engleski

With Time Comes Change? The Evolution of the Yugoslav Public Opinion towards the Trieste Crisis from 1945 to 1975

The aim of the presentation was to show changes in the opinion of the Yugoslav press towards the Trieste Crisis from 1945 to 1975. In 1945, when the Yugoslav Army occupied the city of Trieste and its surroundings, the Yugoslav propaganda machine influenced the public opinion towards the claims for the whole region of Trieste. There was little change in 1947 when the division of the occupied region into Zones A and B was agreed, because Yugoslav public opinion hadn’t shifted towards claims solely for the Zone B. The Yugoslav press continued to instigate absolute claims in the following years, even in 1954 when the Trieste Crisis was officially over and no change towards the acquisition of the city of Trieste had been made. The presentation tried to demonstrate the evolution of the Yugoslav public opinion in 1975, when the Treaty of Osimo was signed, and the reasons it was presented as a good-neighbourly cooperation between Italy and Yugoslavia. The reasons for this change were political and economic, but when one has in mind that the Italian public opinion was highly critical of the Treaty and that some even called for the prosecution of the then Italian Prime Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs for the crime of treason, it is interesting to explore the reasons for the mild Yugoslav stance and the lack of criticism. Based on the most important Yugoslav newspapers and magazines of the aforementioned period, the presentation tried to explain the reasons for the mentioned evolution.

Trieste crisis; Yugoslav-Italian diplomatic relations; Second World War; minority rights; territorial disputes

nije evidentirano