Mini-States and Micro-Sovereignty: Democracies in East Central Europe, 1918–1923 | Hacker News Reader

Mini-States and Micro-Sovereignty: Democracies in East Central Europe, 1918–1923

cambridge.org

85 pointsbenbreen17 comments

In western parts of Germany something similar happened, for example the Bavarian Soviet Republic. And it ended similar: nationalist troops killed the people.

(though it was much worse in East Central Europe: Polish-Soviet War, Ukrainian War of Independence)

"In the first months of 1919, in the wake of uprisings, soviet republics were proclaimed in Bremen, Munich and Saxony. The deployment of Freikorps troops put a violent end to them by the beginning of May of that year at the latest."

https://www.bpb.de/themen/deutschlandarchiv/54085/raete-im-d...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bavarian_Soviet_Republic

Not sure what you're claiming here:

> And it ended similar: nationalist troops killed the people [...] though it was much worse in East Central Europe: Polish-Soviet War, Ukrainian War of Independence

The Polish-Soviet War was not a war of "nationalists killing the people". It was a war to prevent the spread of communism and Soviet imperialism. Not only did Poles by and large reject communism (communist sympathy was higher in Germany, for example), and Soviet communism even more so, but Lenin saw Poland as the corridor through which the Red Army would need to pass to support revolution further West.

The history of East Central Europe is very complicated and contested. Don't know whether there were obvious good guys in the aftermath of WW I.

"He (Piłsudski) used military force to expand the Polish borders in Galicia and Volhynia and crush a Ukrainian attempt at self-determination in the disputed territories east of the Curzon Line, which contained a significant Polish minority."

Lenin, Trotzki, Piłsudski killed a lot of people because of ideology and nationalism.

These Mini-States look more sympathetic.

not sure who were the nationalists, but soviets were killing people by millions, making nazis jealous how effective were they with killing

> not sure who were the nationalists

See Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freikorps

> soviets were killing people by millions, making nazis jealous how effective were they with killing

You're confusing the USSR ("the soviets") with socialism/communism/other stuff in general.

> (though it was much worse in East Central Europe: Polish-Soviet War, Ukrainian War of Independence)

Poland was actually lucky, because the Soviets lost. At least back then, until they attacked us again in 1939.

Under the direction of the SPD, as led by Frederich Ebert (still revered as the party's patron saint, basically).

I've been reading Bloodlands, by Prof. Tim Snyder. I've also watched his entire series of Yale lectures on Ukrainian history. His account is remarkable (I'm only 1/4 of the way through Bloodlands).

He doesn't mention any of this. It seems to be a serious omission.

The paper begins by saying that this viewpoint is a new and unexplored academic angle. If you think of a "cathedral versus the bazaar" point of view, and that academics are often employed by the cathedral owners, then a missing grass-roots point of view is no surprise.

20th century atrocity certainly is overwhelming to know, but it was a wave not an impact from space. The history in Central Asia is swarms of invaders, again and again.. it was literally the winning tactic in the eyes of many over a very long time, because the losers are just dead!

Your professor's "blood" book probably makes him some coin.

> If you think of a "cathedral versus the bazaar" point of view, and that academics are often employed by the cathedral owners, then a missing grass-roots point of view is no surprise.

This seems unsupported by anything.

Firstly, the history of this time is widely explored. I'm more familiar with this period in Southern Europe than in the North but I recommend Misha Glenny's "The Balkans"[1] which covers this period in that area.

> this viewpoint is a new and unexplored academic angle

The unexplored angle part of this is arguing the legitimacy of the claims of sovereignty.

I suspect the reason this hasn't been explored is because that specific claim is somewhat uninteresting historically - it's a 7 year period at most, and most specific "micro states" lasted a lot shorter period than this, and most were very small in terms of land and population (hundreds of people, with a few exceptions).

Generally most people working in this area mention them in passing but since they are absorbed by "the winners" there isn't a huge amount to say about them other than "post war chaos".

I'm not aware of any historians who specifically reject the claims of sovereignty, but you'd really need to look on a case by case basis. Some of these micro-states seem to have had a lot more legitimacy than others.

As an example there are at least 20 papers mentioning the Tarnobrzeg Republic, and that lasted maybe 12 months at most[2]

[1] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/311471/the-balkans-...

[2] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=+%22...

Post-1917-pre-1930-ish eastern european/north asian history in general is fascinating. However, even moreso than most histories, it's been politicized, warped, twisted, rewritten, and wiped out by any number of ruling groups to fit their own victors' version of history. It's also a political landmine studying which can still get you locked up in certain parts of the world, unless you do it in the correct way.

These micro-republics didn't leave any lasting trace on the land, unlike the successful neo-nationalist movements (e.g., Tiso's Slovak Republic) that landed on one side or another of World War Two. I tend to think of them as the tail end of the 19th century kulturkampfs that swept nationalism, clericalism, liberalism, and socialism into a ferment of conflict from 1848 on; by the time Hitler rolls through, and Stalin after him, most of this has been steamrolled into a smaller number of national and ideological movements. Having said that, viewing the invasion of Ukraine and the complex political machinations of the Central European Visegrad states through the lens of this time period is, I think, fruitful, and explains some things (such as the Russian insistence on going to war to "defend" Russophones abroad) that are otherwise unintuitive if not inexplicable to Americans and many Europeans.

An excellent, yet extremely depressing, book.

I haven't read Bloodlands, but I'd note that the characteristics of the entities mentioned in this paper match those of what are often described in other work as "local militias". The claims of "local sovereignty" match this description, and the description of their actions also match:

> local groups collected taxes, printed currency and postage stamps, policed, meted out justice, and even fielded their own armies

Things like "collecting taxes, policing, met[ering] out justice, fielding own armies" are all things we see today in the chaotic edges around wars. For example, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan etc we see this exact pattern.

Printing currency and stamps is interesting. I wonder how wide spread that was.

Interesting. Scale is an often overlooked aspect of politics. On this point, I highly recommend “The Breakdown of Nations” by Leopold Kohr, which is an entire treatise on the (negative) effects of size on nations.

The Green Cadres are mentioned in this paper but mostly in conjunction with the Tarnobrzeg Republic in what is now Poland, whereas the Wikipedia article concentrates on the Balkans.

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