Page 99 - Studia Universitatis Hereditati, vol 11(2) (2023)

er, they were also fighting, and the police sea change in the study of borders. During
came to make peace. Until they [the states the recent history of border studies, there
involved, note PK] agreed on the border and has been a shift from the consideration of
established the national borders according borders as mere geographical demarcations
to the law.... so, with these stakes… the house to a perspective that emphasizes the chang-
was right on the border line... here was the ing meaning of borders, different types of
border where the house was and the yard... borders with different functions, and the so-
they tried to divide the yard and the house cial construction of borders.
in half... it was all hypocrisy and bad neigh- In this perspective I am not interested in
bours... and this poor poor man was so tor- studying the post-war political circumstances,
mented that he went at night to move the disputes, antagonisms, negotiations and demon-
stakes, so his house would be left with the strations of political power, but how people living
whole yard. But the best fields still remained on the newly established border – which abrupt- 99
under Yugoslavia on the other side, in Ga-
ti brovica [village in Northern Istria, note PK]. ly interrupted ‘traditional’ interconnections and
interdependence in the area – managed to ad-
And that man needed a permit every time
he went to work on his land, and that was the just to the new reality. What significantly char-
acterized the second half of the previous centu-
ta even after the border was settled... that hate ry, especially the first decades after the war, was
dispute that remained for years and years,
the sudden absence of the ‘other side’ of the ter-
remained until death... [Interlocutor 14]
However, different experiences show dif- ritory, a territorial discontinuity. As one of my
interlocutors explained: ‘My mother used to say
di were only children when the demarcation line was fascism, before there was Austro-Hungary,
there was a big of change... before, before there
ferent points of view. For some people who
there was one state, Italy was one country and all
was set, the memories may be different and not
of a sudden there was a border’ (Interlocutor 7).
that ‘traumatic’: ‘I don’t remember when they
here but they were giving chocolate, they were giv- the city (Trieste) and its rural hinterland were everyday life in the borderland area between yugoslavia and italy after wwii ...
Economic, social and family ties between
were fixing… [the demarcation line, note PK],
severed. As my interlocutors pointed out, ‘Back
ing chocolate to children… there were Ameri-
then it was one country, there were no prob-
cans and English living next door, the Scottish
were marching through the village singing with
lems, people went to Istria for goods, and wom-
en went to Trieste to sell goods… lived with each
bagpipes until 1953, the Trieste crisis’ (Interloc-
other... men went to work... and then, once they
utor 15).
These examples clearly reflect the ‘reality’
locutor 8).
of living in the area, which was divided by the
studiauniversitatis
‘newly’ established border. Considering the trea- cut it off... you run out of everything...’ (Inter-
Of course, there was Italy and no one knew
ties mentioned in the previous paragraph, the the border. Then, when the border came it
‘other side of history’ is becoming more compre- was a disaster for the nation [in the sense of
hensible. The official side, consisting of political the people, the population, note PK] to get
agreements, provides only a part of the overall used to it… Then they drew the line and the
circumstances. As explained by the political sci- other system came and there it was. They
entist Bastian Sendhardt (2013, 25–26):
were just used to it anyway, they went to Ital-
For a long time, the study of borders was fo- ian schools at that time too, the ones who
cused on state borders as static ontological were nationally aware, Yugoslavia, Italy… Be-
entities with predominantly physical fea- cause yesterday there was no such thing, it
tures, but the past two decades have seen a was like cutting this table in half. It bothered