The Emergence of New States in Eastern in 1918—Lessons for All of Europe

The Emergence of New States in in 1918—Lessons for All of Europe

Adam Balcer

WiseEuropa Królewska Street 2/26 Warsaw 00-065, Email: [email protected]

Abstract: The year of 1918 was a crucial point in the of Europe. Its importance does not only stem from the end of , but also from the establishment of new states. Eastern Europe was particularly an arena where many new states emerged after the dissolution of tsarist Russia. The abovementioned process was correlated with the outcome of World War I (the defeat of the on the Western Front and their victory on the Eastern Front against the tsarist Russia resulting in imposing their protectorate over Eastern Europe) but simultaneously it was infl uenced by the 1917 Bolshevik originating from a structural crisis of Russia. The legacy of nation-building processes, taking place in the period of 1917–1921 in the European part of the tsarist Russia— even when some of the states did not manage to survive— occupies a key role in the historical memories of those countries. The importance of this legacy originates from the fact that these states often constituted the most progressive nation-building eff orts in the world. The wider context of these developments and the important interlinkages existing between them are very often unfamiliar to many Europeans today. Despite that, the -building attempts, undertaken in Eastern Europe between 1917 and 1921, had a huge impact on the trajectory of European history. Contextualising this particular academic enquiry with the events of 1918 and benefi ting from methodological advantages of process tracing, our project represents an attempt to restore (or, if necessary, build from scratch) a communicational system for sending a historical message to a wider Europe. A century doi:TalTech 10.2478/bjes-2021-0001 Journal of European Studies TalTech Journal of European Studies Tallinn University of Technology (ISSN 2674-4619), Vol. 11, No. 1 (33) 3 Adam Balcer

after, while celebrating the Finnish, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian and Polish truly big anniversaries in 2017–2018, Europeans have already forgotten how interconnected and interlinked the 1918-bound events had been and by how much those events had affected the entire European continent as well as the international system.

Keywords: history of Europe, independence, international system, World War I

In November 2018, when the world was commemorating the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, WiseEuropa, a Polish independent think tank together with Tallinn University of Technology (), Latvian Institute of International Affairs, the city of Pori (), Czesław Miłosz Centre of Vytautas Magnus University () and journal The New Eastern Europe launched the project ‘The Emergence of New States in Eastern Europe in 1918—Lessons for All of Europe’. The process of the project’s implementation was co-funded by the European Commission within the framework of the program ‘Europe for citizens’ (European Remembrance). Within the project, a special issue of The New Eastern Europe was published, an exhibition was created and six conferences were organised. On a concrete note, the project-generated findings were introduced in the Ballroom of the Tyszkiewicz-Potocki Palace, the University of Warsaw in Poland (20 March 2019), the Historical Presidential Palace of the Republic of Lithuania in Kaunas, Lithuania (25 April 2019), the Conference Room of Latvian War Museum in Riga, (10 June 2019), the TalTech Law School/Department of Law at Tallinn University of Technology in Estonia (16 September 2019), the Satakunta Museum in Pori, Finland (3 October 2019), and the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium (4 February 2020). Finally, this Special Issue of TalTech Journal of European Studies is dedicated to the main theme of the project, namely the fight for independence of Eastern European states at the end of World War I and in the postwar period and its legacy for contemporary Europe.

Indeed, 1918 was a crucial year in the history of Europe. Its importance does not only stem from the end of World War I, but also from the establishment of new states. Eastern Europe was particularly an arena where many new states emerged after the dissolution of tsarist Russia. The abovementioned process was correlated with World War I (the defeat of the Central Powers

TalTech Journal of European Studies 4 Tallinn University of Technology (ISSN 2674-4619), Vol. 11, No. 1 (33) The Emergence of New States in Eastern Europe in 1918—Lessons for All of Europe occupying most of European and part of tsarist Russia), but simultaneously it was influenced by the Bolshevik Revolution originating from a structural crisis of Russia. In fact, the process started before the end of World War I with the declaration of independence of Finland, which was issued in December 1917 and internationally recognised in early 1918. The same year Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland also gained and maintained independence. Unfortunately, other states which announced independence in 1918 and gained at least partial international recognition (as was the case for Azerbaijan, Armenia, , and some others) were destroyed by the between 1920 and 1921. Many more short-lived bids for independence or autonomy occurred at that time in the former , both in Europe and Asia, but were crushed by the Bolsheviks. All of these states sometimes cooperated closely between themselves against common enemies (mostly the Bolsheviks), but sometimes they fought fiercely against each other. Moreover, these states constituted the avant-garde of European and democratisation.

