Istrian exodus

The term Istrian exodus refers to the post-World War II departure of ethnic Italians from the Yugoslav territory of Istria, as well as the cities of Zadar and Rijeka.

Istria, Rijeka, and Zadar were ethnically mixed, with Croatian, Italian, and Slovene communities. Istria, Rijeka, and parts of Dalmatia including Zadar, had been annexed to Italy after World War I. At the end of World War II the former Italian territories in Istria and Dalmatia became part of Yugoslavia by the Treaty of peace with Italy, the only exception being the Province of Trieste. The former territories which became part of Yugoslavia are part of the present-day Republic of Croatia.

According to various sources, the exodus is estimated to have amounted to between some 230,000 and 350,000 people (including several thousand anti-communist Croats and Slovenes) leaving the areas in the aftermath of the conflict. The exodus started in 1943 and ended completely only in 1960.

The formal responsibility of the Yugoslav authorities for the exodus is still argued over by historians, but in many cases the pressure put on the ethnic Italians (killings and summary executions during the first years of the exodus, replaced after 1947 by less violent forms of intimidation such as nationalization, expropriation and discriminatory taxation) gave them little option other than emigration.

A Romance-speaking population has existed in Istria since the fall of the Roman Empire, when Istria was fully Latinised.

According to the 1910 Austrian census results (Istria included here parts of the Karst and Liburnia which are not really part of Istria), out of 404,309 inhabitants in Istria, 168,116 (41.6%) spoke Croatian, 147,416 (36.5%) spoke Italian, 55,365 (13.7%) spoke Slovene, 13,279 (3.3%) spoke German, 882 (0.2%) spoke Romanian, 2,116 (0.5%) spoke other languages and 17,135 (4.2%) were non-citizens, which had not been asked for their language of communication. So, in the peninsula of Istria before World War I the Italians accounted for about a third (36.5%) of the local inhabitants.

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