Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis

The archaeological investigations of First World War sites that began in the United Kingdom at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries expanded the concept of Great War research, laid the foundations for the development of modern conflict archaeology, and shaped its theoretical and methodological approaches. In Lithuania, the sites of the First World War (1914–1918) and the Wars of Independence (1919–1920) have not attracted much interest among researchers, and there are almost no published studies to date. This article focuses on the legacy of the First World War and the Wars of Independence in Lithuania, for the first time providing an overview of the archaeological research carried out up to 2023 in trenches, battlefields, and sites of death and burial, analysing the context of the research and presenting its results. Drawing on the experience of the archaeology of the First World War in other countries, the author discusses the state of the research and its future prospects, and offers a definition of the archaeology of the First World War and the Wars of Independence in Lithuania.

This article examines the Baltic Regiment, a military unit of Baltic Germans that served under the Estonian army in the Estonian War of Independence, fighting against the Bolshevik Red Army. It focuses on issues of loyalty and the complex relationships between the Baltic Regiment, the Estonian military leadership and Estonian society. Before Estonia declared independence in 1918, the Baltic Germans were the ruling class in Estonian society, and centuries of tension between them and the Estonian population created challenges for cooperation during the war. These strained relations led the Estonian military leadership to assign the Baltic Regiment to the Russian White Army, keeping the unit at a distance from Estonia. Despite this, the Baltic Regiment fought courageously as part of the Estonian forces and earned recognition, both locally and internationally, as an elite and highly effective combat unit. After the war, the Estonian commander-in-chief General Laidoner highlighted the Baltic Regiment as an example of successful cooperation between Estonia’s diverse ethnic groups.

Works of fiction and memoirs relating to the First World War written in the Lithuanian language or by Lithuanian authors have so far not been a preoccupation of Lithuanian literary scholars. Due to the breadth of the topic, the analysis in this article is limited to the most important works of fiction and witnesses’ memories of the Great War. The first fictional and documentary works analysed in the article were written during the war itself, the last at the beginning of the Second World War. There is quite a large and very varied (from the point of view of artistic quality) amount of this kind of literature. Using methods of narratology and comparison, the author sets out to analyse the main themes, plots and possible influences, while placing the writings in the history of Lithuanian literature.

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.