Slovenian Elites in Trieste and Their Role in the Formation of Local Communities

Abstract

This text discusses the formation of Slovenian local elites in Trieste in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A significant part of the analysis presented here concerns the habitus of the elite and the attitudes expressed through the significance they attached to being members of the elite. Drawing on the discourses presented in the Slovenian and Croatian press published in Trieste, as well as biographical sources, this article outlines the vision of society held by the political leaders of the local community. It emphasises how the elites gave expression to their habitus in the public sphere through a variety of institutional activities. I argue that the life of the Slovenian politician and social activist Ivan Nabergoj, a figure central to this text, constitutes an ideal-type committed biography. In conclusion, I address the relationship between the elites and the surrounding community, arguing that elites were representatives of the community while also determining the forms of group belonging by their shaping of mechanisms of consolidation. In this article, I also consider the particularities of the political conditions of Slovenians living in the Slavic-Italian borderlands.