The legacy of nation-building processes taking place in the period of 1918– 1921 in the European part of tsarist Russia—even when the states did not manage to survive—occupies a key role in the historical memories of the citizens of these states. The importance of this legacy originates from the fact that these states often constituted the most progressive nation- building efforts in the world. The wider context of these developments and the important interlinks existing between them are very often unfamiliar to many Europeans today. Despite that, the state-building attempts undertaken in Eastern Europe in 1918 had a huge impact on the trajectory of entire Europe and even the world. In line with the argumentation of the American historian Joshua Sanborn, the demise of Russian Empire should be treated as the first stage of the twentieth-century phenomenon of decolonisation, which after World War II expanded into the other continents (Sanborn, 2014, p. 5).

World War I contributed decisively to the in Russia and, in consequence, to the creation of the . Immediately after the war, the Bolsheviks managed to reconquer huge parts of Eastern Europe, striving to achieve independence by dividing the continent for the first time. That partition constituted a prequel to the , which divided Europe for almost half a century after World War II. The history of Europe after World War I is seen mainly through the prism of the international order established at a peace conference in Paris in 1919 and subsequently called the ‘Versailles system’. However, in Eastern Europe, the interwar

TalTech Journal of European Studies Tallinn University of Technology (ISSN 2674-4619), Vol. 11, No. 1 (33) 5 Adam Balcer order was constructed on the basis of the Treaty of Riga (18 March 1921), signed between Poland and Bolshevik Russia. According to the treaty, Moscow finally recognised the independence of Poland, Finland, the Baltic States, and the division of Ukraine and . Therefore, the international order established in Europe during the should, in principle, be called the Riga-Versailles one. The successful defense of independence allowed Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland to finalize their nation-building processes and create modern political, social and cultural institutions in the interwar period. After World War II, this legacy played an enormous positive role helping the Baltic nations and Poland to maintain social cohesion under and successfully re-establish their states as independent (the Baltics), sovereign (Poland) and democratic after the fall of the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, the interwar period gave Finland the opportunity to undertake a spectacular civilizational leap to become one of the most modern nations in the world during the second half of the 20th century.

A century since the wars of independence (1918–1921), the division between the countries which succeeded in the fight and those that failed is still noticeable. Characteristically of the context, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the only countries which managed to defend their independence between 1918 and 1921 became the EU Member States. And even if certain efforts failed in this period, they left a positive imprint. As the Canadian- Polish historian Jerzy Borzęcki (2008, p. 276) pointed out, even though that which the federalist program promoted—particularly by Poland—did not prevail, it forced Moscow to maintain the illusion of Belarusian and Ukrainian independence. As a result, it contributed to the establishment of the Soviet Union in 1922 as a federation of republics, which was composed of the four republics of Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, and the Transcaucasian Soviet Socialist Republic (which was made up of Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan) inspired by the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic. The federal structure of the Soviet Union, though often only nominally, was different from the centralised system of tsarist Russia. In 1991, after the collapse of the USSR, it became the foundation for the creation of over a dozen newly independent states.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union, accompanied by the change in political systems (1989–1991), looks, at a first glance, similar to the events of 1917– 1921. However, Boris Yeltsin and behaved in a definitely more self-constrained way towards non-Russian nations than and Anton Denikin had. Nevertheless, Russia, under President Vladimir

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Putin, became a genuine successor of White and Red Russia, attacking Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014. The Russian aggressions represented a reaction to (the Rose Revolution, the Revolution of Dignity and the Euromaidan) in both countries. In fact, many observers perceive the revolutions as a continuation of the nation and state-building processes of the Ukrainian and Georgian people that started in 1918 and that were interrupted by the Soviet conquest.

