Епоха великих надій: нариси історії міжвоєнної Литви (1918-1940)

ENIn 1918, the statehood restoration process began in Lithuania. Independence was proclaimed. Soon, the Lithuanian people were forced to fight in arms to preserve their own state. During the War of Independence (1919-1920), Lithuania opposed various imperial projects that set themselves the goal of putting the country under their control in one form or another. According to the conditions of geopolitical reality of the early 1920s, the Lithuanians were able to win despite the impossibility to complete the process of extending the sovereignty of the State of Lithuania to all ethnic Lithuanian lands, the loss of Vilnius, which was the historical capital. Lithuania proved its right to life, the state established. For the first time since the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Lithuanian people gained freedom. At the same time, similar processes of statehood restitution were completed by the other nations of the former Russian Empire, including the Ukrainians. In the spring of 1917, Ukraine was one of the first to take a course towards building its own autonomous, and, since the fall of that year, independent state. Officially, the Ukrainian People’s Republic proclaimed its independence in January 1918. By the voice of the Fourth Universal issued by the governing body of the republic, i.e., the Central Rada, the whole world was announced on the creation of a new sovereign state. The next three years became a period of bloody liberation struggle. Unlike Lithuania, Ukraine was defeated. The army, government, intelligent elites were forced to leave their Homeland. The Ukrainian state finally disappeared “in the dead of a totalitarian night” with the formation of the USSR in 1922, becoming one of its union republics.The Ukrainian patriotic groups incredibly painfully perceived the military-political catastrophe of 1920-1921. “Longing for the Motherland” became an integral companion of the cultural a nd social life of numerous Ukrainian emigrants during the interwar period. Naturally, one of the questions that arose among the Ukrainian elites was the search for the causes of defeat; this task, which was rational in essence, partly replaced the emotional perception of the events of 1917-1921. It became almost sacramental for the Ukrainian liberation movement in the era between the world wars. The search for an answer to such a complex multifaceted question additionally took place in the process of analyzing the experience of neighboring countries and peoples, who had “starting positions” similar to Ukraine, but whose struggle for freedom turned out to be more successful. In this concept, Lithuania occupied one of the central places. There was a forcible reason for it. Representatives of the military and political elites were looking for opportunities to organize and create a movement, the goal of which would be revenge and restoration of the Ukrainian state. The struggle for the restoration of independence was shifted to a different plane. The Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO), created in August 1920 by former Ukrainian officers, showed itself as the most radical force, which aimed at restoring the independence of Ukraine by force of arms. In 1921, Colonel Yevghen Konovalets, an active participant in the War of Independence of 1917-1921, joined this union. The UVO members (there were already about 2000 members a year after founding of the organization) refused to recognize the liquidation of the Ukrainian state and the division of Ukrainian lands between the puppet UkrSSR and Poland according to the Treaty of Riga of 1921, and proclaimed: “We are not defeated!.The war has not ended yet! ... Our victory is ahead!”. The UVO was in search of allies. Among them, one of the priorities was given to Lithuania. It was a state, which regained its independence simultaneously with Ukraine, with historical similarities, also having territorial claims against Poland that was one of the two main opponents of the Ukrainian national liberation movement, according to its ideology. Cooperation began in 1922 and was in an active phase during the interwar period. The Lithuanian experience in state building was constantly in the focus of the Ukrainian emigrant press, and also often cited as an example of pursuing an effective domestic policy, creating conditions for the implementation of the Lithuanian cultural and national renaissance. It became possible during the interwar period in Lithuania. The achievements of that “era of great expectations” were of great importance for the development and subsequent consolidation of the Lithuanian nation. The “first generation of freedom” brought up during the interwar period continued the struggle for Lithuania during the years without statehood (after 1940), during the partisan struggle of the 1940-1950s and the following decades of the Soviet occupation. The metaphysical spirit of the “old” Lithuania influenced the mentality of the liberation movement of the late 1980s - early 1990s. Figuratively speaking, the interwar Lithuania turned out to be stronger than the communist system. The end result of this historical, perhaps, civilizational confrontation was the victory of the Lithuanian cause and the revival of the state. How was the Republic of Lithuania of 1918-1940 created and what was its everyday life?.