Enduring Violence: The Postwar Struggles in East-Central Europe, 1917-21

Author(s): Jochen Böhler

Source: Journal of Contemporary History , JANUARY 2015, Vol. 50, No. 1, Special Issue:
The Limits of Demobilization (JANUARY 2015), pp. 58-77
Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43697363

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 Article QiJ 'J) =_= =_=
Tfïï
Journal of Contemporary History
2015, Vol. 50(1) 58-77

Enduring Violence: © The Author(s) 2014

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DOI: 10.1177/0022009414552145

in East-Central jch.sagepub.com

USAGE
Europe, 1917-21
Jochen Böhler
Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena, Germany

Abstract

In East-Central Europe, the First World War did not end with the armistices of 1
the wake of the Russian Revolution and imperial collapse, armed conflicts of var
kinds, sizes, and political motivation dominated the years 1917 to 1922, when fo
citizens of the major European land empires fought for independence and stateh
These conflicts were not only rooted in pre-war conflicts, and in growing tensi
between the awakening national self-consciousness of the indigenous populations
the one hand and the sometimes harsh imperial politics of the nineteenth and e
twentieth century on the other. With the imperial armies dissolving, a brutal b
some ways conventional war - occasional and sometimes even large-scale atr
against civilians notwithstanding - gave way to an outburst of paramilitary viol
against civilians. Various warlords in the western territories of former Tsarist
used violence as a mere raison d'etre; armies under development - as the Polish a
or the Bolshevik Red Guard/Army - lacked discipline, their conscripts being brut
and inclined to commit atrocities. Ultra-violent milieus such as the European cou
revolutionary militias added to the extraordinary death toll in the region.

Keywords
antisemitic violence, brutalization, imperial rule, national self-determina
paramilitary violence, revolution

The war, finished in autumn, has not died away. Peace and a return to stability app
to be as remote, if not more distant, as in autumn when the war was formall
approaching its end. Evicted from the trenches, front lines and from the official a
regular struggle of militarised powers, it reached into human societies and tran
formed itself into a state of permanent chaos, a bellum omnium contra omne

Corresponding author:
Jochen Böhler, Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena, Leutragraben I , D-07743 Jena, Germany.
Email: jochen.boehler@uni-jena.de

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 Böhler

Formally
onlythe
stage?1

When Michał Römer noted these lines on 1 April 1919, fighting in Western Europe
had already ended. This was not the case in the areas further to the East, where the
collapse of the Russian, Austrian, Ottoman and Prussian Empires, the repercus-
sions of the Bolshevik revolution, and struggles for national independence blocked
the road to peace in the years before and after the armistices of 1918-19. In East-
Central Europe, the First World War soon merged in a maelstrom of different
armed conflicts - revolutionary wars, state building wars, interstate wars, civil
wars, and other forms of violent clashes between soldiers, war veterans, warlords,
armed bands of peasants and other agents of violence.2 While Western European
countries largely kept their pre-war shape and composition, in East-Central Europe
political entities and affiliations were dissolved by force and recomposed like
the gems of a kaleidoscope. Michał Römer was born in 1880 near Vilnius - by
that time part of the Russian Empire - as the son of a Polonized Baltic-German
family. During the First World War, he joined Józef Piłsudski's Polish Legions - a
volunteer army under Habsburg command - fighting first for Austria-Hungary
and later for a federation in the style of the pre-partition Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth. This dream was not realized since Lithuanian politicians
favoured the idea of a Lithuanian nation state. Vilnius was occupied by the
troops of Piłsudski in 1919 and subsequently incorporated into the newly-
established Second Polish Republic. Römer declined the offer to organize a polo-
nophile Lithuanian government because he considered Lithuanian independence as
paramount for a coexistence of the two new nation states. Disenchanted, he chan-
ged his name to Mykulas Römeris and became an influential academic and lawyer
in the interwar Republic of Lithuania.3 This kind of fragmented biography was
surely rather untypical for Western Europeans in the early years of the twentieth
century.
The waves of violence East-Central Europe experienced at the beginning of the
twentieth century have fascinated memoirists and historians from the beginning,
but more recently a significant interest in the dense and tangled violent occurrences

1 M. Römer, 'Kulisy misji kowieńskiej: Fragment Dziennika. Wiosna 1919', in Arcana , 70-1, 4-5
(2006), 52, quoted after P. Wróbel, 'The Revival of Poland and Paramilitary Violence, 1918-1920', in
R. Bergien and R. Prove (eds), Spießer, Patrioten, Revolutionäre: Militärische Mobilisierung und
gesellschaftliche Ordnung in der Neuzeit (Göttingen 2010), 303.
2 P. Gatrell, 'War after the War. Conflicts, 1919-1923', in J. Hörne (ed.), A Companion to World War I
(Oxford 2010), 558-75; C. Mick, 'Vielerlei Kriege. Osteuropa 1918-1921', in D. Beyrau,
M. Hochgeschwender and D. Langewiesche (eds), Formen des Krieges: Von der Antike bis zur
Gegenwart (Paderborn 2007), 311-26.
3 T. Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999
(New Haven, CT 2003), 55, 62, 69-70; M. Römer: 'Answer to Józef Piłsudski', published in
A. Ersoy, M. Górny and V. Kechriotis (eds), Modernism: The Creation of Nation States (New York,
NY 2010), 376-7.

