Integrarsi o allontanarsi dal Paese? Il Pci verso la costruzione della Regione autonoma Friuli-Venezia Giulia (1954-1963)

The essay deals with the Italian Communist Party’s policy towards the territories on the upper Adriatic border, in particular those that were to compose the Friuli-Venezia Giulia Region in 1963 following the signing of the London Memorandum and the return of Trieste to Italy (1954). The outlook aims to analyse in a unified way the inputs of the party’s national leadership and the reactions in the local dimension, considered in its distinct articulations, characteristics of a multiform territory in terms of cultural and social composition. After summarising the reasons for the strong specificity that had characterised the relationship between the Pci and the Italian eastern border during the second world war and in the years of the “Trieste question”, the essay highlights the national and international logics that drove the Pci to focus on the constitution of the autonomous Region, the former essentially linked to the objective of building the ‘national road to socialism’ from below and by alternative routes to the central government, the latter to the plan to enter into a strategic partnership with the League of Yugoslav Communists in function of polycentrism. Lastly, with regard to the local dimension, the essay argues the existence of a dualism in the approach of the Pci Federations in Udine and Trieste to the issue of the Region, embodied in the two main leaders in office at the time, respectively Mario Lizzero and Vittorio Vidali.