Nation and Memory in Eastern Europe Lecture 13 The Great War and the Russian Revolution Week 4, Spring Term
Nation and Memory in Eastern Europe
Lecture 13The Great War and the Russian
Revolution
Week 4, Spring Term
Outline
1. National concepts and war aims2. The Great War in Eastern Europe3. The two Russian revolutions 4. “Ostraum”: The treaty of Brest-Litovsk5. Civil wars, state-building and revolutionary wars6. Results
Putzger, Historischer Weltatlas, pp. 106-107
Russian Concepts 1914
Tsar and supporter of autocracy
• Strengthening of the authority of the Tsar
• Territorial gains in West and South (Constantinople)
• Defeat of Germany and Austria• Occupation of East Galicia and
Bukowina – Liberation of Russian (East Slavic – Ruthenian) population
• To win the support of the Poles – Promise of autonomy of unified ethnic Polish territory under tsarist rule
Society
Constitutional reforms, participation of society
Territorial gains in West and South (Constantinople)
Defeat of Germany and Austria Occupation of East Galicia and
Bukowina – Liberation of Russian (East Slavic – Ruthenian) population
To win the support of the Poles – Promise of autonomy of unified ethnic Polish territory under tsarist rule
Roman DmowskiJózef Pilsudski
Polish Concepts 1914
Pilsudski• Independence
• Together with Austria and Germany
• Federation of Poland with Ukraine, Lithuania etc.
• Rights of minorities• Jagiellonian Poland –
territory in the East• Enemy No. 1: Russia
DmowskiAutonomy of a unified
Poland under rule of the Tsar
Together with Russia
Polish nation state
Assimilationist“Piast Poland” – territory in
the WestEnemy No. 1: Germany
Ukrainian Concepts 1914
Russian Ukraine• Defeat of Austria• Autonomy of ethnic
Ukrainian territory in a constitutional or democratic Russia
• Unification of Ukraine under Tsar
East GaliciaDefeat of RussiaAutonomy (Ukrainian
Crownland) in Austria, partition of Galicia and Lodomeria
Unification of Ukraine under Austrian Emperor
The Bolshevik Concept
• Imperialist war for all participating states
• True socialists must not support the war effort of their country
• Revolutionaries should transform the imperialist war into civil wars
• World revolution beginning with the weakest imperalist state: Russia
Outline
1. National concepts and war aims2. The Great War in Eastern Europe3. The two Russian revolutions 4. “Ostraum”: The treaty of Brest-Litovsk5. Civil wars, state-building and revolutionary wars6. Results
Outline
1. National concepts and war aims2. The Great War in Eastern Europe3. The two Russian revolutions 4. “Ostraum”: The treaty of Brest-Litovsk5. Civil wars, state-building and revolutionary wars6. Results
Revolutions in Russia
Alexander Kerenski Vladimir I. Lenin
8 January, 1918 President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points (Delivered in Joint Session of the Congress, January 8, 1918)
XIII. An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant.
What we demand in this war, therefore, is nothing peculiar to ourselves. It is that the world be made fit and safe to live in; and particularly that it be made safe for every peace-loving nation which, like our own, wishes to live its own life, determine its own institutions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by the other peoples of the world as against force and selfish aggression.
Outline
1. National concepts and war aims2. The Great War in Eastern Europe3. The two Russian revolutions 4. “Ostraum”: The treaty of Brest-Litovsk5. Civil wars, state-building and revolutionary wars6. Results
Brest-Litovsk, February 1918
Mykhailo Hrushevsky1866-1934
Pavlo Skoropadsky1873-1945
Symon Petliura1879-1926
Outline
1. National concepts and war aims2. The Great War in Eastern Europe3. The two Russian revolutions 4. “Ostraum”: The treaty of Brest-Litovsk5. Civil wars, state-building and revolutionary wars6. Results
Territorial claims after the First World War (from Davies: God’s Playground...)
dtv-Atlas zur Welt-Geschichte. vol. 2, 1979.
Polish-Ukrainian War 1918/19
Outline
1. National concepts and war aims2. The Great War in Eastern Europe3. The two Russian revolutions 4. “Ostraum”: The treaty of Brest-Litovsk5. Civil wars, state-building and revolutionary wars6. Results
Eastern Europe after the Great War
• Multinational states or federations with problematic legitimacy: Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia
• New nation states: Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia• Profiteers of Versailles: nation states with nationalist
ideologies and considerable national minorities: Poland, Romania
• Defeated countries with reduced territory, but high degree of ethnic homogeneity, where part of the nation lives outside the borders of the nation state: Hungary, Bulgaria – revisionist
• Loosers of the state building wars 1918-1921: Ukraine, White Russia – revisionist
• Revolutionary (Soviet) Russia – revisionist
Putzger, Historischer Weltatlas, pp. 122-123