page_title: Rijeka
section_title: Aftermath of World War II
hierarchical_section_title: Rijeka / History / Aftermath of World War II
caption_attribution_description: Hrvatski: Astronomski centar u Rijeci na brdu Sveti Križ. Dana 18. svibnja 2001. godine članovi Akademskog astronomskog društva Rijeka, astronomi amateri i građani, dobili su Riječku zvjezdarnicu.
context_page_description: Rijeka is the principal seaport and the third-largest city in Croatia. It is located in Primorje-Gorski Kotar County on Kvarner Bay, an inlet of the Adriatic Sea and in 2011 had a population of 128,624 inhabitants.
  Historically, because of its strategic position and its excellent deep-water port, the city was fiercely contested, especially among Italy, Hungary, and Croatia, changing hands and demographics many times over centuries. According to the 2011 census data, the majority of its citizens are Croats, along with a large minority of Serbs, and smaller numbers of Bosniaks and Italians.
  Rijeka is the main city and county seat of the Primorje-Gorski Kotar County. The city's economy largely depends on shipbuilding and maritime transport. Rijeka hosts the Croatian National Theatre Ivan pl. Zajc, first built in 1765, as well as the University of Rijeka, founded in 1973 but with roots dating back to 1632 School of Theology.
  Apart from Croatian and Italian, linguistically the city is home to its own unique dialect of the Venetian language, Fiuman, with an estimated 20,000 speakers among the autochthonous Italians, Croats and other minorities.
context_section_description: The city's fate was again resolved by a combination of force and diplomacy. Despite the requests of the Fiuman government in exile and the initial promises of large autonomy for the city by the Yugoslav authorities (up to it becoming a Federal Republic of Yugoslavia), the city became part of Yugoslavia (within the federal state of Croatia). The situation was formalised by the Paris peace treaty between Italy and the wartime Allies on 10 February 1947, despite the protests of the last democratically elected government and its president in exile Riccardo Zanella, and the attempts by experienced Italian foreign minister Carlo Sforza to uphold the previous Wilsonian plans for a Free State solution, with a local headquarter for the newly created United Nations. Once the change to Yugoslav sovereignty was formalised, and in particular in the years leading to the Trieste Crisis of 1954, 58,000 of the 66,000 Italian speakers were gradually pushed to either emigrate (they became known in Italian as esuli or the exiled ones from Istria, Fiume and Dalmatia) or endure a harsh oppression by the new Yugoslav communist regime during the first decades of its existence. The Yugoslav communist party opted for Stalinist approach in solving the local ethnic question in particular after the Autonomist-sympathisers gained massive support in the first local elections held on the city's territory after the war.
  The discrimination and persecution many inhabitants experienced at the hands of the Yugoslav officials in the last days of World War II and the first years of peace still remain painful memories for the esuli and somewhat of a taboo topic for Rijeka's political milieu, which is still largely denying the events.
  Summary executions of alleged fascists (often well-known anti-fascists or openly apolitical), aimed at hitting the local intellectual class, the Autonomists, Italian public servants, military officials and even ordinary civilians (at least 650 executions of Italians took place after the end of the war) forced most ethnic Italians to leave Rijeka/Fiume in order to avoid becoming victims of harsher retaliation. The removal was a meticulously planned operation, aimed at convincing the hardly assimilable Italian part of the autochthonous population to leave the country, as testified decades later by representatives of the Yugoslav leadership.
  The most notable victims of the political and ethnic repression of locals in this period has been the Fiume Autonomists purge hitting the autonomists still living in the city, and now associated in the Liburnian Autonomist Movement. They actively helped the Yugoslav partisans in liberating the region from Fascist and Nazi occupation, and despite receiving various promises of large autonomy for Fiume inside the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, they were eventually killed by the Yugoslav secret police OZNA in the days leading to and following the Yugoslav army's victorious march into city.
  In the subsequent years the Yugoslav authorities joined the municipalities of Fiume and Sušak and after 1954 less than one third of the original population of the now united municipalities (mostly what was previously the Croat minority) remained in the city. Thus the old municipality of Fiume lost in these years more than 85% of the original population. The city was then resettled by immigrants from various parts of Yugoslavia, changing heavily the city's demographics and its linguistic structure. These years coincided also with a period of reconstruction and new industrialisation. During the period of the Yugoslav communist administration in the 1950s–1980s the city became the main port of the Federal Republic and started to grow once again both demographically and economically thanks to the fact it got once again a solid hinterland, as well as the refurbishing of its traditional manufacturing industries after the war, its maritime economy and its port, now the largest in the country. This paired with its rich commercial history allowed the city to become the second richest (GDP per capita) district of Yugoslavia
caption: Astronomical Centre Rijeka
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