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60 Journal of Contemporary History 50(1)

of the period immediately following the Russian Revo

relatively settled postwar order, can be noted.4 This ma
centenary of the so called 'great seminal catastrophe'. A
has been disputed since its evocation by George F. Kennan,5
truth for East-Central Europe, not as much for its 'formal
Römer (1914-18), but rather for the period of 1917-21,
violent features reminding us of the danse macabre th
Second World War in that very region. Whereas Germ
the 'War Land on the Eastern Front' during 1914-18 (ce
tation, but arguably mentally) anticipated the Nazi ext
quarter of a century later,6 the ethno-political struggles fo
both World Wars bear stunning parallels. Over and abo
dividing line between the Great War and the diverse po
nor did the violence accompanying them come like a jac
seems plausible to take a closer - though by no means exhau
acts of paramilitary violence exercised between 1917 a
Europe, in due consideration of longer traditions before

The geopolitical setting of our region in the nineteenth

predefine trouble. Historians have named East-Central E
land that stretches from the Baltic to the Balkans divided between the four
European land empires - as 'lands between', 'borderlands', 'frontier zones', 'sh
zones of empires', 'no place' or 'cauldron of conflict', thus underlining the v
character of these contact zones prone to cultural, political and ethnic dynam

4 This study owes much to to the recent works of Piotr Wróbel on violence after 1917, of Al
Prusin on the borderlands, of Julia Eichenberg on Polish soldiers and veterans of the Great W
Felix Schnell on cultures of violence in civil war Ukraine, and of Robert Gerwarth on parami
violence in postwar Europe cited below.
5 G.F. Kennan, The Decline of Bismarck's European Order : Franco- Russian Relations, 187
(Princeton, NJ 1979); A. Reimann, 'Der Erste Weltkrieg. Urkatastrophe oder Katalysator?' in
Politik und Zeitgeschichte , 29-30 (2004), 30-8.
6 V.G. Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity, and German Occup
in World War I (Cambridge 2000); M. Levene, 'Frontiers of Genocide: Jews in the Eastern War
1914-1920 and 1941', in P. Panayi (ed.), Minorities in Wartime: National and Racial Groupi
Europe, North America, and Australia during the two World Wars (Oxford 1993), 83-117
Prusin: 'A "Zone of Violence": The Anti-Jewish Pogroms in Eastern Galicia in 1914-1915 and
in O. Bartov and E.D. Weitz (eds), Shatterzone of Empires: Coexistence and Violence in the G
Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Borderlands (Bloomington, IN 2013), 362-77.
7 G. Eley, "'Remapping the Nation": War, Revolutionary Upheaval and State Formation in Ea
Europe, 1914-1923', in P.J. Potichnyj and H. Aster (eds), Ukrainian Jewish Relations in Histo
Perspective (Edmonton 1990), 205-46.
8 A.W. Palmer, The Lands Between: A History of East-Central Europe since the Congress
Vienna (London 1970); A.V. Prusin, The Lands Between : Conflict in the East European Border
1870-1992 (Oxford 2010); A.V. Prusin, Nationalizing a Borderland: War, Ethnicity, and Anti- J
Violence in East Galicia, 1914-1920 (Tuscaloosa, AL 2005); D. Bloxham, The Final Solution : A
Genocide (Oxford and New York 2009); J. Eichenberg and J. P. Newman: 'Aftershocks: Violence in
Dissolving Empires after the First World War. Introduction', in Contemporary European History , 19, 3
(2010), 183-94; K. Brown, A Biography of No Place: From Ethnic Borderlands to Soviet Heartland
(Cambridge, MA 2004); E.D. Wynot, Cauldron of Conflict : Eastern Europe, 1918-1945 (Wheeling, IL

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 Böhler 6 1

But it is im
where the
break of t
during the
shaken by
not a form
lands belte
swift chan
by brutal s
language, p
most of th
1866, Russi
borderlands
side led to
opment tha
Russian pol
not to thre
western bor
centres and
periphery
time this le
era Poland,
workers' u
in the Balti
fist of the
the overhe
The grow
between an
European sc
Revolution
estates wer
even self-determination, and a fairer distribution of land and wealth.

1999); Bartov and Weitz, Shatterzone of Empires. In the following, the term 'borderlands' will be
applied.
9 Prusin, The Lands Between, 18-27.
10 A. Gill, Freiheitskämpfe der Polen im 19. Jahrhundert: Erhebungen - Aufstände - Revolutionen
(Frankfurtam Main 1997); Prusin, The Lands Between , 34; F. Schnell, Räume des Schreckens:
Gewalträume und Gruppenmilitanz in der Ukraine, 1905-1933 (Hamburg 2012). Schnell argues that in
the Russian Empire, the absence of state power in the south-western periphery at the beginning of the
twentieth century made violence an everyday life experience in rural and urban spaces, but it is difficult
to say how representative his case studies are for the experience of its overall population. The constant
brutalization of the inhabitants of East-Central Europe during the nineteenth and early twentieth cen-
tury cannot be drawn from his rewarding study. Prusin states as well that until the First World War 'in
sum, despite profound socio-economic divisions and ethnic animosities, with the exception of the Polish
uprisings and the first Russian revolution, the borderlands remained largely violence-free'. Prusin, The
Lands Between , 40.

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 62 Journal of Contemporary History 50(1)

The multinational empires as point of reference gave w

identifying with and struggling for, such as the creat
levelling of class antagonisms. Such new orientations
potential confrontation lines that not only followed
the ruling and the ruled, but splintered the population
fractions that sometimes cooperated with, sometimes
worked against each other. Because of the historically
and religious diversity of East-Central Europe, already
First World War the potential for instability and decidedl
much higher here than in other parts of the continent. T
by urbanization, industrialization and modernization w
modern agrarian societies caused further ruptures of t

