Aaslestad, who not only sat on my dissertation committee, but also served almost like a second advisor throughout my time in graduate school. She strove endlessly to broaden my knowledge and my frame of reference beyond the twentieth century, which has made me a more well-rounded scholar. I am incredibly thankful for all the effort she put into my development, including in the form of directing independent studies and supporting my search for outside research funding. I am certain that her efforts opened doors for me that otherwise would have remained closed. I would also like to thank Dr. Maura Hametz, my outside reader, who brought her intimate knowledge of the northern Adriatic region to this study and always kept me honest. Her comments pushed me to consider more closely the relationship between events in the small corner of the world I study and what was happening beyond that corner. She encouraged me to question my categories of analysis and provided far more attention to the project than I could have ever expected, for which the manuscript is not only much more readable, but also more accurate. Thanks are also due to Dr. Robert Blobaum and Dr. James Siekmeier for their contributions as members of the dissertation committee. Dr. Blobaum pushed me to question my methodological and analytical concepts, including my understanding of everyday history and everyday ethnicity. Unfortunately for readers, the true value of his comments will be clear only at a later date, when I release a revised version of this dissertation in book form. Dr. Siekmeier brought to the project an invaluable familiarity with the US National Archives and expertise in Cold War history. He not only made me aware of sources I otherwise would have overlooked, but also helped me situate my study more clearly in a global Cold War context. In addition to my committee members, I owe an enormous debt to the many librarians and archivists who made my research possible. The librarians at WVU put up with endless Inter- iii Library Loan requests for obscure, foreign-language sources, and only in the rarest cases were they unable to get their hands on the materials in question. Without heir tireless work, my study would be on much shakier historiographical ground. The librarians at the Narodna in študijska knjižnica in Trieste and the Biblioteca statale Isontina in Gorizia opened their doors to allow me to examine collections of old newspapers and Italian-language books, for which I am incredibly thankful. In no particular order, thanks also go out to the staffs of the Archivio centrale dello Stato, Archivio di stato di Gorizia, Archivio di stato di Trieste, Archivio di stato di Udine, Archivio generale della Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri, Istituto Gramsci, Biblioteca comunale di Monfalcone, Archivio storico diplomatico del Ministero Affari Esteri, Arhiv Republike Slovenije, Istituto friulano per la storia del movimento di liberazione, Istituto regionale per la storia del movimento di liberazione di Friuli-Venezia Giulia, and the National Archives and Records Management in College Park, MD. I am especially thankful for those Italian archivists who stuck with me through my research process, even though my poor spoken Italian made things difficult. They were always willing to listen through the grammatical errors and help me find what I was looking for. Special thanks go out to Federica Puglisi, Emanuela Zollia, and Annalisa Filippo of the Archivio di Stato di Gorizia for helping me gain legal access to otherwise sealed records, as well as to Tadej Cankar for helping me with the same process at the Arhiv Republike Slovenije. And then there is the issue of funding. In this regard, I owe a considerable debt to both the Cesare Barbieri Endowment for Italian Culture and the American Council of Learned Societies. The former’s Research Grant in Modern Italian History allowed me to expand the scope of my research and take a deeper dive into the relevant archival material. Moreover, the Cesare Barbieri Endowment’s invitation to speak at Trinity College and the questions posed by Dr. John Alcorn and Dr. Dario del Puppo helped identify weak points in my analysis. The ACLS’s generous Dissertation Completion Fellowship afforded me the opportunity to write and polish the dissertation to the best of my ability. In addition to professional debts, I am substantially indebted to family and friends for their constant support. First, thanks are due to my parents, Kurt and Ann Gramith, and my sisters, Kirstin and Rachel, for seeing me through five years of undergraduate studies and seven years of graduate school. I recall speaking with my parents toward the end of high school about skipping college and going straight into the workforce. (Really, my plan was to make it big with my band, but with the benefit of hindsight, “workforce” sounds much better.) How strange it is that their success in narrowly convincing me to give college a try turned into over a decade of additional schooling and a terminal degree. It was the right path for me, and their support never flagged along the way. Throughout the dissertation process, they showed (or at least convincingly faked!) interest in my research, and their periodic visits to the Mountain State provided much-needed periods of rest and fun.