Klaipėdos universitetas

The Lithuanian Taryba (Council of Lithuania), which was formed in September 1917, was the first body to concern itself with the foreign representation of modern Lithuania. After the peace treaty was concluded in Brest-Litovsk between Germany and the Bolshevik Russian government, and after Lithuania’s independence was recognised by the Kaiser (both in March 1918), the Taryba took up caring for war refugees and other issues. This involved dealing with former territories of European Russia to the east of the Ober Ost area, part of which had been occupied by Germany in early 1918, while in another part the Bolsheviks and the White Russians were competing for power in the emerging Russian civil war. The Taryba appointed authorised representatives for these purposes. The article examines how the Lithuanian Taryba and the German military authorities in the Ober Ost perceived the concept of an authorised representative, and explores the appointment, the responsibilities and the activities of two representatives of the Taryba, Teresė Prapuolenytė and Veronika Janulaitytė Alseikienė. The author examines whether their social status and education played any role in granting these women the power to represent the Lithuanian Taryba abroad.

The Great War had a devastating impact on some Lithuanian immigrant families living in Great Britain. In 1917, after Britain and Russia signed a military agreement, the mobilisation was announced of foreign men living in Britain who were former subjects of the Russian tsar. The Lithuanians had to decide quickly whether to join the British army or return to Russia and fight on the Russian side. For disadvantaged immigrant families, the mobilisation of men and the loss of the main breadwinner were a major misfortune, and the British government had to provide benefits to the families of the mobilised soldiers. After the war, only a few of the Lithuanian men who had been transported to Russia were able to return to Britain to rejoin their families. The repatriation of these families to Lithuania was organised through the efforts of the British government and the Lithuanian Embassy in London. This article uses historiography and the Lithuanian weekly newspaper Išeivių draugas, published in Scotland from 1914, to describe the Lithuanian community during the Great War, and to analyse how the outbreak of the war, and in particular the Convention of 1917, affected the families of Lithuanian immigrants. The author focuses on the situation of Lithuanian women, their activities during the war, and their concern for the fate of their mobilised men and their families.

The rebellion that broke out in the Northwest Province (Severo-Zapadnyi Krai) of the Russian Empire in January 1863 and spread over the former lands of the Commonwealth of the Two Nations is not a new topic for historians. The involvement of women in the insurrection of 1863 has also been studied for a long time, with the first research appearing even before the Second World War. So far, Polish, Belarusian, and to some extent Lithuanian, researchers have raised questions about the forms and methods of women’s protests in this insurrection, and the changes in their social role, and analysed women’s memories and images of women. This article is the first to address memoirs of the January insurrection written by women from the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania who observed the events of the insurrection in these lands. The women’s memoirs are analysed here as a whole, in order to reveal some common features. In contrast to previous studies that have looked at women’s memoirs of the rebellion in order to answer questions about the course of the rebellion, the theme of deportations, or women’s ability to balance social activities and family responsibilities during the insurrection, this paper raises the more general question of what women did and did not write about in their memoirs about the insurrection between 1863 and 1864, and why.

Although war refugees are mostly a subject of research involving war and military conflict in the 20th and 21st centuries, forced migration also accompanied many earlier military conflicts. This article focuses on war refugees during the Deluge period in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, when the Commonwealth was simultaneously at war with Muscovy (1654–1667) and Sweden (1665–1660). At that time, the idea of offering temporary shelter for refugees was increasingly recognised, and relief for refugees gradually became a concern of the nascent modern state. In the Commonwealth, the Cossack uprising and the aforementioned wars of the mid-17th century made the issue of war refugees particularly relevant. The article first clarifies the terms that were used to refer to migration and war refugees (zbieg, advenus, profugus, exul and wygnaniec). Later, it examines whether state institutions in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL), a constituent part of the Commonwealth, attempted to deal with refugees’ problems. Finally, on the basis of scarce and fragmentary sources, the author makes an attempt to trace the fate of women refugees from different parts of the GDL in Žemaitija (Samogitia) in 1654–1667, and their behavioural strategies, and to answer the question to what extent the decisions of the women refugees were independent, or dependent on the will of their spouse or their family.

The role of women in Prehistoric Baltic societies has so far received relatively little attention. As for the Balts (east Baltic tribes), they have hardly been studied in this respect at all. The paper deals with aspects of warfare involving east Baltic women, fragmentary as they might be, based on archaeological data and written source material. The authors analyse archaeological data, asking if it might help to reveal whether there were any female warriors in ancient Baltic societies (this can be done by analysing grave goods and anthropological features of human remains found in graves). Investigations of female remains sometimes also reveal traces of violent traumas, potentially related to or even directly caused by war. The article also analyses Medieval written sources describing the role of east Baltic women in military conflicts. Although they are very scarce and do not provide clear answers, some rare and unique cases featuring female activity in military society reveal the importance of their role in tribal decision-making.

Monte Carlo experiments are an efficient tool for investigation of the Laser-Induced Damage Threshold (LIDT) testing with pulsed lasers. In this study, the approach of sequential Monte Carlo search is developed for LIDT testing with bundle of laser pulses and compared with the approach of Sample Average Approximation (SAA). The likelihood ratio test is applied to accept or reject the hypothesis about the data distribution.

This paper presents a new algorithm for a batch of task makespan minimisation in heterogeneous multigrid computing. Heterogeneous grids are known to cause straggling task problem that increases task execution makespan. Existing task distribution algorithms solve this problem by using information about the compute node capacities or task sizes. However, such information may not always be available. Task stalling solves both problems. However, this method is described for queuing systems consisting of only two heterogeneous servers or grids. Our proposed algorithm is based on an improved task stalling method, allowing it to distribute tasks in systems consisting of two or more grids. Experiment results show reduced task execution makespan by up to 19,92% compared to FIFO. This allows us to conclude that the new algorithm is suitable for a batch of task makespan minimisation in heterogeneous multigrid computing.