A Liberation That Was Not Quite Liberation: Partisan and Anti-fascist Women between the Center and the Periphery in the Northern Adriatic

• In Event: Rethinking Yugoslav Revolution II: The Politics of Narratives and Images of Yugoslav People’s Liberation Struggle: Past for Future

Abstract

In North-Adriatic, on the soil of present-day Slovenia, as well as in Austrian Carinthia, the Julian March and Istria, a significant part of the female population was involved in the partisan movement. Despite the great commitment of many women and girls, their contribution to the liberation after the end of the war did not receive widespread institutional recognition. This was not only the case in the border areas of Italy and Austria, where the Anglo-American authorities allowed attempts to restore the traditional hierarchy between the sexes and excluded communist-oriented subjects from public action, but also in socialist Yugoslavia. The paper will problematize the issue of gender in post-war politics, identify the differences between centers of politics and peripheries that became part of neighboring countries, and shed light on the problematic experience of liberation for women belonging to minority contexts outside the Yugoslav state, as well as for those who were excluded from it for ideological and national reasons. The analysis will draw on ego-documents and newspaper sources.

Author

• Marta Verginella, U of Ljubljana (Slovenia)