The organization, which is considered to be one of the first antifascist resistance movements in Europe, was composed mostly of Slovenes from the regions that were annexed to the Kingdom of Italy after World War I with the Treaty of Rapallo. Few of its members were also Croats of Istria, where its support was much weaker. It was active between 1927 and 1941. Many members of this organization were connected with Yugoslav and British intelligence services and many of them were militarily trained. The aim of the organization was to fight Fascist Italianization and to achieve the annexation of Istria, the Slovenian Littoral and Rijeka to Yugoslavia.

The TIGR carried out several bomb attacks on Italian and German soil, as well as assassinations of Italian military personnel, police forces, civil servants and prominent members of the National Fascist Party. It also planned a popular uprising against the Fascist regime, which was however never carried out. Because of these actions, it was treated as a terrorist organization by the Italian state.

The organization was dismantled by the Organization for Vigilance and Repression of Anti-Fascism in 1940 and 1941. Many of its members joined the Liberation Front of the Slovenian People during World War II. After the war, many former TIGR activists were persecuted by Yugoslav Communist authorities.

Background

After the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, the Austrian Littoral and the adjacent territories of western Carniola were occupied by the Italian Army. In 1920, they were annexed to the Kingdom of Italy and reorganized under the administrative region known as the Julian March. In 1924, the port of Rijeka (Fiume) was also annexed to Italy and included in the region.

According to the last Austrian census of 1910/1911, the Julian March counted 978,385 people, of whom 49% were Slovenes and Croats, and 43,1% were ethnic Italians and Friulians. The Italians were concentrated in Trieste, on the western coast of Istria, on the Cres-Lošinj archipelago, and in the coastal area around Monfalcone and Grado, as well as in other larger urban centers such as Rijeka and Gorizia. The south-western plains of the Gorizia region was inhabited mostly by Friulian speakers, an ethnic-linguistic group closely related to Italians.

Slovenes and Croats, on the other hand, inhabited the rest of the region, representing almost the totality of the population of Inner Carniola, eastern and northern Gorizia region, the Karst Plateau and in eastern and central Istria. In addition to that, between 30,000 and 40,000 Slovenes lived in the mountainous regions of north-eastern Friuli, known as Venetian Slovenia. An additional 3,000 Slovenes lived in the Canale Valley, a former part of the Austrian Duchy of Carinthia, annexed to Italy with the Treaty of Saint Germain in 1919. All together, more than half a million Slovenes and Croats became Italian subjects after the end of World War I in 1918.

The tensions between the Italian State and the Slovene and Croat minorities arose already during the two years of military occupation (1918-1920), and intensified after the annexation of the former Austro-Hungarian provinces in 1920. While the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy was a multi-national empire, which allowed a relatively large degree of cultural autonomy to the different peoples and ethnic groups, Italy was a nation state, and its governments had little intention to allow the existence of separate national movements and identities on its territories. Issues regarding the use of Slovene and Croatian languages in public administration and in the educational system, became the main point of contention between the Italian authorities and the Slovene and Croat minorities.

The situation was further worsened by the rise of the Fascist movement. In June 1920, the Fascist squads attacked and destroyed numerous Slovene shops and institutions in Trieste, including the Slovene Community Hall, the ''Narodni dom'', which was burned down. This inaugurated the Fascist violence against Slovenes and Croats in the Julian March. In the spring of 1921, several episodes of anti-Slavic violence, which mostly took place in Istria, culminated in Labin miners' rebellion (March-April 1921) and the Marezige revolt (May 1921), in which the Croat and Slovene locals openly revolted against Fascist incursions. Eventually, both revolts were suffocated with the intervention of the Italian police forces.

After the Fascist movement came to power in 1922, anti-Slavic policies were enforced as part of Fascist Italianization. In 1923, the use of Slovene and Croat languages in all public offices, including post offices and means of public transport, was prohibited. In the same year, the Gentile reform declared Italian as the only language of public education; by 1928, all Slovene and Croat schools, including private ones, were closed down. In 1925, the use of Slovene and Croat was prohibited in the courts of law. All Slovene and Croat names of towns and settlements were Italianized. By 1927, all public use of Slovene and Croat languages was prohibited. Children were prohibited being given Slavic names, and all Slavic-sounding surnames were administratively given an Italian-sounding form. The Fascist Italianization went so far as to prohibit Slavic inscriptions on gravestones.

By 1927, all Slovene and Croat associations - not only political, but also cultural, educational and sport associations - were dissolved, as were all financial and economic institutions in the hands of the Slovene and Croat minority. Since 1928, the State law started limiting the use of Slovene and Croat also in the churches, and in 1934, all use of Slovene and Croat in Roman Catholic liturgy (including singing and sermons) was prohibited.

These Italianization policies were accompanied by a State violence directed against all opposition to the regime. Hundreds of Slovenes and Croats were interned in prison camps throughout Italy, while tens of thousands emigrated abroad, mostly to Yugoslavia and South America.