Moreover, many of the conflicts that erupted after the dissolution of the Soviet Union—for instance, , Karabakh and the uprisings in Chechnya—were often instrumentally presented by the participants as a return to the postwar period (1918–1921). For the pro-Russian separatists, the Bolshevist legacy in Eastern Europe has remained a significant source of inspiration. During the Russian aggression against Ukraine, which began in 2014, the legacy of the –Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic, established in 1918 by the Soviets against the Ukrainian People’s Republic was revived. In February 2015, the “legislature” of the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR), supported by Russia, adopted a resolution declaring the DNR to be the legal successor to the Donetsk–Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic. The authorities of the Donetsk People’s Republic claimed—falsely—that its flag was based on the flag of the Donetsk–Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic. Moreover the Soviet of Azerbaijan in 1920 (a local self-proclaimed revolutionary committee launched “riots” and requested intervention from the Red Army) may be treated as a source of inspiration for Russia’s current hybrid war against Ukraine based on the so-called “little green men”. In fact, a few decades later the scheme served as a blueprint during the Soviet in Hungary (1956) and (1968). However, the anti-Bolshevik liberation ideas, such as Prometheism and Intermarium (Between the Seas), formulated in the postwar period (1918–1921) impacted the international reality. They were cultivated in the interwar period, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union they reentered in the public discourse in Eastern Europe, and are now present in foreign policies of regional states. Moreover the alliances established between the nations during the wars of independence (1918–1921) reemerged after the fall of the Soviet Union. The Baltic Assembly (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) and the Nordic-Baltic Eight (a regional cooperation format that includes Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, and Sweden) constitute the best exemplifications of this phenomenon. These initiatives are solidly founded on the cooperation between the Baltic and Nordic states in the wars of independence (1918–1921). However, the period of 1918–1921 also has

TalTech Journal of European Studies Tallinn University of Technology (ISSN 2674-4619), Vol. 11, No. 1 (33) 7 Adam Balcer a wider European context concerning the development of values standing behind the EU integration. Describing the legacy of the Democratic Republic of Georgia, Hans-Dietrich Genscher (as cited in Papuashvili, 2012, p. 99), the long-standing Federal Foreign Affairs Minister of Germany, rightly pointed out that “[a]t that time it [the 1921 Georgian Constitution] already advocated such values as liberty, democracy and rule of law, which the modern Europe is based on currently”.

Our Special Issue addresses this context in greater details. Professor Louis Clerc with his contribution ‘A Case in Relations between Great Powers and Small States—France’s Recognition of Finnish Independence, 1917–1918’ introduces the general discourse on France’s interactions with “nationalities” during World War I, contextualising the discussion with the geopolitical environment of the winter 1917–1918. Professor Vesa Vares (‘An Honourable U-turn? Finland and the New Europe after the End of the First World War’) talks on Finland’s position at the time, underlining the fact that the Versailles treaty in 1919 did not directly concern Finland to push the country towards a bumpy road of adjusting to disappointments and demands. Professor Maciej Górny and his ‘Not All Past is Legacy: Echoes of 1917–1923 in Contemporary East ’ discusses parallelisms between the social and political realities of East Central Europe around 1917–1923 and the current state of affairs. Dr. Andrejs Gusachenko and Vineta Kleinberga make their contribution on ‘The Emergence and Restoration of the State: Latvia in 1918 and 1990’, underscoring an extreme complexity of both de jure and de facto recognition of a newly independent state. Professor Ēriks Jēkabsons’ article (‘The Attitude of the United States to the Baltic Region in 1918–1922: The Example of Latvia’) deals with the attitude of USA to the newborn independent Baltic States, using Latvia as an example. Finally, Professor Klaus Ziemer with his contribution on ‘The Emergence of New States in Eastern Europe after World War I: The German Impact’ presents a particular pattern of German policy towards the Baltics, until the Treaty of Rapallo was concluded with the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1922.

Adam Balcer is program director at the College of Eastern Europe (Poland), Senior Fellow at WiseEuropa (Poland) and national researcher at the European Council on Foreign Relations. He also gives lectures at the Centre for East European Studies at the University of Warsaw. In 2018–2020, he headed the project titled ‘The Emergence of New States

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in Eastern Europe in 1918–Lessons for Entire Europe’ at WiseEuropa (Poland), which was co-funded by the European Commission. He has published several books and many reports and articles on Central Eastern Europe and the Black Sea region.

References

Borzęcki, J. (2008), The Soviet-Polish Peace of 1921 and the Creation of Interwar Europe, Yale Scholarship Online, Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.12987/yale/9780300121216.001.0001 Papuashvili, G. (2012), ‘A retrospective on the 1921 Constitution of the Democratic Republic of Georgia,’ Engage, vol. 13, no. 1. Sanborn, J. A. (2014), Imperial Apocalypse: The Great War and the Destruction of the Russian Empire, Oxford Scholarship Online, Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199642052.001.0001

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