By contrast, the local\nSlovene, Croat, and Serb National Council\u2014also established at the end of\nOctober\u2014along with the South Slav nationalists, obviously\nsaw the Italian army\u2019s entrance as a national defeat. If these groups had been\n\u201cliberated\u201d by an army, it was two days earlier, when Serbian troops were\nwelcomed into the city with flowers and the singing of the Serbian royal hymn.[2]<\/sup><\/a> On 15 November Serbian forces were\nwelcomed as \u201cour brave knights\u201d by the only local Croatian-language daily, Primorske novine<\/em>, the same\nnewspaper entitled their 19 November issue as \u201cItalians Occupied Rijeka.\u201d[3]<\/sup><\/a> The Italians were viewed as \u201coccupiers\u201d because the Serbian presence\nwas short-lived: following Inter-Allied higher orders, and after negotiations\nwith Italian occupation authorities, Serbian troops had abandoned Fiume\/Rijeka\nbefore Italians troops arrived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 On the edges of these divergent interpretations of national liberations stood the political considerations of the local socialist party. The same day that Italian troops came into Fiume\/Rijeka, the International Socialist Party of Fiume organized a public meeting. The speakers included Samuele\/S\u00e1muel Mayl\u00e4nder (Si\u00f3fok, 1866\u2013Fiume\/Rijeka, 1925), Giuseppe Quarantotto (Pola\/Pula, 1889\u2013Fiume\/Rijeka, 1939), Stjepan Turkovi\u0107, a representative of the Social Democratic Party of Croatia and Slavonia, and Pietro\/P\u00e9t\u00e9r\/Petar Kemper (Nagykikinda, Kikinda, 1881\u2013Fiume\/Rijeka, 1953). After speeches in Italian, Croatian, and Hungarian, the members voted forward an agenda that demanded that Fiume\/Rijeka become a \u201cfree independent republic under the protection of the Socialist International.\u201d While the aforementioned daily Il Giornale<\/em> simply reported brief news about the meeting, La Bilancia<\/em>, an Italian-language daily formerly loyal to the Kingdom of Hungary and now an Italian nationalist paper, criticized the socialists\u2019 political conduct. The paper ran an article entitled \u201cAre you serious? (Dite sul serio?<\/em>),\u201d[4]<\/sup><\/a> which provides insight into the complicated political situation and existing options for the political organization of the city. Further, by an attempt to stress Fiume\/Rijeka\u2019s local variant of Italian nationalism, the article shows that loyalty to an imagined Italian nation-state was not so consistent as Italian nationalists would claim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The\nsocialists\u2019 request for an independent republic was labeled\nas \u201castounding (sbalorditivo<\/em>),\u201d but the issue was not neglected. In\nfact, the author shows, given this decisive moment of \u201cour political life\u201d that\ndoes not allow for divisions, a need to enlighten the \u201cobfuscated minds of our\nbest workers.\u201d[5]<\/sup><\/a> In the nationalists\u2019 minds, workers were included in the national\ncommunity but, according to the nationalists, they were not completely aware of\nthe political situation. The patronizing attitude towards local workers is\nfurther evidenced: The workers don\u2019t have and didn\u2019t have the opportunity to\ncreate a political culture that would allow them to decide, with needed\ncompetency, on such issues in such a serious moment.[6]<\/sup><\/a> The existence and the effort of the Socialist Party, organized in\ntown since 1903 and with an elected city councilor during the Great War, was\nsimply neglected or erased by the author of this article. Advancing\nalternatives to the city\u2019s annexation by Italy was a sign of incompetence and\nignorance in the author’s view, and not a concrete and valid political claim.\nHowever, discrediting political opponents as amateurs was not enough. An\nadditional element had to be added to the national discourse: the sense of\nsecurity and fear of a foreign enemy invasion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Recalling the timeframe\u2014from\n30 October to 17 November\u2014when the policing\nof Fiume\/Rijeka was mainly assumed by former Habsburg Croatian military units,\nthe article questions the idea of brotherhood between workers of different\nnationalities. After the days of Croatian occupation, and \u201cafter insolent\nCroatian national agitation that incited hate and violence without restrain and\nopenly to prepare to conquer \u2018Italian Fiume\u2019 with armed force,\u201d[7]<\/sup><\/a> mere common sense would be enough to lead any sober person to support\nthe annexation of the city by Italy. The concept of the free republic had to be\nabandoned due to the existing Croatian menace. For the author, Croatian (or,\nmore broadly, Yugoslav) greed is not drowsy and \u201ctomorrow as yesterday it will\nbe necessary to rely on a large or respected state unit.