Under the conditions of war the concepts of state, nat

tinued to drift apart with breathtaking speed. Many soldi
entered the First World War within the ranks of imp
itional state wars, but soon ended up fighting all kinds of
formations and for different causes. The limitations of re
neglected where regular armies turned their weapons n
but against civilians. Due to the ethnic mixture of the
soldiers everywhere faced alleged 'internal enemies' from
Russian soldiers suspected German settlers and German
for the Central Powers.11 The Austrian military blam
and Romanians for failed attempts to stem the Russian
public hangings as means of deterrence. Mass arrests, repr
mass deportations soon became common techniques in t
In Habsburg Galicia alone, 30,000 individuals, including
either killed or deported to internment camps.12 An estim
and refugees crossed the Russian Empire until the end of
fleeing from armies of all uniforms.13 From the outbr
violence against civilians became part of the everyday
lands. Whereas the multi-national armies at first seemed t
come the ethnic diversities at least within the empires at
and unsanctioned force against the 'enemies within', th
ethnic identity of their tormentors, even widened th
existed in peacetime. Initially, this policy was imposed
authorities of the belligerent states. Since in the areas
gave way to different forms of military or paramilitary

11 E. Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire: The Campaign Against E

I (Cambridge, MA. 2003).
12 Prusin, The Lands Between , 41-4.
1 3 P. Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking: Refugees in Russia Durin
1999).

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 Böhler 63

effects' in
ually afflic

Still, it is
rather con
civilians n
replaced b
Russia des
Central Po
the whole
area as a r
Wróbel:

between 1918-20 when states did not exist or had only recently been formed and a
power vacuum existed in Central and Eastern Europe, most fighters and victims were
civilians or former soldiers operating outside of government control and convinced
that their cruel behaviour was necessary and served a good cause.15

According to Robert Gerwarth, military defeat, revolutionary upheaval and coun-

terrevolutionary reactions turned Central and Eastern Europe into 'a transnational
zone of paramilitary violence'.16 The transition from military to paramilitary vio-
lence in the borderlands was fluent where armies that witnessed the decline of their
governments did not dissolve entirely, but felt entitled to keep on fighting for
different causes. The bloody Russian civil war quickly spread to the neighbouring
countries and in its course claimed the lives of between 2.5 and 3.3 million people.
Even this horrific death toll is dwarfed by the overall population decline: between
1918 and 1920-21, more than 10 million people - almost 7 per cent of the
population - vanished from the territory of Soviet Russia.17 Physical injury or
death, the spread of diseases,18 constant insecurity and the loss of one's possessions
or home soon became a common experience.
Where old states ceased to exist and new ones had yet to be founded, the rapid
change of provisional governments or the temporary power vacuum in between
merely led to a complete absence of state control, encouraging warlordism, peasant

14 A. Kramer, 'Combatants and Noncombatants: Atrocities, Massacres, and War Crimes', in: Home,
A Companion to World War /, 190-1.
15 Wróbel, The Revival of Poland and Paramilitary Violence, 1918-1920', 282.
16 R. Gerwarth, 'The Central European Counter-Revolution: Paramilitary Violence in Germany,
Austria and Hungary after the Great War', in Past and Present , 200 (2008), 177. See also
R. Gerwarth and J. Home, 'The Great War and Paramilitarism in Europe, 1917-23', in
Contemporary European History , 19, 3 (2010), 267-73.
17 M. Conway and R. Gerwarth, 'Revolution and Counter- Revolution', in D. Bloxham and
R. Gerwarth (eds), Political Violence in Twentieth-Century Europe (Cambridge and New York, NY
2011), 152; D. Beyrau, 'Der Erste Weltkrieg als Bewährungsprobe: Bolschewistische Lernprozesse aus
dem "imperialistischen" Krieg', Journal of Modern European History , 1, 1 (2003), 99.
18 P.J. Weindling, Epidemics and Genocide in Eastern Europe 1890-1945 (Oxford 2000).

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 64 Journal of Contemporary History 50(1)

uprisings, the forming of bands of marauders and oth

could belong to several of such organizations at the sam
to the other, not infrequently even changing sides. As Ale
'the "cost of violence" - previously controlled by the
declined and multiple protagonists were able to make their
Towards its end, the war in the East assumed an incre
'rules of warfare' often implemented torture in prisons or
ging of peasants, rapes, pogroms, mass shootings and
quence of the ubiquitous application of violence, the
civilian and military sphere almost completely disappea
When the February Revolution weakened the centra
Russian generals in the field decided to act autonomo
and order on the front, where soldiers' councils were esta
of superiors was questioned. The transformation of re
marauding and looting soldiers was paralleled by the
into warlords. The bid to replace chaos by military order
of the installation of a military dictatorship. The firs
such an attempt was the commander-in-chief of the Pr
Kornilov.23 More important for our study than the fact t
station his troops in Petrograd in August 1917 (warlor
cessful on a local level at the state periphery) is the effect
had on his men in the field. Thrown back by an Austrian
they crossed Galicia plundering, looting and raping. Th
tary unit deliberately deployed to oppress soldiers' mu
ticularly distinguished itself in this regard. Instead of con
Kornilov himself ordered a scorched-earth policy and
against the civil population, thus repeating the measures o
the beginning of the war with a soldatesca that had al
irregularity.24
The White 'Volunteer Army' of Kornilov's successor D
of Cossacks, was as small a regular army as the Red A
forcibly recruited thousands of war-weary peasants.25 On
Civil War, the latter resembled a professional army tha
Facing mass desertion and an appalling lack of profes

19 P. Wróbel, The Seeds of Violence: The Brutalization of an Eastern

Journal of Modern European History , 1, 1 (2003), 125-49; J. Baberowsk
Rußland und die Sowjetunion 1905-1950', in Beyrau, Hochgeschwend
Krieges, 290-309.
20 Prusin, The Lands Between , 73.
21 Beyrau, 'Der Erste Weltkrieg als Bewährungsprobe', 97, 106.
22 Wróbel, 'The Seeds of Violence', 132-3.
23 C. Read, War and Revolution in Russia, 1914-1922 (Basingstoke 2013), 90-2; G. Katkov, The
Kornilov Affair: Kerensky and the Break-up of the Russian Army (London and New York, NY 1980).
24 J. Sanborn, 'The Genesis of Russian Warlordism: Violence and Governance during the First World
War and the Civil War', Contemporary European History , 19, 3 (2010), 195-213.
25 Schnell, Räume des Schreckens , 246.

