Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis

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.

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 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.

The government of the Republic of Latvia began creating a penal system as soon as it took control of the territory it claimed. According to the international understanding, imprisonment was not only seen as the isolation of a person, but also included serious steps in ‘correctional practices’. The article deals with the first stage of the creation of a penal system in Latvia, of which the end can be linked to the ‘Instructions for Prison Employees’, the first law regulating prisons in the Republic of Latvia, which was passed on 16 April 1921. This stage coincided with the period when Latvia switched to peacetime order after the end of the War of Independence. By presenting an overview of the creation of the state penal system, the author highlights the most important steps taken by the prison administration, and the conditions the state prison system faced.

Estonia was a post-imperial country where the question of how to develop a citizen loyal to the new nation-state arose after the First World War. Seen by some as being composed of the ‘best part of the Estonian nation’, the army was considered to be a good tool for the effective training of citizens. In order to fulfil the idea of the army as a ‘school of nation’, the crucial issues were the creation of its own military traditions, language policy, and the education of personnel. The leadership of the army tried to eliminate the influence of the former Imperial Russian army, invented new military traditions in the national spirit, and actively cultivated nationalist ideas. The article analyses the education of Estonian military personnel in this regard, discussing how nationalism, language policy, cultural training and history lessons helped to embody the vision of the army as the school of nation.

In the interwar years, Finland and Estonia were characterised by the fact that in both countries exceptionally broad linguistic and cultural rights were given to national minorities, compared with the situation in the rest of Europe. There were several factors behind this. One was the relationship between ethnic groups from a historical perspective. Another was each country’s internal debate on the kind of social order in general that was to be built. The third was how politics in Finland and Estonia was influenced by international trends and theories on how national minorities should be treated. The article analyses how national minorities were taken into account in the Finnish and Estonian constitutions which held true in the period between the two world wars, and why account was taken precisely in a certain way. At the same time, it considers what kind of views in this regard were presented by different political parties, what kind of debates were held in the parliaments of both countries, and how the matter was dealt with by other significant interest groups.