The places in the hinterland of the town of Milje, in the northwest of the Istrian peninsula, changed several state formations until they were annexed to the former Yugoslavia in 1954. Before that, a series of events took place in the first half of the 20th century, which had a strong impact on the lives of the people there, forcing them to pledge allegiance to various political ideologies and systems, and sometimes even against their will attaching a certain national identity to them. In this article I shed light on the important events that took place in the decades before the annexation of a small part of the former zone A of the Free Territory of Trieste to Yugoslavia in 1954, and which subsequently influenced the extremely difficult decision that the inhabitants of the Milje hinterland had to make: whether to stay or to migrate.