\u201d[8]<\/sup><\/a> Fiume is not San Marino, a territorially\nuncontested city-state, but a big see port\nand industrial developing town that the socialists will not be able to protect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Using fear to maintain and defend Fiume\u2019s Italian character, an argument was developed that counterposes alleged Italian progress and civilization against Croatian\/Yugoslav backwardness and\/or former Habsburg militarism. On one side, socialism, as an ideology, was recognized as having some positive elements as in the case of the Italian Socialist Party. On the other side, the Croatian workers\u2019 organizations were underdeveloped and unable to limit the cupidity of Yugoslav imperialism and militarism. Due to their political weakness, the Croatian socialists were unable to restrain a scattered Yugoslav army led by former Austrian officials from planting the militarist tradition of the Habsburg Monarchy into the new Yugoslav state. Further, cooperation between socialist parties across small states or small republics would not work as well as cooperation inside large national units. For the author, annexation by Italy was in the interest of international socialism and its higher ideals as well as the interests of the local Italian nationalists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally,\nthe article addressed economic arguments. Since Fiume\/Rijeka is a large sea\nport and an important industrial town, it wouldn\u2019t develop well as a small city-state because capitalism would produce\nrivalries and greed that neither the Socialist International nor a future\nLeague of Nations could solve. A pure and simple annexation by Italy\ncorresponds to the economic benefits of the city: only a large, strong state\ncould find the necessary elements to fulfill Fiume\/Rijeka\u2019s full economic and\ncommercial development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By criticizing the socialists\u2019 agenda, the Italian nationalists showed\nthat state alternatives to a mere annexation to\nItaly were valid and considered realistic by the local population. The fact\nthat the multiple weaknesses of an independent state had to be presented to the\npublic was an admission that such ideas circulated. The former Hungarian\npresence, the multinational and multilinguistic practices,\nthe economic bonds with Habsburg lands and multilayered loyalties did not\nvanish overnight. The choices between a South Slav State, Croatia, and Italy\nwere thus not obvious options. Fervent love for any motherland had to be\ninstigated by economic and civilizational arguments as well as by fear of\n\u201cforeigners\u201d and promises of security. Thus, an independent\nrepublic was not an astounding option, but rather an expression of the composite political vision of the\nlocal socialists and their ability to combine and condense the political\nlanguages of Austromarxism and Hungarian social-democracy into a concrete\npolicy option\nthat\nrefused to simply abandon the Habsburg Empire\u2019s economic and political\nframework. In the same article, the socialists at the meeting were skeptically\nestimated to be over a thousand, hence their opponents recognized that the socialists did not have only a few\nfollowers. Therefore, the socialists were taken seriously: their numbers and\nthe arguments behind their political agenda suggests that they were perceived\nas a real threat to Italian nationalist claims. [1]<\/sup><\/a> \u201cLa ferrea volont\u00e0 latina, l\u2019ardente amore di Fiume per la Madrepatria,\nla tenace lotta sostenuta, la viva fiamma che aliment\u00f2 da secoli il nostro\npopolo hanno trionfato ieri\u201d<\/em>. In \u201cLa memorabile giornata di ieri. Lo sbarco\ne l\u2019entrata delle truppe italiane a Fiume\u201d, Il Giornale<\/em>, 18.11.1918, p. 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [2]<\/sup><\/a>\nDaniel Patafta, \u201cPrivremene\nvlade u Rijeci (listopad 1918. \u2013 sije\u010danj 1924.)\u201c, \u010casopis za suvremenu\npovijest<\/em>, br. 1, 2006, p. 202. <\/p>\n\n\n\n [3]<\/sup><\/a> \u201cDobro nam do\u0161li vitezovi\nhrabri\u201c, in Primorske\nnovine<\/em>, 16.11.1918, p. 1 and \u201cTalijani\nokupirali Reku\u201c, in Primorske\nnovine<\/em>,\n19.11.1918, p. 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [4]<\/sup><\/a> \u201cDite sul serio?\u201c, in La Bilancia<\/em>, 19.11.1918, p. 2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [5]<\/sup><\/a> \u201c(\u2026) non ce ne saremmo occupati se non\nritenessimo doveroso rischiarire le menti offuscate degli operai nostri\nmigliori in questo momento decisivo della nostra vita politica che non annette\n(sic!) scissure.\u201c, in Ibid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [6]<\/sup><\/a> \u201cPerch\u00e9 se anche\nl’operaio non ha e non pu\u00f2 avere l’opportunit\u00e0 di farsi una\ncultura politica che gli permetta di decidere in questioni di cos\u00ec grave\nmomento con la dovuta competenza (\u2026)\u201c, in Ibid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/1918local.eu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/DSC05595_1000.jpg\")
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