Riccardo Zanella

Who was Riccardo Zanella?

Riccardo Zanella was the only elected president of the short lived Free State of Fiume.

Zanella was born to an Italian father and Slovene mother in Fiume, Austria-Hungary. He attended Hungarian Commercial School in Fiume and Budapest. Soon he was professor of bookkeeping in the same school in Fiume, but year later he resigned. During the clash between Liberalism and radicalism in Hungary, Zanella emerged as the local leader of the Kossuthist faction in Fiume. He became the leader of the Autonomist Association, known also as Autonomist Party in Fiume, after Michele Maylender resigned in 1901. With Zanella the party abandoned its liberal stance and turned to the Kossuthist independence party for support. Embracing a staunch Italian nationalist stance his popularity grew especially among the lower and middle classes, eventually becoming elected mayor of Fiume in 1914, but the nomination was vetoed by the Emperor Franz Joseph. During World War I, Zanella fought in a Hungarian unit on the Russian front where he promptly deserted to the Russians. In 1916 he arrived in Rome where he started an agitation campaign for the Italian annexation of Fiume. After the War ended in 1918 he came back to Fiume where he was greeted as a hero, but quickly distanced himself from the Italian National Council in Fiume that assumed the powers in the City. After Gabriele D'Annunzio on September 12, 1919, seized the city of Fiume, Zanella led the Autonomist opposition to the D'Annunzio’s regime of occupation and personal dictatorship. His chance came as D'Annunzio ignored the Treaty of Rapallo and declared war on Italy itself, finally surrendering the city in December 1920 after a bombardment by the Italian navy.