Overview
In this book, Tomas Balkelis explores how the Lithuanian state was created and shaped by the Great War from its onset in 1914 to the last waves of violence in 1923. As the very notion of independent Lithuania was constructed during the war, violence is seen as an essential part of the formation of Lithuanian state, nation, and identity. War was much more than simply the historical context in which the tectonic shift from empire to nation-state took place. It transformed people, policies, institutions, and modes of thought in ways that would continue to shape the nation for decades after the conflict subsided.In telling the story of the post-WWI conflict in Lithuania, War, Revolution, and Nation-Making in Lithuania, 1914-1923 focuses on the soldiers and civilians involved in the conflict, rather than the strategies and acts of politicians, generals, or diplomats. The volume's two main themes are the impact of military, social, and cultural mobilizations on the local population, and different types of violence that were so characteristic of the region throughout the period. The actors in this story are people displaced by war and mobilized for war: refugees, veterans, volunteers, peasant conscripts, POWs, paramilitary fighters, and others who took to guns, not diplomacy, to assert their power. This is the story of how their lives were changed by war and how they shaped the society that emerged after war.
Full Product Details
Author: Tomas Balkelis (Senior Research Fellow, Senior Research Fellow, Lithuanian Institute of History, Vilnius)
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 16.40cm
, Height: 2.30cm
, Length: 24.10cm
Weight: 0.476kg
ISBN: 9780199668021
ISBN 10: 0199668027
Pages: 198
Publication Date: 22 March 2018
Audience:
College/higher education
,
General/trade
,
Undergraduate
,
General
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: To order
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.
Reviews
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. * Joachim Tauber, European History Quarterly *
Author Information
Tomas Balkelis received his PhD in History at the University of Toronto in 2004. After graduation he worked at the Universities of Manchester and Nottingham. During 2009-2013, he was a European Research Council Postdoctoral Research Fellow at University College Dublin, and in 2015 and 2016 he was a visiting scholar at Stanford. He is the author of The Making of Modern Lithuania (2009) and a co-editor of Population Displacement in Lithuania in the 20th century: Experiences, Identities, and Legacies (2016).
