Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis

The Grand Duchy of Finland was the first region to declare independence from the Russian Empire in the final stages of the First World War. However, the declaration of independence in December 1917 was insufficient, and Finland fought a war of independence until the country’s sovereignty and its democratic political system were finally secured. The fiercest phase of the war was in the spring of 1918. The main parties were, on one hand, the Finnish left, which received support from the Russian Bolsheviks, and on the other hand, the non-socialist groups supported by Germany. The German armed forces played a significant role in the fact that the war ended with the victory of the Finnish democratic government. Previous research has investigated thoroughly the details of the military operations by the German forces, but the role and importance of the German armed forces in the overall picture of the war has received relatively little attention. This article analyses in more detail what kind of contribution the German troops made. There are indications that their importance was greater than most scholars have estimated.

The article discusses the problem of spatial localization of Lithuanian literature and literature in general in the context of centre / periphery relations. The emphasis is laid upon the relative character of the concepts of centre and periphery, the fact which forestalls the formalistic or unconditional approach to the spatial existence of literature, when it is seen as isolated from historical, social and metaphysical implications of time. The author enters into polemics with postmodernistic treatment of culture and literature where hierarchic value system is no longer valid. He also proposes that modern culture is no longer literary-central and directs attention to the dramatic shifts in value-judgements and the consequences of the process.

In geo-political terms, Lithuania was never a maritime state. In 1916, however, its politicians formulated a clear claim to obtain access to the sea and have a commercial port for the first time. The claim appeared in a memorandum attributed to Antanas Smetona, but signed by 12 politicians and presented to the German military authorities of the Ober Ost. So far, historians have not questioned the intellectual origins of the claim. Discussing the emergence of the issue of Lithuania’s sea access, the article seeks to identify the reasons for the ventilation of this issue in the Lithuanian-language press, and to show how it arose and how it manifested itself in political practice. The main argument is that the origin of the idea of Lithuania as a maritime state should be associated with the period of the First World War, whereas Lithuania’s claim for access to the sea cannot be explained solely by the idea of uniting Prussian and Russian areas inhabited by Lithuanian speakers.

In the evaluation of the goals of the countries that fought in the First World War, one of the most persistent stereotypes testifies to the particular aggressiveness of the Kaiser’s Germany, and its exclusive role in the outbreak of the war. This opinion is directly related to Lithuania, when it comes to the expansionist approach of Germany with respect to the western border zones of the Russian Empire. The paper looks for the origins of these historiographic stereotypes, by analysing how the goals of Germany in the First World War were presented in Soviet historiography, and, in a broader sense, in socialist bloc historiography; and how Lithuanian historiography in the period of restored independence has been impacted by the approaches of foreign researchers. After looking at studies of recent resonant historiographic trends with respect to the military aims of the Kaiser’s Germany, and their traces in the Lithuanian study of history, the author makes an attempt to verify the validity of the statement about ‘German expansionism’ as regards Lithuania and the neighbouring region in the initial period of the war, which has been little explored in Lithuania.

The proclamation to the Polish nation on 14 (1) August 1914 signed by Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich has interested more than one researcher. Researchers from Russia and other countries routinely refer to the document in their analysis of the Polish question. However, the proclamation itself has not been an object of research for a long time, although the circumstances of its appearance, its content, and its multiple political consequences might contribute not only to an analysis of the Polish question, but also, in a more general sense, to studies of the national question in the Russian Empire. The paper deals with the history of the proclamation to the Polish nation, the reasons for its appearance, and the characteristics of the text. It analyses the issue of its authorship, and the impact of the proclamation on general public feeling, and also discusses the consideration of the Polish question in the Council of Ministers of the Russian Empire during the First World War.