Elections for Fiume/Rijeka’s Constituent Assembly in 1921, Democracy in the Jaws of Nationalism

Abstract

This article analyses the Free State of Fiume/Rijeka’s Constituent Assembly elections of April 1921, where the Italian nationalist bloc sat in opposition to an independentist Autonomist list. Mainly using sources from the State Archive of Rijeka and local newspapers, the article reconstructs the electoral results, provides information on the political lists, elected figures, and the electoral system, examining both the categories of people eligible to vote as well as the division of voters per electoral districts.

The law for the Constituent Assembly elections, written by Italian annexationists, was in practice a majority prize system through which Italian nationalists aimed to secure power. A proportional system was in place for the minority seats, again for the purpose of weakening the political opposition. Aside from the majority prize system, the Assembly was elected by only people with pertinency in Fiume, which excluded a large portion of the population residing in the city-state. However, the law was based on universal suffrage, since it granted the right to vote to men and women alike, aged 20 and above – as well as to a particular category of Fiumian legionnaires aged 18 and above. Yet, the population was divided into two electoral districts, maintaining almost intact the administrative divisions between the city and the suburbs that had existed during the Austro-Hungarian period. This was meant to reduce the possible representation of potentially un-Italian political groupings. Furthermore, people from the territories newly annexed to Fiume in 1921 never voted. The majority prize system was contested by Fiume’s Italian People’s Party, while the International Socialist Party of Fiume criticized the exclusion of people without pertinency. Supporters of the Autonomist Party complained about the inclusion of women, legionnaires, and people who obtained pertinency after 1918, advocating instead for the importance of Fiume’s Statute. However, this protest was mainly a political calculation. The complaints, as well as the criticism against the new electoral law, were unsuccessful. The Constituent Assembly elections were held with more than 2,000 voters compared to the number of voters for the 1919 Italian National Council/City Council elections. Despite the Italian nationalist’s designed electoral law, the electoral struggle resulted in an unexpected victory of the Autonomists, who won the majority of the Assembly’s seats. However, the democratic victory achieved within the frame of an electoral law designed by Italian annexationists was not tolerated by the Italian nationalists, who subsequently burned the ballots, and – a few months after the Constituent Assembly convened – organized a coup d’état. Democracy succumbed to nationalism, first through a rigged electoral system and finally through violence.