Abstract
Reviewed by: Joachim Tauber, University of Hamburg, Germany
Between 2009 and 2013 Tomas Balkelis took part in a research project ‘Paramilitary violence in Europe and the wider world 1917–1923’ at the University of Dublin. This monograph is the result of that project. Balkelis gives an account of the ‘making of modern Lithuanian society through the period of continuous war’ (1). His focus is on the role of violence within this process: ‘What is the significance of this unremitting violence for the emergence of the Lithuanian state and identity?’ (4).
The author begins with a description of the situation in Lithuania during the Great War. There was no abundant enthusiasm when news of the war reached the Lithuanian countryside; most of the drafted men were not overzealous to fight for Tsar and Russian fatherland (17). Balkelis makes it clear that violence against civilians started almost on the first day of the war, with Russian soldiers looting German villages and German soldiers looking for valuables in Lithuanian villages a few months later (18–19). After the crushing defeat of the Russian army in 1915, more than 500,000 people were left homeless and fled or were deported to the East. The majority of these victims were Jews, because the Russian military believed in preventive measures against those thought to be collaborators. The German occupiers weren’t any better: highly efficient administrative plundering and forced labour were key elements of German rule (27–8). The transformative effect of the years 1914–1918 is clearly described: ‘… the region became an epicenter of violence, economic insecurity, and social strife’ (33).
The next chapter focuses on the nation-building efforts in Lithuania. The author paints a vivid picture of the politics of the Taryba under German tutelage. After the German defeat, the Polish–Lithuanian clash over Vilnius became immediately evident. Lithuania became a territory of violence through many different forces: the German army and later Freikorps, Bolshevik troops, Polish soldiers and the first units of the Lithuanian army. Balkelis gives an overview of the ethnic groups that were taking part in the clash. There were ‘Two visions of Lithuania’ (78) that had a Socialist-Bolshevik and a national concept as their core. The different aims often intermingled: ethnic conflicts leading to international disputes and confrontations. But there also was a connection between national and social upheavals among the Lithuanian population. Before the Red Army came into the country, a kind of grassroots Socialist revolution happened in some small towns and villages that led to the creation of short-lived local soviets (83–4).
The author coins the term multidirectional war ‘rather than a series of “liberation,” “civil” or “revolutionary” wars’ (96). He tries to distinguish between ‘three types of players: those that performed state-sanctioned violence, those that acted as semi-independent paramilitary agents, and those that engaged in ethnically or socially motivated violence on a local level’ (96). The militarization did not come from afar, but ‘was a self-generating process’ (120). Balkelis provides an interesting overview of the history of the paramilitary Lithuanian Rifle Union (LRU). In May 1919, a new wave of violence erupted: the Polish–Lithuanian conflict that soon impacted the Polish–Soviet war culminated in heavy fighting between Lithuanians and Poles in the Suvalkija region and the capture of Vilnius by ‘mutineering’ Polish troops in October 1920.
Balkelis’ arguments for a multidirectional war are very convincing. He tells the story of Lithuanian independence with a new perspective, focusing on the different agents of violence. In doing so he bridges the gaps between World War I and the subsequent battles and struggles. ‘The period 1914–1923 resulted in the creation of a nation state. I hope that this book has shown that the process of its emergence was violent, multifaceted, full of contingencies, and hardly predetermined’ (163). Indeed, this is one of the great merits of the book: it gives a coherent narrative of these vintage years and it shows that violence had its input in forging a national identity in Lithuania. But Balkelis is not overstretching his argument: He opposes any thesis that advocates a direct line of brutalization between 1918 and World War II (158).
One point has to be made: if we follow the thesis of Balkelis (and I do), one can hardly speak of a multidirectional war after the loss of Vilnius to Zelkigowski and the Lithuanian-Polish truce on 29 November 1920. The author argues that only in May 1923 did the ‘war violence’ that had started in summer 1914 end (2). Balkelis bases his argument on the armed gangs that still existed until 1923, but these are more or less local phenomena, especially at the demarcation line to the Vilnius region, where the Lithuanian authorities were slow to establish their rule. Elsewhere in Lithuania law and order were accomplished before 1923.
Nevertheless, this is a well written, interesting book with the convincing general thesis that violence by armies and paramilitary formations and arising out of ethnic and social tensions is a key element of the nation-building efforts in Lithuania.