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The fascist Italianization is the process by which, between 1924 and 1945, the Fascist government of Benito Mussolini forced foreign populations living in Italy to assume Italian culture and language.
This program of Italianization aimed to suppress all the linguistic minorities such us Slovenes and Croats in the Julian March and Zadar, German-speakers (Bolzano, Val Canale) or Francoprovençals (Aosta Valley and Piedmont). Under this program, these ethnic groups were pressured to adopt Italian names, attend Italian language schools and churches and speak only the Italian language in public. The minorities institutions were closed, foreign toponyms were translated and immigration of Italians from other regions of Italy was also encouraged. The Italianization of surnames was executed on a legislative level - laws and decisions were brought, in which foreign names were forbidden or "restored in the original Italian form."
With regard to Istria and Dalmatia, some Slovenians and Croatians willingly accepted Italianization as a compromise required in order to gain full status as Italian citizens, and favour upward social mobility; most, however, resisted, as far as possible, these policies, sometimes with the support of local Catholic clergy. A Slovenian choirmaster Lojze Bratuž, who led several Slovenian language church choirs and thus resisted persecution of Slovenians in the area around Gorizia, was arrested on December 27 1936, tortured and forced to drink gasoline and motor oil.
The policy affected also the inhabitants of Dodecanese, conquered by Italy in 1912. Although the islands were overwhelmingly Greek-speaking, punctuated only by a relatively small Turkish-speaking minority and even smaller Ladino-speaking Jewish minority (with few Italian speakers), schools were required to teach in Italian, and the Greek Orthodox religion of most of the inhabitants was strongly discouraged. These measures caused a good deal of Greek emigration from the islands, replaced by a moderate amount of Italian immigration.
In 1939 Hitler and Mussolini reached an agreement on the status of Germans living in the province of Bolzano-Bozen: they could emigrate to Germany (or its new territories) or stay in Italy and accept their complete Italianization. As a consequence of this "Option in South Tyrol," South Tyrolean society was deeply riven. Those who wanted to stay ("Dableiber"), were condemned as traitors, those who left ("Optanten") were defamed as Nazis. Because of the outbreak of the World War II, this agreement was never fully accomplished.
See also
- Italianisation
- Cultural assimilation
- Linguicide
- Italia irredenta
- Option in South Tyrol
- Prontuario dei nomi locali dell'Alto Adige
- TIGR
References
- Regio decreto legge 10 Gennaio 1926, n. 17: Restituzione in forma italiana dei cognomi delle famiglie della provincia di Trento