Italienische Sozialdemokratie im österreichischen Litoral

"Adriatic socialism" represents the first comprehensive historical reconstruction of the Italian section of the socialist movement in the Habsburg Empire. The research is based on a very large ammount of sources from Italian, Croat and Austrian archives and libraries. At the core of the analysis are the different features of the socialist movement in the different coastal regions of the Habsburg Empire: Istria, Gorizia & Gradiska, Dalmatia and the very important port city of Trieste. The author analyses the social composition and the political culture of the Italian socialism in Austria, stating that in rural environments socialists maintained still close connections with the liberals, as the clericals were considered as the main opponents. On the contrary, in the industrial and commercial centre of Trieste socialists completely severed such links and developed a strictly orthodox austro-marxist view. A second topic is represented by the influence of the socialist centre in Vienna on the peripherical sections like the Adriatic-Italian one. Socialists in Trieste fully accomplished with the political orientation worked out at the congresses of the party , whereas in the backward areas of Istria and Gorizia they maintained republican and Italian patriotic views. Finally, the third and most important topic of the volume is represented by the Socialist attitude to the "national issue". The Austrian coastal region war a multiethnic environment, where Italians, Croats, Slovenes and Germans have settled and developed an extremely articulated associative culture. Again, only in Trieste Socialists overcame nationalistic bias and pledged for class solidarity which should prevail over nationalistic allegiances. Coping with this topic, Cattaruzza broadly analyzes the relations between the Italian and the Slovenian sections of the social democracy, referring to the respective theoretical solutions given to the "national issue" f.i. by the Slovene Etbin Kristian and by the Italian Jew Angelo Vivante. "Adriatic Socialism" is not only a contribution on the history of Socialism at the time of the Second International but also a study on political culture in the Habsburg Empire, with a special regard of the relationship between a political centre (Vienna) and a very heterogeneous periphery (the Austrian Littoral). "By placing Adriatic movements firmly in the broader context of Central European developments, Cattaruzza has succeeded in her aims - to illuminate the particular history of social democratic movements in the Adriatic regions and to broaden scholars` perspectives on social democracy in the Habsburg Empire" (Maura Hametz, in "Austrian History Yearbook", 2000).