Preservare la scuola italiana in Istria. La diplomazia italiana e la questione delle scuole bilingui (1959)

The article deals with the issue of bilingual schools in the former Free Territory of Trieste, a 1959 Yugoslav project aimed at creating in the Yugoslav administered Zone B new schools in which all classes would be taught in both Italian and Slovenian or Croatian. The Italian diplomacy strongly opposed this project, the implementation of which would almost certainly have led to the gradual closure of the schools with Italian as language of instruction provided by the 1954 London Memorandum of Understanding, and, in prospect, to the national assimilation of the Italian minority in Istria. The efforts of the Italian diplomacy were crowned with success: indeed, the Yugoslav authorities dropped the project, which was changed into the inclusion of the study of the Italian language in the Zone B schools with Slovenian and Croatian as language of instruction.