Page 100 - Studia Universitatis Hereditati, vol 11(2) (2023)

them terribly; they needed some time to be... (Interlocutor 2) also emphasized this new reali-
The one who could not do that, left. [Inter- ty. He remembers his mother’s experience dur-
locutor 6] ing the FTT years:
It was therefore a two-way situation with My mum and her friends smuggled goods
the urban areas dependent on labour and agri- across the border. It was not really to break
cultural products, and the rural areas on trade the law, but to survive. It was a need because
and jobs. In the years and decades following the there were goods you could not find in zone
end of World War II, the urban centre lost its ru- B… All the women in the village were smug-
ral supply of goods for trade and its workforce. gling… My mum got caught once by the
The other side, the rural area, lost the centre graničarji [border guards], smuggling eggs…
where people sold their products and migrated my dad told me this story later, she was
100 for work, and which enabled them to carry out ashamed and didn’t want to talk about it…
their principal economic activity and increase
she went to prison for a few days…controls
their income (Verginella 2021; Kalc 2008; Pa- were very strict… but 90% of people smug-
studia universitatis hereditati, letnik 11 (2023), številka 2 / volume 11 (2023), number 2
njek and Lazarević 2018). It is important to em- gled to have a better life. ti
phasize that the interconnections or interrela- Our mothers also went; my mother went
tions existed on both sides and this new reality in the evening. They used to take eggs, tra-
caused an ‘absence’ on both sides of the border, pa, wine, and then there was the border,
causing a drastic loss of income and a possible fall there was a fence, and they had to crawl un- ta
in living standards.Suddenly divided by a new der the fence to sell the robes the next morn-
state border, the population reacted in different ing… yes, at night, because they carried a bit
ways. The main goal was to maintain economic more. I remember our aunt Ema from Šan-
ties with Trieste. The historian Marta Verginel- toma [near Koper, note PK], my father Vic- di
la explains that most of the population in the ru- tor’s sister; she and our mother and all the
ral areas, regardless of their political, ideologi- women together brought 200 eggs. My aunt
cal or national affiliation, continued to cross the came once a week to collect the money. [In-
border and work in Trieste. In 1947, for example, terlocutor 7]
around 2,000 workers and people who sold their
products in Trieste went there every day. The Yu- These examples show that since the early
goslav communist authorities in zone B tried to modern period, it was women in particular who here
obstruct mobility across the demarcation line, as travelled to the urban areas to sell the surplus of
they considered this practice of going to work in their agricultural products. For example, women
the capitalist ‘other’ side a bad example. It was an purchased grain in Trieste, used it to make bread
ideologically controversial activity. The Yugoslav and then sold it back to the city. This type of ac-
authorities implemented several direct or indi- tivity also enabled a better economic standard as
rect sanctions to prevent this transit (Verginella well as women’s economic independence and an
2021). We need to understand that in the period important role in decision-making in the family
after the end of World War II, the town of Kop- (Verginella 2021).
er and its hinterland were still ‘underdeveloped’ As has been mentioned, in the years 1947
and unindustrialized (Žitko et al. 1992). Most of to 1954, crossing over to zone A of the FTT was
the inhabitants ‘made their livelihoods by fish- limited by the Yugoslav military government.
ing, seafaring, salt farming, agriculture, retail Severe restrictions and regulations were intro-
trade and crafts’. An important work activity duced to limit transit between the zones. The studiauniversitatis
involved daily migration to Trieste but the war problem was that qualified workers who were
and the post-war demarcation aggravated the sit- needed in zone B were working in Trieste in-
uation (Kralj and Rener 2019). One interlocutor stead of in the communist zone. Even former