Early activity

In September 1927, a group of Slovene liberal nationalist activists met on the Nanos Plateau above the Vipava Valley, and decided to form an insurgence organization called TIGR, an abbreviation of the names Trieste, Istria, Gorizia, Rijeka. Few months later, another meeting took place in Trieste, where a group connected to the former established the organization ''Borba'' (Fight), which also included some Croat activists from Istria. From the very beginning, the two groups worked in close alliance.

The two organization were formed mostly by liberal nationalist youngsters from Trieste, Kras, Inner Carniola, and the Tolmin district. Between 1927 and 1930, the organization launched numerous attacks on individual members or supporters of the National Fascist Party (both Italian and Slovene), and also killed several members of repressive forces: carabinieri, border guards, military personnel. Several kindergarten, established in Slovene villages in order to italianize and indoctrinate the local children, were burned down. In 1929, the TIGR dropped a bomb at the central editorial office of the local Fascist journal ''Il Popolo di Trieste'', killing two people. The action gained widespread publicity and triggered an immediate reaction by the Fascist regime.

In the Gorizia region, the TIGR organization restrained from openly violent actions, and focused mostly on propaganda and on illegal educational, cultural and political activity among larger strata of the population. The Gorizia section of the TIGR established close connections with the underground Catholic network organized by Christian Socialist activists, centered around the lawyer Janko Kralj and priest Virgil Šček.

In Istria, the TIGR cell was led by the Croatian activist Vladimir Gortan. Differently from most Slovene cells, Gortan opted for open demonstrative actions, such as attacks on police convoys. His most daring action took place in March 1929, during the Fascist plebiscite, when he raided a polling station near the town of Pazin and prevented the plebiscite to take place. Soon afterwards, he was caught by the Italian police and executed.

In 1930 the Italian fascist police discovered some TIGR's cells. Numerous members of the organization were sentenced at the First Trieste trial; four of them (Ferdo Bidovec, Fran Marušič, Zvonimir Miloš and Alojzij Valenčič) were sentenced to death and executed at Basovizza () near Trieste.

Re-organization in the 1930s

After the trial of 1930, the organization quickly re-organized itself under the leadership of Albert Rejec and Danilo Zelen. It expanded its membership and shifted its tactics. Instead of demonstrative attacks on symbolic figures and institutions of Fascist repression, they opted for targeted attacks on infrastructure and high ranking military, militia and police personnel. They also built a wide intelligence network, and established contacts with British and Yugoslav intelligence services. Ideological propaganda was intensified.

While in the late 1920s, the organization had close connection with radical Yugoslav nationalist movements, such as ORJUNA, after the reorganization in the 1930s it adopted a more left wing ideology. Several connections with Italian anti-Fascist organizations were established (including with the organisation Giustizia e Libertà). In 1935, TIGR signed an agreement of co-operation with the Communist Party of Italy. The TIGR nevertheless tried to remain above all ideological divisions, maintaining a close relationship with the local Slovene and Croat Roman Catholic lower clergy and grassroots organizations in Istria and the Slovenian Littoral.

Among the actions planned by the organization, the most daring and far-reaching was probably the attempt on Benito Mussolini's life in 1938. The plan was supposed to be carried out in 1938, when the dictator visited Kobarid (then officially known as Caporetto). The plan was put off at the last minute, most probably because of the pressure by the British intelligence, which opposed such an action in times when Mussolini was conducing an active role in the negotiations that led to the Munich agreement.

After the ''Anschluss'' of Austria in 1938, the TIGR expanded its activity to neighboring Nazi Germany, focusing primarily on bomb actions against crucial infrastructure: railways, and high-voltage power lines. The actions led to a thorough investigation by the Fascist regime, which disclosed most of the TIGR cells in 1940/1941.

After 1941

During World War II, many of its members joined the partisan resistance, although the organization itself was not invited to join the Liberation Front of the Slovenian People.

Aftermath and legacy

After the establishment of the Communist regime in Yugoslavia in 1945, most former TIGR members were removed from public life. The Yugoslav secret police continued to closely monitor some of TIGR's members up to the 1970s. Their activity was removed from the official historical accounts.

In the late 1970s, the first historical accounts on the activity of the TIGR started to appear. Only in the 1980s, however, did their resistance activity started to be appreciated again, with several historical books written on the matter. The historian Milica Kacin Wohinz was one of the first to produce a though study of the movement in a monograph entitled "The First Anti-Fascism in Europe", and published in 1990.

Throughout the 1990s, the history of TIGR received increased publicity and started to be mentioned in public speeches. In 1994, the ''Association for the Nourishment of Patriotic Traditions of the Slovenian Littoral Organization TIGR'' (colloquially known as the "Association TIGR" or "Patriotic Association TIGR") was formed in Postojna, and eventually became the main promoter of the positive evaluation of the TIGR legacy.

In 1997 on the 50th anniversary of annexation of the Slovenian Littoral to the Socialist Republic of Slovenia, the then president of Slovenia Milan Kučan symbolically insignated the organization TIGR with the Golden Honour Insignia of Freedom of the Republic of Slovenia (''Zlati častni znak svobode Republike Slovenije''), the highest state decoration in Slovenia.

Since the 1990s, many monuments and memorial plaques have been erected to commemorate TIGR activists and their activities.

Prominent TIGR members

People linked to the organization

See also

References