Working towards ‘An Unforeseen Miracle’ Redux: Latvian Refugees in Vladivostok, 1918–1920, and in Latvia, 1943–1944

2007 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 479-494 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALDIS PURS

AbstractDuring the First World War the survival of hundreds of thousands of Latvian refugees, dispersed across the Russian Empire, overlapped with issues of identity. Latvians in Siberia and the Far East created a refugee organisation complete with military, diplomatic and cultural programmes for themselves and their homeland. The key players attempted to recreate the same organisational trajectories and outcomes during the Second World War, under very different geopolitical conditions. This article presents new archival research and suggests new interpretations of the dynamic nature of political organisation, refugee experience and identity in Latvia through the first half of the twentieth century.

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 37-46
Author(s):  
Igor I. Barinov ◽  

This article sheds some light on the early life of Kazys Škirpa (1895–1979), a prominent military offi cer and statesman of interwar Lithuania. Škirpa was best known for his efforts to re-establish Lithuanian independence with the support of Nazi Germany after his country was annexed by the Soviet Union during the Second World War. For this reason, evaluation of his personal biography has previously been neglected by scholars. Striving to fi ll this research and knowledge gap, this paper hypothesises that the formation of the future politician was deeply infl uenced by processes that took place during his youth in Russia. Škirpa’s biography offers a fascinating insight into changes in the Russian Empire. The changes included the two trajectories of Russifi cation; “from above” and “from below” and the transformation of the loyalty principles as well – social- religious loyalty became ethnonational. Russian governmental policy was to categorise its population on the basis of formal criteria. Škirpa’s biography demonstrates how the representatives of various ethnic groups (including Lithuanians) bypassed bureaucratic peculiarities to develop their national identity, which worked against the raison d’être of the empire. However, at the same time these representatives of the various ethnic groups remained “ideal subjects” of the Tzar. It was the First World War that contributed to the realisation of the national and political aspirations of such ethnic communities. The article also includes some of Škirpa’s previously undiscovered personal documents, which were found in the Russian archives.


Author(s):  
Igor Lyubchyk

The research issue peculiarities of wide Russian propaganda among the most Western ethnographic group – Lemkies is revealed in the article. The character and orientation of Russian and Soviet agitation through the social, religious and social movements aimed at supporting Russian identity in the region are traced. Tragic pages during the First World War were Thalrogian prisons for Lemkas, which actually swept Lemkivshchyna through Muscovophilian influences. Agitation for Russian Orthodoxy has provoked frequent cases of sharp conflicts between Lemkas. In general, attempts by moskvophile agitators to impose russian identity on the Orthodox rite were failed. Taking advantage of the complex socio-economic situation of Lemkos, Russian campaigners began to promote moving to the USSR. Another stage of Russian propaganda among Lemkos began with the onset of the Second World War. Throughout the territory of the Galician Lemkivshchyna, Soviet propaganda for resettlement to the USSR began rather quickly. During the dramatic events of the Second World War and the post-war period, despite the outbreaks of the liberation movement, among the Lemkoswere manifestations of political sympathies oriented toward the USSR. Keywords: borderlands, Lemkivshchyna, Lemky, Lemkivsky schism, Moskvophile, Orthodoxy, agitation, ethnopolitics


Author(s):  
Mark Rawlinson

This chapter explores how Anglophone literature and culture envisioned and questioned an economy of sacrificial exchange, particularly its symbolic aspect, as driving the compulsions entangled in the Second World War. After considering how Elizabeth Bowen’s short stories cast light on the Home Front rhetorics of sacrifice and reconstruction, it looks at how poets Robert Graves, Keith Douglas, and Alun Lewis reflect on First World War poetry of sacrifice. With reference to René Girard’s and Carl von Clausewitz’s writings on war, I take up Elaine Cobley’s assertion about the differing valencies of the First and Second World Wars, arguing that the contrast is better seen in terms of sacrificial economy. I develop that argument with reference to examples from Second World War literature depicting sacrificial exchange (while often harking back to the First World War), including Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour Trilogy (1952–61), and William Wharton’s memoir Shrapnel (2012).


Author(s):  
Phillip Drew

Drawing on several examples through history, this chapter illustrates the devastating potential that maritime blockades can have when they are employed against modern societies that are dependent on maritime trade, and particularly on the importation of foodstuffs and agricutltural materials for the survival of their civilian populations. Revealing statistics that show that the blockade of Germany during the First World War caused more civilian deaths than did the allied strategic bombing campaign of the Second World War, and that the sanctions regime against Iraq killed far more people than did the 1991 Gulf War, it demonstrates that civilian casualties are often the true unseen cost of conducting blockade operations.


Südosteuropa ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 274-281
Author(s):  
Dubravka Stojanović

AbstractThe author comments on the political and economic options in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic that started at the beginning of 2020. She revisits responses to the crises of the First World War, the Great Crash of 1929, and the Second World War, sorting them into ‘pessimistic’ and ‘optimistic’ responses, and outlining their respective consequences.


2006 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 441-455 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALAN KRAMER

The Nuremberg tribunal following the Second World War is universally considered as the foundation stone of international law with regard to war crimes and crimes against humanity. It may come as a surprise, however, to learn that the first international attempts to prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity came at the end of the First World War, with trials held at Allied prompting in Turkey and Germany.


2021 ◽  
pp. 096777202110440
Author(s):  
Jonathan R.T. Davidson ◽  
Roger Hart

Bernard Hart was among the most eminent 20th-century British psychiatrists. Following medical qualification at University College Hospital, London, he trained in psychiatry, which included two years studying in Paris and Zurich. He was appointed as the first psychiatric consultant at University College Hospital, then spent some time in Liverpool, where he specialized in treating war neurosis. Early in his career, Hart was one of the first to introduce the ideas of Freud and Janet, and the importance of unconscious processes, to the British public. After the First World War, Hart returned to University College Hospital, where he remained until 1947, building up a flourishing department. Hart was appointed to numerous senior offices and directed the psychiatric section of the British Emergency Medical Services in the Second World War. Hart is believed to be the last psychiatrist to certify someone (John Amery) as being of sufficiently sound mind to die for treason.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerzy Grzybowski

The books presents the life of archbishop brygadier general Sawa (Sowietow). The author explores its successive stages: young years during the First World War, priesthood in the Second Polish Republic, wanderings during the Second World War, service in Polish Armed Forces in the West (as the chief military chaplain of the Orthodox Church), and religious service among Polish citizens abroad after the Yalta Conference.


2002 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Gavron

Amnesties presuppose a breach of law and provide immunity or protection from punishment. Historically amnesties were invoked in relation to breaches of the laws of war and were reciprocally implemented by opposing sides in an international armed conflict. The impact of the two world wars in the first half of the twentieth century, however, had considerable implications not only for the use of amnesties, but also for their legality under international law. The scale of the First World War precipitated a new phase of unilateral amnesty for the victors and prosecutions of war criminals for the defeated aggressor states.1 This precedent was followed after the Second World War,2 with the establishment of the first ‘international’3 criminal court, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. However, the horrors perpetrated during the Second World War also prompted the development of a branch of international law aimed at recognising and protecting human rights in an attempt to prevent such atrocities being repeated.


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