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 Böhler 65

revolution
over 70,0
Civil War
against th
as against
Admiral
Denikin a
Basin in s
stronghol
Terror' t
Denikin h
hang comm
Since the
tary troo
battlefiel
soldiers a
average s
Atamans
The Makh
of the mo
head of a
Austrian
among th
and sabot
peasant's
Ukraine i
the Makh
Volunteer
troops of
thus tem
growing

26 F. Benve
to the Russi
1923', 569. O
Past and Pre
27 Schnell,
und der Dau
(2008), 5-6;
October 201
28 Schnell,
29 P. Kenez
1971), 205.
30 For an overview see V. Brovkin, Behind the Front Lines of the Civil War: Political Parties and Social
Movements in Russia, 1918-1922 (Princeton, NJ 1994).
3 1 R. Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror Famine (London 2002),
41. See Schnell, Räume des Schreckens , 261.
32 Gatrell, 'War after the War: Conflicts, 1919-1923', 561.

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 66 Journal of Contemporary History 50( I )

by typhus - joined the Red Army again in its fight against

After the total retreat of the Whites from Ukraine in 1920
fluous to the needs of the Red Army, was declared an ou
against the Bolsheviks, and fled to Paris where he died in ex

Although violence was most intense in the areas mainly

Ukrainians, the epicentre of violence - in terms of the s
armed encounters - was the territory of the former Ki
forcibly partitioned at the end of the eighteenth centu
Austria. Now becoming the largest of the East-Central E
the Polish Second Republic between 1918 and 1921 was en
armed conflicts with its neighbour states.
In the Polish case, the transition from paramilitary fo
tially took, as mentioned, the detour of a foreign assignme
of the First World War, Polish political parties had sta
paramilitary units mainly in the Austrian partition zon
approximately 30,000 men - that were intended to become t
Polish state. They merged in the Polish Legions, a volunt
under the charismatic authority of Józef Piłsudski, a mem
Party leadership with extraordinary strategic talent, wh
not confined just to a Habsburg victory, but also include
Dual-Monarchy Austria-Hungary by a Triple-Monar
Poland.35
To further complicate the picture, other Poles served as well in the armies of the
remaining partition powers, Russia and Prussia. As many as three million Polish
and one million non-Polish soldiers from the former Polish territories were drafted
to fight at the various fronts of the First World War, most notably, of course, on
the Eastern Front.36 Thus, where Russian clashed with Central Power troops, there
was a high probability of Polish fratricide. The Polish death toll was considerably
high: between 450,000 and 800,000 Polish soldiers died37 and almost one million
were wounded until 1918. After the February Revolution, the Germans formed
three Polish Corps out of 40,000 Polish prisoners of war and former soldiers of the
Russian army. However, they immediately dissolved them because the drive
towards independence amongst the troops was too hard to control. When the
Russian, German, and Austrian armies disintegrated, a large bulk of the survivors
and many more volunteers joined again Polish paramilitary organizations.

33 Schnell, Räume des Schreckens , 298; W. Medrzecki, Niemiecka interwencja militarna na Ukrainie w
1918 roku (Warsaw 2000), 277-9.
34 The following considerations on Polish paramilitary forces refer - if not noted otherwise - to
Wróbel, 'The Revival of Poland and Paramilitary Violence, 1918-1920', 283-4, 287-9, 294.
35 W. Borodziej: Geschichte Polens im 20. Jahrhundert (Munich 2010), 75.
36 J. Eichenberg, Kämpfen für Frieden und Fürsorge: Polnische Veteranen des Ersten Weltkriegs und
ihre internationalen Kontakte, 1918-1939 (Munich 2011), 26-7.
37 Ibid., 23; Eichenberg: 'Paramilitary Violence in Ireland and Poland after the First World War',
Contemporary European History , 19, 3 (2010), 235.

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 Böhler 67

Indeed, th
Polish sta
camps and
example o
glorifying
controlled
sides fight
in contest
and 6000
Republic o
evidence,
gunpoint.
with a ve
next nine
while 20,0
victim to
Ukrainian
utopia. Ma
or swelled
Military O
in the int
now partl
police out
former re
sisted of
dissolved
and in Ja
general co
to contro
difficultie

the Polish
paramilitar
skills and
them how

38 J. Eichen
War Experie
Europe's Fir
39 Eichenbe
40 B. Musial, 'Die Ukrainepolitik Polens 1918-1922', in Dornik, Die Ukraine zwischen
Selbstbestimmung und Fremdherrschaft, 1917-1922 , 454.
41 Wróbel, 'The Seeds of Violence', 138.
42 S. Troebst, 'Nationalismus und Gewalt im Osteuropa der Zwischenkriegszeit: Terroristische
Separatismen im Vergleich', in Berliner Jahrbuch für osteuropäische Geschichte (1996), 273-314.

