The trials of the First World War only increased the sway of political radicalism in Latvia. Unlike Estonia, the country was devastated by warfare, evacuation and the refugee crisis. Aimingto take advantage ofthe Latvians' traditional hatred oftheir German masters, the Russian government created separate units of Latvian infantry, known as strelnieki or, in Russian, Latyshskie strelki (Latvian sharpshooters). By 1917, the Latvian units were 30,000 strong and, like most of the Russian army, completely demoralised. The Bolsheviks were able to gain mass support among the strelnieki, many of whom would later move to Russia as Lenin's most trusted guards. The collapse of the monarchy briefly brought to prominence Latvian moderate nationalists, represented politically by Karlis Ulmanis and the Agrarian Union, but the Left soon regained the initiative. During the November elections to the All-Russian Constituent Assembly, the Bolsheviks, who were led by Peteris Stucka, won in Latvia an impressive 71. 9 per cent.
Nevertheless, following Soviet Russia's diplomatic concessions at Brest- Litovsk, the German forces in February 1918 occupied all of Latvia. After the German capitulation, representatives of most Latvian political parties met secretly in Riga on 18 November 1918 and proclaimed the Republic of Latvia with Ulmanis as prime minister of its provisional government. It soon transpired that the victorious Entente wanted to perpetuate the German occupation as protection against the Bolsheviks, who from December 1918 to May 1919 again controlled a considerable part of Latvian territory. In the ensuing civil war, Latvian nationalists relied on support consecutively from Germany, the Entente and Poland to defeat the Bolsheviks, White Russians and the Baltic German forces. The war ended in early 1920, and in August, Soviet Russia recognised Latvia as an independent state.
Further south, Roman Catholic Lithuanians could not boast the same level of literacy and social organisation. Closely related to Latvians by language, their modern history was, however, shaped by Polish political domination and the Polonisation of native elites. Unlike their two Baltic neighbours, the Lithuanians could claim to be the heirs of a mighty medieval state, the grand duchy of Lithuania, but the tsarist assimilationist drive greatly hindered the development of their modern high culture. Seeking to separate the peasantry from the rebellious Polish nobility in the region, the government outlawed the use of the Roman alphabet and imposed on Lithuanians the Russian educational system. Equally important, in contrast to Estonia and Latvia, at the turn of the century Lithuania remained an agrarian backwater. Landless peasants did not have an option of becoming industrial workers, and Vilnius remained the only big city in the area, a multinational metropolis that Lithuanians, Poles, Belorussians and Jews all claimed as their cultural centre.
After a slow start, the national movement spurted during the Revolution of 1905, when a national congress, the so-called Great Diet of Vilnius, demanded autonomy and political freedom. Although Social Democrats had long been influential in Lithuania, new opportunities for cultural expression channelled the revolutionary events there more in the direction of national liberation. Such a trend suited the Germans, who occupied all of Lithuania early during the First World War and eventually modified plans for annexation towards the creation of a puppet Lithuanian government. However, when the German military allowed the formation of a Lithuanian national assembly or Taryba, in September 1917, this body proved less than obedient. It did proclaim independence 'in alliance with the German Reich' (11 December 1917), but immediately pressed for more rights and subsequently issued another declaration of independence without mention ofthe Germans (16 February 1918).[297] At one point in 1918, the balance of military powers forced the Taryba to accept the German Prince Wilhelm of Urach as a Lithuanian king, but the Lithuanian nationalists, led by Antanas Smetona, gradually took over the administration. Following the German capitulation, Lithuanian forces managed to fight off the Bolsheviks and the Whites, yet lost Vilnius to the new Polish state.
Belorussians represented in the extreme the same case of belated national development and German manipulation. Numbering some 5.5 million in 1897, they were an East Slavic nationality close to Russians in language and Orthodox religion. With their cities dominated by Poles, Jews and Russians, the overwhelming majority of Belorussians were illiterate peasants unfamiliar with the modern notion of national identity. Although it distrusted the Polish gentry in the area, the Russian government did not encourage the development of Belorussian culture. On the contrary, it repressed book publishing in Belorus- sian, and, when it provided the peasants with any education at all, it was in Russian. With less than 3 per cent of them residing in cities and towns, Belorus- sians were quite possibly the least urbanised people in Europe. Their national awakening began late, the idea of a separate Belorussian nationality emerging only in the 1890s in the work of the poet Francisak Bahusevic. As other nations of the region were entering the mass mobilisation stage, Belorussians during 1906-15 were undergoing a belated literary revival, which was made possible by the temporary softening of restrictions on the Belorussian language. Belorussian cultural life of this period centred around the weekly Nasa niva (Our Cornfield) edited by the brothers Ivan and Anton Luckievic.[298]
The First World War brought destruction and population dislocation on Belorussian soil. By the time of the February Revolution, half of Belorussian territory was occupied by the Germans, but in the other half, patriotic activists managed in December to convene the All-Belorussian Congress, only to have it disbanded by the Bolsheviks. By the terms ofthe Brest-Litovsk Treaty, Belorus- sia was divided between Germany and Soviet Russia. The former allowed the local nationalists to proclaim the Belorussian Democratic Republic (9 March 1918), while the latter created the Belorussian Soviet Republic (1 January 1919). Subsequently, Belorussia became a prize in the Polish-Soviet War, which ended with the final incorporation of western Belorussia into Poland and the re- establishment of the Belorussian SSR.
Belorussia's neighbour to the south, Ukraine, presented a more complex case. Eastern or Dnieper Ukraine, which was part of the Russian Empire, shared many characteristics with Lithuania and Belorussia. A large nation of some 22 million people in 1897, Ukrainians spoke an East Slavic language closely related to Russian and were overwhelmingly Orthodox. The imperial government imposed harsh restrictions on the development of their national culture, but the national revival that had begun in the mid-nineteenth century was unstoppable. By the early twentieth century, the Ukrainian intelligentsia boasted developed literary, theatrical and musical traditions. Still, nationalist agitators did not have free access to the peasant masses, which remained largely illiterate. Cities, including Kiev, changed their Polish cultural character to Russian because the peasants who moved there or joined the industrial workforce adopted Russian identity. The new working class responded better to agitation by Russian socialists, and, indeed, all-Russian socialist parties had an impressive following in eastern Ukraine. Only the Revolution of 1905 enabled Ukrainian activists to publish their first daily newspaper, Rada (Council), and to start popular education societies in the countryside - concessions that the government would take back by the beginning of the war. Except for a brief period after 1905, political parties could only operate underground, and only socialist Ukrainian parties could muster any significant support.
297
John Hiden and Patrick Salmon,
298
Jan Zaprudnik,