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 1914Tsar 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 1914Pilsudski

• 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 1914Russian 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