Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis

For many societies in East Central Europe and the Baltic region, the First World War did not truly end in 1918. The wartime conditions of that year set the stage for the Council of Lithuania to pass a resolution restoring Lithuania’s independence. Born amid conflict, and striving to establish its sovereignty, Lithuania began forming its own army in the autumn of 1918. However, building the Lithuanian armed forces required two years of intense engagement in regional conflicts. Initially, the army relied on voluntary enlistment, but this approach proved disappointing due to the low number of volunteers. As a result, the Lithuanian government implemented compulsory military service in early 1919. This article examines a widespread phenomenon that emerged during this period: the evasion of military service by Lithuanian men. On average, one in five men eligible for the draft failed to report to the draft office, and some conscripts who were enlisted subsequently deserted. The article analyses the causes of the evasion of military service, and explores specific instances of evasion in 1919 and 1920.

The events that took place in Lithuania, both during the struggle for the revival of the Lithuanian state (1917–1918) and during the years of its sovereignty up to 1940, aroused the interest of the Ukrainian public. Both nations, Lithuania and Ukraine, went a similar way in implementing their national state projects. As the project of sovereign Ukraine failed, however, Lithuania became important, because it provided significant support to the Ukrainian liberation movement, and was perceived among nationalist Ukrainian elites as a historical and natural ally. The article shows how the priorities and vectors of Lithuanian foreign policy were covered by the Ukrainian press. The author discusses the period between the world wars. An integral part of the article is a list of publications in Ukrainian and Ukrainian-language periodicals devoted to these questions.

Wilsonianism, the political philosophy of President Woodrow Wilson of the USA, was seen in Europe in 1919 as a way out of the chaotic and almost hopeless situation in international relations that had emerged in the autumn of 1918. The philosophy established a new ideology of international relations based on the equality of sovereign states, a doctrine of collective security, and the preservation of peace and stability. In European and world political history, this was the beginning of a geo-political experiment that, to a large extent, continues to this day. New entities in international politics, such as the Lithuanian state, proclaimed in 1918, had to adapt to the new ideology as well. The essay provides an outline of the stimuli and obstacles to Lithuanian foreign policy in that direction in the period between the two world wars. Based on sources from Lithuanian and Russian archives, published documents and historical research, the author discusses the links between Lithuanian foreign policy and its controversial historical heritage, complex domestic political processes, and attempts to solve the problems it faced in its cooperation with Bolshevik Russia (the USSR).

The article is devoted to the new historical investigations on the problem of the Lithuanian National Movement (“Sąjūdis”) and the “Polish issue” in Lithuania: the intrinsic situation and the interventions of outside in the end of 1980-ies – beginning of the 1990-ies. The so called “Polish issue” in Lithuania – both in its full historical dimension and in the special acute meaning that appeared in the end of 1980-ies – since a long time finds itself in the field of the scientific and civil attention. Our paper is an attempt to lead this issue out of the borders of only Lithuanian-Polish controversial discourse and to consider it in the context of all the dramatic history of the national movements in the period of the Soviet Union’s disintegration, in the system of political provocations which the communist regime, doomed already to its downfall, tried to use for repression against its contestants.

The article is devoted to the new historical investigations on the problem of Lithuanian-Polish relations in interwar period, as a first signs of a thaw. In the beginning of the 1930’s the political situation in Europe changed. Lithuanian and Polish politicians had to look for new ways to resolve the conflict between the two countries. Lithuanian foreign minister S. Lozoraitis had a real opportunity to put an end to the prolonged conflict. He had to finish the period of Lithuania’s previous political orientation and to start a new period of foreign policy, which is mentioned in historiography as a beginning of “the new course”.