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.

On 13 August 1949, in Užpelkiai Forest in northern Lithuania, on the border of the Grinkiškis and Baisogala rural districts in Radviliškis County, a battle by Lithuanian partisans that had a significant impact on the history of the Prisikėlimas (Resurrection) district took place. The leaders of the Lietuvos Laisvės Kovos Sąjūdis (Movement for the Struggle for Lithuania’s Freedom) operated in this district. Based on the approach of modern conflict archaeology, the authors of the article, helped by volunteers, determined the location of the Battle of Užpelkiai Forest (in the Grinkiškis rural district, Radviliškis County), and collected a lot of new archaeological and historical data, in order to reconstruct the progress of the attack by MGB (Ministry of State Security) troops and the partisan defence. By referring to complex research results, the article gives the surnames and duties in the organisation of all the partisans who participated, as well as the circumstances and progress of the battle. It shows the importance of the Battle of Užpelkiai Forest to the Lietuvos Laisvės Kovos Sąjūdis in 1949–1950. The case study of field research into the battle in the partisan war shows how complex historical and archaeological research complements the picture of the partisan war with facts and artefacts, clarifies or denies old interpretations, and leads us to new ones.

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.