[Fragmentation in East Central Europe: Poland and the Baltics, 1915-1929]

ENScholars working on the Baltics and east-central Europe received a remarkable study that covers the emergence of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia during the 1920s. It is a rare thematic and international history that by its geographic scope and thematic coverage may be compared to similar histories of the broader East European region such as David Kirby’s "The Baltic World, 1772–1993" (1995) or Alexander’s Prusin’s "The Lands Between: Conflict in East European Borderlands, 1870–1992" (2010). In essence, the book traces a history of political, social, and economic empowerment of the four new nation states focusing on their attempts to gain international recognition as viable sovereign entities and to build their social and economic structures on the postwar ruins of three European empires. The author selected the Baltics and Poland due to their similar historical paths. They were also all multiethnic, with substantial minorities, while their economies to various degrees were predominantly rural, and their social structures largely corresponded with ethnic structures. Economic conflicts thus often turned into ethnic conflicts. [...].