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 68 Journal of Contemporary History 50(1)

mobilization; and produced a new class of leaders such as

Haller, and Władysław Sikorski.43

In other words, a regular Polish army to speak of star

1919-20 after (similarly to the Red Guard/Army) passi
at times witnessed also violence against civilians. On th
war, it consisted of 50,000 officers and one million rank a
after a close encounter east of Warsaw, to throw the Bols
Polish territory and to ban them during the whole in
Piłsudski, the performer of the 'Miracle on the Vistu
encounter a full-grown state war, calling it 'an unreal
war even, a sort of childish tussle, a brawl from which
contemptuously excluded'. Meanwhile, Lenin compl
brave, confident vanguard had no reserves, and never
to eat' and 'had to requisition bread from the Polish p
classes'.45 As mentioned above, Polish troops also engag
the Republic of Lithuania that in 1918, due to the col
Russian Empires, had gained independence as well. In t
Balkelis shows in his contribution to this special issue,
postwar clashes involving Baltic nationalists, soldiers
White troops, and German Freikorps fighters sometimes l
and turned the country into the same cauldron that the r
boiling in.46
Armed clashes in Upper Silesia concluded the violen
World War. Three Polish uprisings between 1919 and 19
of the region to the Polish Second Republic. Demobiliz
of them returning from the Eastern Front where the
without themselves being defeated, gathered in paramilita
in bitter struggles with Polish insurgent bands. The sit
cated by the presence of 5000 Italian and 15,000 French
over the correct implementation of a plebiscite on the
latter almost openly took the Polish side. Despite the Allie
of violence remained high: between 11 November 191
region witnessed an estimated number of 2824 fatalit

43 Wróbel, The Revival of Poland and Paramilitary Violence, 191

44 Eichenberg, 'Paramilitary Violence in Ireland and Poland afte
Eichenberg, Kämpfen für Frieden und Fürsorge , 35-6; Wróbel
Paramilitary Violence, 1918-1920', 284, 287-9.
45 Both quotes from N. Davies, White Eagle, Red Star: The Polish
1983), 264, 266.
46 See the contribution of T. Balkelis, 'Demobilization and Remobilization of German and
Lithuanian Paramilitaries after the First World War' in this volume.
47 See in general T. Wilson, Frontiers of violence : Conflict and Identity in Ulster and Upper Silesia
1918-1922 (Oxford and New York, NY 2010), 5 (on fatalities), 29 (on Italian and French troops). While
Wilson extensively describes the cultural, religious, linguistic and political diversity of Upper Silesia in
comparision to Ulster, the acts of violence perpetrated by the conflicting parties are not at the centre of

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 Böhler 69

western p
Silesia was allocated to Poland.

As the presence of Lithuanian regiments in Smolensk, Rovno, Siberia, Estonia, a

Vitebsk and German volunteers from Dresden and Leipzig in Kaunas illustrates,
the turmoil of the First World War scattered soldiers and paramilitaries with
kind of ethnic bonds and assignments all over East-Central Europe's battlefield
fighting in different conflicts with ever-changing coalitions. This might blur o
vision of the larger contexts in which these conflicts were embedded. The war h
started as a struggle between the Central Powers and the Entente. The decline
the empires and the success of the Bolshevik Revolution gave the cards a new
shuffle. Since the latter threatened to swamp the rest of Europe, the postwar battl
were not only fought for national independence within historically-claimed b
ders, but also for and against Bolshevism as a transnational phenomenon. As Ma
Conway and Robert Gerwarth have established, 'the Bolshevik Revolution and t
subsequent civil war interacted with paramilitary counter-revolutionary violen
further afield'.49
The by far largest foreign military force in East-Central Europe was t
Czech(oslovak) Legion. The Legion was formed out of predominantly Czech v
unteers who had been fighting during the First World War alongside the Enten
(mainly Russia, Italy, and France) against the Central Powers. After the Bolshev
revolution, the Czech Legion in Russia consisted of a whole army corps with t
divisions.50 Since its main focus was to continue the fight against Austria an
Germany for a Czechoslovak national state, the Legion - now under the comma
of the Czech exile politician and later first president of the Czechoslovak Repub
Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, and under the supreme command of the French arm
was eyed suspiciously by the Soviet government, which just had signed the cos
peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Central Powers. At a time when the wa
coalition between Russia and the Western European powers gradually turned in
bitter enmity alongside ideological lines, the latter disposed of a militia armed
the teeth on Soviet controlled territory. To defuse this highly risky situation, it w
agreed all-around that the Czech troops had to leave Russia, and, since the ro
West was blocked by Red Army contingents, they would have to do so via Siber
Moving eastwards, the Czechoslovak Legion absorbed former soldiers from Wh

his rewarding study. For more on Freikorps engagement at the Polish border see T. Hunt Toole
'German Political Violence and the Border Plebiscite in Upper Silesia, 1919-192 1', Central Europ
History , 21 (1988), 56-98; T. Hunt Tooley, National Identity and Weimar Germany: Upper Silesia
the Eastern Border, 1918-22 (Lincoln, NE 1997). For the Freikorps movement in general: R.G.L. Waite
Vanguard of Nazism: The Free Corps Movement in Postwar Germany, 1918-1923 , 2nd edn. (New Yor
NY 1970); B. Barth, Dolchstoßlegenden und politische Desintegration: Das Trauma der deutsc
Niederlage im Ersten Weltkrieg 1914-1933 (Düsseldorf 2003).
48 Balkelis, 'Demobilization and Remobilization of German and Lithuanian Paramilitaries after t
First World War'.
49 Conway and Gerwarth, 'Revolution and Counter-Revolution', 151.
50 G. Župcan, Der Tschechoslowakische Legionär in Russland 1914-1920 (Munich 2008), 18.

