Abstract

This chapter examines the court's decision in the Paulovich case, the implementation of their ruling, and its impact on the application of surname legislation. It demonstrates how, even under the strictures of national dictatorship, local authorities adopted various legal strategies and approaches that affected the experience of local populations, and that periodic violence and overt repression were not the only tools Fascists employed to promote quiescence in the borderland. The Paulovich case served as a precedent in subsequent surname restoration cases, and the chapter shows how the surname campaign and its implementation in the borderland continued to provoke nationalist controversy until the outbreak of the World War II. The chapter reveals rifts between local officials and national authorities, illuminating the tensions that surfaced between officials charged with applying the nationalizing laws and those responsible for overseeing national legal standards and administration.

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