This article analyzes the contested role of bilingualism in the politics of national identity implemented in Rijeka after the Second world war, when the city was integrated into Socialist Yugoslavia. The investigation of the linguistic landscape focuses on the implementation process of visual bilingualism, exploring difficulties, different stages and the eventual removal of Italian signs in the city. The article highlights the approaches of different actors – as the minority institutions and various Party organs – on this particularly visible and crucial issue. The analysis of everyday political confrontation on the city’s public image and the consideration of the ways in which different subjects acted within the general ideological framework stress the tensions in the definition of the relationship between national identities and territories: one of the most sensitive issues in the organization of the Yugoslav socialist state.
