Tired of Life: Suicides in the Province of Istria during Italian Administration between the Two World Wars

Sa？etak The paper presents and analyses – on the basis of printed sources, archival material (State Archives in Pazin) and newspapers (Hrvatski list, L’Azione, Pu？ki prijatelj, Istarska rije？) – statistical data concerning suicide cases in the Province of Istria registered in the period between 1924 (beginning of official record keeping) and 1940. The data have been compared with the average in the Kingdom of Italy, and the neighbouring provinces of Trieste and Rijeka; which – together with Istria (and Gorizia) – formed the Venezia Giulia region, where the highest suicide rates – at state level – were recorded for the entire interwar period. Many articles, in particular the ones published in the newspaper L’Azione, which frequently and in detail informed about individual suicide cases, as well as police reports, have facilitated judgement forming in the domain of historical sciences regarding the most-represented age, sex and social groups of the Istrians who ended their own lives, as well as concerning their motives and the means used. Towards the end of the 1920s, the fascist discourse present in the media changed, so that the term suicide became a subject of censure as an unwanted element directly opposed to Duce’s vision of demography-related policy and the greatness of Italian nation and Italian spirit