Fiume National Council

On 30 October 1918 two authorities were operating in Fiume, today’s Rijeka, each invoking the same right of peoples to self-determination. In the morning, in the former palace of the Hungarian governor, a commissioner of the National Council of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs in Zagreb announced that he was assuming state authority in the city in its name, and hung the Croatian flag on the building. The same day the Italian National Council of Fiume, formed by Italian city councillors, proclaimed the city’s union with Italy. The British chronology of the war recorded both events under that date: the handing over of Fiume to the Croats by the Hungarian authorities, and the proclamation by the “National Council” of independence and of the wish for union with Italy.

Fiume was a peculiar city of the monarchy. Since the time of Maria Theresa it had been a separate body (corpus separatum) of the Crown of Saint Stephen, subject directly to the government in Budapest and not to the Croatian authorities. It was Hungary’s main port and an important centre of shipbuilding. According to the 1910 census, nearly half of its roughly 50,000 inhabitants spoke Italian and about a third Croatian. Across the river Rječina, however, lay Croatian Sušak, and the whole surrounding coast was inhabited by Croats. The Treaty of London of 1915 had promised Italy Istria and part of Dalmatia, but left Fiume outside its borders.

Hungarian rule ended within a week. On 23 October Croatian soldiers of the 79th Infantry Regiment mutinied. According to a telegram read out in the Hungarian parliament, they disarmed the Hungarian Honvéd troops, occupied the railway station and public buildings and hoisted Croatian flags. During the night of 28–29 October the last Hungarian governor, Zoltán Jekelfalussy, handed over his powers to the mayor, Antonio Vio, on the understanding that the next day they were to pass to a Croatian national committee subordinate to the National Council in Zagreb, and left the city. On 29 October representatives of the Croats occupied the governor’s palace, and the Croatian Sabor declared that Croatia, together with Rijeka, was severing its ties with Hungary. At nine in the morning on 30 October the commissioner Konstantin Rojčević invoked this resolution in a written protocol and took power in the name of the National Council. According to the Italian historian Danilo Massagrande, however, Croatian authority did not extend much beyond the palace, the harbour master’s office and the railway station.

The Italians of Fiume had no intention of accepting this. On the evening of 29 October the enlarged city council turned itself into a national committee, soon named the Italian National Council, whose chairman was the physician Antonio Grossich, a surgeon known for introducing tincture of iodine to disinfect the skin before operations. On 30 October the Council declared that Fiume, hitherto a separate body constituting an Italian national commune, was exercising the right of peoples to self-determination and on that basis proclaimed its union with Italy. The Council regarded the situation as provisional, placed its decision under the protection of America and awaited its confirmation by the peace conference.

For several days there was dual power in the city. At the beginning of November Italian warships entered the port, in the middle of the month Italian troops marched in, and later American, British and French units too. The Croatian committee dissolved itself, and the Italian National Council governed the city under the protection of the Italian army. The Fiume question became one of the sharpest disputes of the Paris Peace Conference. In September 1919 the city was seized by the volunteers of the poet Gabriele D’Annunzio. In 1920 Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes recognised the Free State of Fiume, and in 1924 Fiume was annexed to Italy.