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70 Journal of Contemporary History 50( I )

army units, growing to a strength up to 90,000 men. The c

led to calls from Bolshevik leaders to disarm the Legion,
that time was still to just reach the Pacific borders via t
When Leon Trotsky on 25 May 1918 issued a formal disa
to 45,000 Czech legionaries stationed near Omsk revolt
afterwards, the French, British, and US- American gove
nized the independence of the Czech national counci
Legion. Unofficially, the failed Bolshevik attempt to d
turned them into potentially dangerous supporters of t
intervention forces in Russia where the French, British,
landed in Murmansk, Arkhangelsk, and Odessa open
Bolshevik case of the Russian White armies of Denikin
Nikolayevich Yudenich.51
Nevertheless, in the course of the years 1918-20, the
crumbled, mainly because of the lack of a political post
satisfy their men that, after all, had to eke it out. The Wh
a 'Russian Motherland' was compromised in four ways: First
represented the ancient model of Tsarist and aristocrati
Russian masses even more than Bolshevism; second, thei
from areas outside the Russian heartland, such as Ukrai
third, for their fight for national independence, they para
on international support; and fourth, their notoriously rut
ing antisemitic pogroms,52 looting and raping - alienated
normally could have served as a supporting base for their m
foreign intervention troops did not fare better: Tn the ent
Kenez, 'there were no more ill-disciplined soldiers then the
and Senegalese troops commanded by French officers; these
want to fight, and were useless. The British were not much
The further away from home, it can be concluded, th
willingness to continue the struggle. The case was obvi
highly politicized anti-Bolshevik militias that fought for a
war order. The revolutions following November 1918 i
Vienna triggered highly motivated and interconnected
united in their anti-Bolshevist stance, affirmed again
brutal violence against the political enemy. This

counterrevolutionary violence after 1918 had a seemingly

Central Europe. On the one hand, it obviously constituted a

51 P. Kenez, Civil War in South Russia, 1919-1920. The Defeat of the

52 P. Kenez, 'Pogroms and White Ideology in the Russian Civil War',
(eds), Pogroms. Anti-Jewish violence in modern Russian history (Cambr
53 Read, 'War and Revolution', 153-5.
54 P. Kenez, 'Civil War', 178; see also D. Diner, Das Jahrhundert verstehen. Eine universalhistorische
Deutung (Munich 1999), 94.

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 Böhler

intensifi
war viole
national

The exam
Ukraine shows the arbitrariness of coalitions in the chaos of the Russian Civil War.
Political goals often became subsidiary. The only real perceptible front ran between
the White and Red Armies, which made an alliance on their command level out of
question, but this did not apply to their soldiers who would frequently change
sides. Atamans usually were more practically oriented - Nestor Makhno contem-
plated anarchism, but obviously felt much more loyal to peasants' concerns then to
specific ideologies - and would cooperate with the Whites or Reds depending on
tactical considerations. Since all these formations were cut off from any kind of
regular supply and therefore heavily relied on looting, since, furthermore, no cen-
tral state authority was able to control them, and since the authority of their
leaders depended on their ability to maintain a ruthless reign of terror, violence
against civilians became an aim in itself. Even the Makhnovshchina had to use force
against peasants when acting in areas far from home.56 As has been noted else-
where, in civil wars 'much of what might appear to be political, or was indeed
claimed to be political by actors at the time, was motivated by pre-existing social
tensions or was a by-product of envy, greed or lust'.57 In a landscape permeated
with violence and marked by scarcity caused by the war years, the reasons for
taking up arms in fact could be of a very mundane nature, such as 'organizing'
food, clothes or shelter in order to survive, or just acting out of basic instincts.
For many uprooted men in the borderlands, the mere struggle for survival was
often reason enough to join or stay with armed groups that never had or soon lost
any kind of political agenda: deserters from the frontlines, men trying to avoid
conscription or death by starving filled their ranks, terrorizing and pillaging the
war-torn countryside.58 Violence - perpetrated or experienced - was the sword of
Damocles hanging over German and Austrian-controlled Ukraine, where peasant
unrest in 1918 mobilized up to 80,000 men and allegedly affected 10 to 12 per cent
(2.5 million) of the agrarian population. By then, the military and paramilitary
forces of the puppet government under the Hetman Pavlo Skoropadskyi had gath-
ered about 65,000 men in their ranks. After the Bolshevik seizure of power at the
end of the year, an army of between 150,000 and 250,000 Ukrainian soldiers was
dissolved, leaving 50,000 men under arms, most of them former supporters of the
Hetmanate. All the rest decided to benefit from the land distributions of the

55 Gerwarth, 'The Central European Counter-Revolution: Paramilitary Violence in Germany, Aust

and Hungary after the Great War', 178.
56 Schnell, Räume des Schreckens , 260-1.
57 Gerwarth and Hörne, 'The Great War and Paramilitarism in Europe, 1917-23', 270, with referen
to S. Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge 2006), 365-87.
58 Beyrau, 'Der Erste Weltkrieg als Bewährungsprobe', 109-10.

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 72 Journal of Contemporary History 50(1)

Bolsheviks and went home.59 In other words, the region w

and men that knew how to use them.
Furthermore, the causes of violence were not only diverse, but often entangled.
Bolsheviks and Nationalists at least pretended to fight for political aims in the first
place, while bands of peasants took hold of their former master's estates and
sometimes exacted bloody revenge for years of oppression, while interethnic vio-
lence was dominant everywhere. Literally all parties engaged in fighting in East-
Central Europe killed Jews. The first anti-Jewish measures were implemented by
the Tsarist army. The Jews', a report from 1915 stated, 'are maybe even more
detested than the Germans. Anyway, after the war both elements will be completely
expelled from Russia. That's a widespread thought within the army'.60 More than
half a million of the deportees in the first year of the war were Jews.61 From 1917
onwards, the borderlands witnessed large-scale antisemitic violence. In Ukraine
alone, between 1918 and 1920 some 1500 anti- Jewish pogroms cost the lives of
between 50,000 and 200,000 people.62 The perpetrators were soldiers of the White,
Red, and Ataman Armies, aided by parts of the local Christian populations.63
While such outbreaks of violence had started as coordinated state policy early in
the war, they soon became less organized and more sporadic.64 In addition to the
marauding gangs, nomadic deserters and displaced persons added to a general
atmosphere of insecurity. Between the collapse of the empires and their replace-
ment by nation states, the borderlands were the most dangerous tracts of land in
Europe in which to live. New state structures evolving from the chaos created by
war and revolution needed time to crystallize. Since the armies of the new states
were born within this chaos, coordination and control of the large-scale violence
was only achieved at the beginning of the 1920s.
It is difficult to say how voluntary the so-called 'volunteers' - who joined the
evolving 'armies' to continue fighting when the actual war was already over - were,
due to strong postwar nationalistic narratives and the lack of reliable sources. It
might be assumed that to risk one's life for an abstract ideal like an independent
nation state might have looked at first glance less convincing to war-weary men
then to take up arms to defend one's home, or to 'organize' food, or to enforce

