Between 1946 and 1947 some thousands people emigrated from Friuli Venezia Giulia (a northeastern region of Italy) heading to the federal socialist republic of Yugoslavia.
The largest group was formed by more than two thousand specialized workers of the Naval dockyards from the city of Montefalcone, the others were mostly farmers, construction workers or unoccupied people from different zones of the Friuli Venezia Giulia plains and mountains regions. They left with their entire families and kids. Those of them who owned a house, even sold their properties.
Many of these people had been fighting in the resistance and partisan war. This fight often had been carried out flanking troops formed by marshal Tito. Going to Yugoslavia for them had the meaning of giving substance to the ideas which they had been fighting for. They left to offer their contribution to the newly formed socialist republic.
But it hasn't been this way in all the cases. Lots of people just emigrated to find a work. Friuli Venezia Giulia at the end of world war two was still a very poor region and it was difficult to get a job.
With the definition of the new borders between Italy and Yugoslavia immediately after the war, a parallel exodus of Italians began from Istria and Fiume, territories which now belonged to Yugoslavia. In many cases the Friulians that arrived in Yugoslavia occupied therefore the houses and the jobs that these people left heading toward the new Italy. The Monfalconias (the inhabitants of Monfalcone), organized in the Communist Party of the Giulia Region, went in particular to the dockyards of Pola and Fiume, whereas the Friulians had been dislocated in various other towns.
From their arrival onwards till summer 1948 the lives of this new emigrants swung between the difficulties of a country rising from the destruction of world war two and their hopes in a new society.
Later on, unexpectedly like a struck of lightning on a bright day, Tito received the condemning of the Cominform, the international political organ of information and collaboration between the socialist parties required by Stalin. Most of the friulian and monfalconian people agreed more or less to the Cominform thesis and declared themselves on Stalin’s and Togliatti’s side.
The idea, on the one side, that Tito had become heretic in regards of the communist orthodoxy dictated by Stalin and the climate of suspect and repression after the resolutions of the Cominform on the other side, forced the Friulians and Monfalconians to leave Yugoslavia and return back to Italy.
But about a hundred of Monfalconian and some Friulian workers could only effectively return to Italy after a number of years and a lot of sufferance. Arrested and condemned for anti-yugoslavic activities they would be detained in Tito’s terrible reeducation-prisons for cominform-communists.
In “The dream of a thing” Nidia, Noemi, Renata, Ermanno, Gigi, Mario and Spartaco remember at a distance of almost 60 years their experiences in Yugoslavia.
The radio documentary is divided in five parts, each of them of twenty minutes duration.

If you’d like to receive a CD copy of  Il sogno di una cosa mail  to info@radioparole.it

Il sogno di una cosa

a radio documentary by Andrea Giuseppini produced by Radioparole and Amis under the patronage of the Cultural Department of the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region (2006)

thanks to: Gian Luigi Bettoli, Ermido Furlan, Luca Marin e Marco Puppini

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Luca Marin, Vita, ideali, anni di galera di Milio Cristian comunista, Cjargne Culture, Cercivento 2004

Pier Paolo Pasolini, Il sogno di una cosa, Garzanti, Milano 2000

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Giacomo Scotti, Goli Otok. Italiani nel gulag di Tito, Lint, Trieste, nuova edizione 2002