Population Displacement in Lithuania in the Twentieth Century: Experiences, Identities and Legacies(43 On the Boundary of Two Worlds)

Population Displacement in Lithuania in the XXth Century: Experiences, Identities and Legacies is an edited volume written by historians from several countries offering a series of ground-breaking case studies on forced migration in Lithuania during and between the two World Wars. Starting with the premise that the mass movement of peoples during and after the Second World War needs to be understood in relation to the population displacement of the First World War, the authors draw on theoretical perspectives ranging from entangled histories, cultural theory and studies of nationalism to trace the ethnic, social and cultural transformation of Lithuanian society caused by the displacement of Lithuanians, Poles, Jews and Germans. Contributors are: Tomas Balkelis, Daiva Dapkutė, Violeta Davoliūtė, Andrea Griffante, Ruth Leiserowitz, Klaus Richter, Vasilijus Safronovas, Vitalija Stravinskienė, Arūnas Streikus and Theodore R. Weeks.

Table of Contents:
PREFACE INTRODUCTION Acknowledgement List of contributors I. POPULATION DISPLACEMENT DURING WORLD WAR ONE AND ITS AFTERMATH CHAPTER 1 Andrea Griffante. Making the Nation: Refugees, Indigent People, and Lithuanian Relief, 1914-1920 CHAPTER 2 Tomas Balkelis. Forging a “Moral Community”: the Great War and Lithuanian Refugees in Russia CHAPTER 3 Klaus Richter. Displacement without Moving: Secession, Border Changes and Practices of Population Politics in Lithuania (1916 – 1923) II. POPULATION DISPLACEMENT IN THE KLAIPĖDA REGION CHAPTER 4 Vasilijus Safronovas. Population of the Klaipėda Region and the Balance of Power in the Eastern Baltic Region, 1919-1960 CHAPTER 5 Ruth Leiserowitz. Population Shifts and Displacement in the Memel Region III. POPULATION DISPLACEMENT DURING WORLD WAR TWO AND ITS AFTERMATH CHAPTER 6 Theodore R. Weeks. Repopulating Vilnius, 1939-1949 CHAPTER 7 Vitalija Stravinskienė. Between Poland and Lithuania: Repatriation of Poles from Lithuania, 1944-1947 CHAPTER 8 Violeta Davoliūtė. A “Forgotten” History of Soviet Deportation: The Case of Lithuanian Jews CHAPTER 9 Arūnas Streikus. Religious Life in a Displaced Society: the Case of Post-War Lithuania, 1945-1960 CHAPTER 10 Daiva Dapkutė. Lithuanian Diaspora: from Displaced Persons to Diaspora Politics

About the Author :
Dr. Tomas Balkelis is a visiting scholar at the Centre for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies at Stanford University and a senior researcher at the Lithuanian Institute of History in Vilnius. He is the author of The Making of Modern Lithuania (Routledge, 2009). His research fields include nationalism, population displacement and paramilitary violence in the Baltic States. Dr. Violeta Davoliūtė is a visiting researcher at MacMillan Centre for International and Area Studies, Yale University and a senior researcher at the Lithuanian Culture Research Institute in Vilnius. She is the author of The Making and Breaking of Soviet Lithuania: Memory and Modernity in the Wake of War (Routledge, 2013). Her research is focused on the history of the Lithuanian elites under Nazi and Soviet rule, questions of trauma and memory, and the social and cultural effects of forced modernization, sovietization and mass displacement in the Baltic States.

Review :
“The authors, perhaps inadvertently, acknowledge a debt to Jan Gross in also suggesting that the impact of the Second World War needs to be understood in relation to the First World War. Gross suggested in passing that Jews who fled eastwards in 1939-41 during the Soviet occupation of Belarus and western Ukraine did so less in anticipation of a Nazi onslaught than because of memories of pogroms during the First World War and its immediate aftermath. Whatever the validity of this suggestion, it is imperative to think about the associations between the two world wars, and one of the most fruitful aspects of this book is that its contributors are attuned to this kind of broad chronological perspective. Mid-century upheavals can no longer be detached from earlier developments.” Peter Gatrell, University of Manchester