Die Russische Freiwillige Westarmee in Kurland 1919. Regionale Besatzungspraxis im Spannungsfeld zwischen Imperialismus und Selbstbestimmung
The Russian Volunteer Western Army in Courland 1919. Regional Occupation Practice in the Area of Tension Between Imperialism and Self-Determination

Summary/Abstract: The terms “self-determination,” “democracy,” and “national autonomy” were omnipresent after the end of World War I. Yet it was not only actors with revolutionary or nation-state agendas who used these popular slogans. Representatives of the just-collapsed Empires in Eastern Europe also explained their actions in the violent phase of negotiating future state order with these terms and thus-intentionally or unintentionally-contributed to the establishment of the corresponding vocabulary. Often, however, it remained unclear which concrete political objectives were concealed behind the buzzwords. The article explores this question using the example of the West Russian Volunteer Army and its commander-in-chief Pavel Bermondt-Avalov. This army appeared for a short period in 1919 as an occupying force in Courland and in the north of Lithuania and represents a special example of an imperialist military enterprise in the civil wars of Central and Eastern Europe. The personnel composition of this army and the political circles associated with it combined objectives that included the restoration of the Tsarist empire, the retention of regional self-government by the Baltic German elites, and the safeguarding of German war aims in Eastern Europe. Since the competition for regional state reorganization was fought not least with propagandistic means, the actors tried to communicate their own understanding of a right to national self-determination to the population of the occupied territory as well as to the interested world public. The article examines both this communicative strategy and the way in which the political promises were institutionalized on the ground.

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