The article deals with youth work units – brigades of the Venezia Giulia zone A after the Second
World War, mostly in the year 1946. The Union of antifascist youth of the Venezia Giulia organized
these work brigades in order to participate in youth work campaigns in Yugoslavia. Youth
work units of the zone A were presented by the pro-Yugoslav forces as a manifestation of the
people’s desire to unite Venezia Giulia with Yugoslavia. The participation of Italian youth in these
brigades represented only a part of the complex relationship between the Slovenian and the Italian
anti-fascist movement in this territory. The principle of Italo-Slavic brotherhood had guaranteed
the ideological basis of this cooperation. In fact, the brotherhood had been regarded as a
precondition for the affiliation of young Italians in the work brigades. Sent from Venezia Giulia
zone A to the fields of youth voluntary work in Yugoslavia in 1946, these bi-national brigades can
be considered as the most direct and intense form of implementing the policy of the Italo-Slavic
brotherhood, as well as one of its greatest trials.
