Ricerc@Sapienza

The article presents Benito Mussolini’s view of the “Yugoslav Question”, i.e. the future delimitation of the eastern Adriatic coast between Italy and Yugoslavia during the First World War. The future fascist politician underwent a significant transformation during this period and so did his view of Italian-Yugoslav relations. Mussolini carefully manoeuvred between two “extreme” groups of Italian interventionists, one, the so-called rinunciatari, inclined to give significant concessions to Yugoslavia, and the other, demanding Italy’s complete control of the Adriatic.

The article focuses on the main aspects of economic policies in
Eastern Europe after the Peace Treaty of Versailles, when the whole region witnessed
the collapse of the old multinational empires and their replacement with national states
that were theoretically built according to the principle of national self­determination,
though they were in many cases as ethnically mixed as the old empires. As a matter of
fact, the new frontiers did not perfectly correspond to the ethnic divisions among the