59 G. Kasianov, 'Die Ukraine zwischen Revolution, Selbständigkeit und Fremdherrschaft', in

Wolfram Dornik et al. (eds), Die Ukraine zwischen Selbstbestimmung und Fremdherrschaft, 1917-1922
(Graz 2011), 155-63.
60 Report from Samara from 1915, quoted from D. Beyrau: 'Der Erste Weltkrieg als
Bewährungsprobe: Bolschewistische Lernprozesse aus dem "imperialistischen" Krieg, in: Journal of
Modern European History , 1, 1 (2003), 103.
61 Wróbel, The Seeds of Violence', 130.
62 Sanborn, The Genesis of Russian Warlordism', 208-9. See also Prusin, Nationalizing a Borderland
(2005), F.M. Schuster, '"Für uns ist jeder Krieg ein Unglück": Die Auswirkungen des Ersten Weltkriegs
auf die Welt der osteuropäischen Juden', inj. Tauber (ed.), Über den Weltkrieg hinaus:
Kriegserfahrungen in Ostmitteleuropa 1914-1921 (Lüneburg 2009), 153-75.
63 P. Wróbel, The Kaddish Years: Anti- Jewish Violence in East Central Europe, 1918-1921 , Jahrbuch
des Simon- Dubnow-Instituts, 4 (2005), 211-36; Levene, 'Frontiers of Genocide', 98-105; Prusin, 'A
"Zone of Violence'".
64 Sanborn, 'The Genesis of Russian Warlordism', 209.

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 Böhler 73

other sur
ably would
rather than
at peace. T
war was a
while not
1917, abou
mous and
home, joi
minoritie
the fight
territorie
realisation
to was dir
the fortunes of warfare on the other.
However, the dichotomy of volunteer armies (as the Polish Legions under
Piłsudski) and the imperial conscript armies has given way to the overall notion
that soldiers of the first served with consent to realise the ideal of a Polish state,
while the soldiers of the latter only obeyed the orders of foreign powers under
coercion , using every possibility to defect. The reality, as Julia Eichenberg has
demonstrated, looked different. For many soldiers on the Eastern Front, what
was more important than the approval or rejection of the political aims of the
military leadership was the concept of endurance , which was simply the humane
desire to survive the war and to return to their homes and families alive.66
Contrary to the large majority of rather apolitical war veterans, highly politi-
cized entities like the counterrevolutionary militias, especially of Germany, Austria,
and Hungary, tended to create transnational milieus of violence.67 Having fought
together in the First World War, they saw the struggle against Bolshevism as a
mere continuation of this coalition. Experiencing the trauma of revolution after a
lost war in which many of them had actively taken part, they built up ultra-violent
environments that served two purposes: to prove themselves in battle and to
revenge and eventually overcome the despised 'Red Terror'. 'We shall see to it',
wrote Hungarian officer Miklós Kozma in August 1919 (referring to the between
400 and 500 victims of the short-lived communist Béla Kun regime), 'that the flame
of nationalism leaps high . . . We shall punish. Those who for months have

65 Wróbel, The Seeds of Violence', 132.

66 See J. Eichenberg, 'Consent, Coercion and Endurance in Eastern Europe: Poland and the Fluidity
of War Experiences'. Her innovative approach adapts the concept of endurance (connected with accept-
ance and refusal) - developed by Alexander Watson: A. Watson, Enduring the Great War: Combat,
Morale and Collapse in the German and British Armies, 1914-1918 (Cambridge 2008) - to the Eastern
Front 1914-21.
67 The following considerations and quotations on Hungarian paramilitary forces refer to Gerw
'The Central European Counter-Revolution: Paramilitary Violence in Germany, Austria and Hun
after the Great War'; see also B. Bodo, 'Paramilitary Violence in Hungary after the First World W
East European Quarterly 38, 2 (2004), 129-73.

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74 Journal of Contemporary History 50(1)

committed heinous crimes must receive their punishment

eyes of the counter-revolutionaries, was the result of a
violent acts were directed first and foremost against Jews
report from 1922 listed 3000 Jewish victims of the 'Whit
military militias as well, violence had not only a destructi
side, by building up a brutalized form of group ident
separating the perpetrators from the 'civilized' part of soc

The battles for the East-Central Europe postwar orde

Winston Churchill as 'quarrels of the pygmies',68 in realit
ciless carnage that mostly affected civilians of every a
diversity of formations, political orientations and ethnic d
can be established that these violent clashes were the r
demobilization in the borderlands. Armed men could
military or paramilitary formations like a chameleon
engage in battle as well as in atrocities. However, t
direct cause of the brutalization of the soldiers that
Eastern fronts of the Great War. Nestor Makhno, th
had not fought a single day, but spent the war years
released in 1917, he immediately took personal reven
allegedly turned him in to the Tsarist authorities, ki
head, throwing the second out of the window of his h
third.69 By contrast, Józef Piłsudski, who served as
Legions from 1914 to 1916, is not known for having comm
atrocities by his men, and upon his return from a Ger
exactly the same goal as he had done since well before the
resurrection of an independent Polish state.
Many soldiers did not give up arms after the armistices
they were used to violence and alienated in postwar civ
with the Russian and Central Powers' loss of territories an
hitherto rather fictive goals such as national independence
realistic options. Violence after the First World War i
not to extend the war, but to end it in a fashion more
engaged. Instead, many more did end their engagemen
choice and went home. And many of the predominant
paramilitary units after 1917 had not served in any army
violent outbreaks was the sometimes complete absence of a
for months or even years in these areas. After the de
control in the borderlands itself was born out of viole
military organizations that turned into state institutions

68 According to Davies, White Eagle, Red Star , 21, Churchill comm

night of the armistice: 'The war of the giants has ended; the quarrels
69 Schnell, Räume des Schreckens , 29 1 .

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 Böhler

statehoo
forces v
a lack of
violence
the case
to blur t
along et
historica
motivat
social m
between
The lega
After th
means o
means, a
option.
military
lished Bo
Since th
formed,
1920 numbered around 62,000 men. These and other measures of reallocation
additionally criminalized the population that had to establish illegal networks of
black markets, smuggle and organized criminality, and constantly break state rules
in order to secure its breadline. The Cheka - the notorious soviet secret police
charged with mass arrests and executions of tens of thousands of civilians -
increased by more than tenfold from 12,000 men in 1918 up to 137,000 in 1921,
only to be reduced to 36,000 men in 1922-3. Amongst the members of the com-
munist party, it was common practice to carry revolvers as status symbol, a habit
that was ended by official decree only in 1937. 70 Nevertheless, the brutal treatment
of peasants during the period of collectivization in Ukraine in the early 1930s
differed significantly from the violence that had permeated the area a decade ear-
lier, since it was not enabled by the absence , but the omnipresence of state control.71
Where paramilitary violence had been the means to achieve national independence,
it was usually domesticated once this goal was achieved, although the evolving state
structures were often authoritarian and highly militarized.72 The counter-revolu-
tionary forces often lacked a political agenda for a postwar order, and disappeared

70 Beyrau, 'Der Erste Weltkrieg als Bewährungsprobe', 1 14-22. For the numbers see H. Leidinger,
'Zeit der Wirren. Revolutionäre Umwälzungen und bewaffnete Auseinandersetzungen im ehemaligen
Zarenreich 1917-22', in W. Dornik, G. Kasianov, H. Leidinger et al. (eds), Die Ukraine: Zwischen
Selbstbestimmung und Fremdherrschaft 1917-22 (Graz 2011), 51.
71 Schnell, Räume des Schreckens.
72 P. Jasienica, 'The Polish Experience', Journal of Contemporary History , 3, 4 (October 1968), 73-88,
stresses the democratic foundation on which the early Polish Second Republic - in spite of its violent
prehistory - was built.

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 76 Journal of Contemporary History 50( I )

or integrated after the 'Bolshevik thread' was banned f

relations with the Soviet Union had stabilized.
Nevertheless, the ideologies and traditions of violence and armed conflicts were
obviously able to outlive more peaceful periods and could be accessed when their
time had come again. A large majority of the commanders in the Berlin Reich
Security Main Office would hark back to personal counter-revolutionary experi-
ences.73 The antisemitic Pogroms conducted by the local population of the border-
lands in the wake of the German invasion of the Soviet Union paralleled the
sinister events of a quarter of a century earlier,74 although it cannot be ignored
that they took place within the framework of the Nazi Holocaust and therefore
under completely different political circumstances. The anti-Bolshevik phalanx of
the White armies and its coalition partners 25 years later found its equivalent in the
anti-Soviet struggle of the East-Central European nations just freed from the
German yoke.75
The most stunning parallels, though, can be found in the postwar conflicts of
1944-7 on the territory of the Polish Second Republic that had evolved at the end
of the First World War and vanished at the very beginning of the Second. After
almost six years of war and occupation, after millions of deaths and immeasurable
suffering, the country lay in ruins, plagued by scarcity of food and epidemics,
roamed by millions of displaced persons, refugees, orphans, deserters, demobilized
or invalid soldiers. The hasty retreat of the German troops left a power vacuum
that lasted many years until the complete Sovietization of the 'Polish People's
Republic'. It was exactly within that void that the post- 19 17 ethno-political strug-
gles were revived, when Poles and Ukrainians instinctively felt that national inde-
pendence was within reach again. The renewed rivalry led to a bloody civil war
between Polish and Ukrainian partisans that on both sides cost the life of tens of
thousands of men, women, and children; and, in a blunt resort to the atavistic
experiences and methods of the years following the First World War, peasant tools
such as rods, axes or pitchforks were often deployed.76
Since two decades of peace separated one theatre of war from the other, these
were legacies rather than continuities. Still, Michał Römer was right: the postwar
struggles in East-Central Europe had indeed only been the initial stage of a larger
catastrophe.

73 M. Wildt, An Uncompromising Generation . The Nazi Leadership of the Reich Security Main Office
(Madison, WI 2009).
74 Prusin: 'A "Zone of Violence'"; W. Medykowski, W cieniu gigantów. Pogromy 1941 r. u' byłej
sowieckiej strefie okupacyjnej. Kontekst historyczny, Społeczny i kulturowy (Warsaw 2012); Levene,
'Frontiers of Genocide: Jews in the Eastern War Zones, 1914-1920 and 1941', 83-117.
75 G. Motyka, R. Wnuk, T. Stryjek and A. F. Baran, Wojna po wojnie. Antysowieckie podziemie w
Europie Środkowo-Wschodniej w latach 1944-1953 (Warsaw 2012).
76 M. Zaremba, Wielka trwoga. Polska 1944-1947: Ludowa reakcja na kryzys (Kraków 2012), 574-83;
T. Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (New York, NY 2010), 326.

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 Böhler 77

Biograph
Jochen B
European
Genocide,
vol. II, (M
1939, wh
internati
Joachim
First Wor
Munich.

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