Robert W. Heingartner kept this diary during his two year service as American consul in Kaunas, the provisional capital of Lithuania, 1926-1928. First titling the work ¿Impressions of Kaunas,¿ he wanted to record all his impressions of this small city about which he actually knew very little. He started with negative impressions, but he soon came to like it. He watched its growth with considerable sympathy. The diary¿s appeal lies in its picture of daily life in Kaunas as the ¿provisional capitol¿ of a newly independent small state ¿ the conditions of life in the city, the social life of the diplomats, and backstage episodes in the life of the foreign diplomats. The diary records some unusual details about the family of Antanas Smetona, the ruler of Lithuania from 1926 to 1940, and it abounds in interesting commentary on the attitudes of both Lithuanians and foreigners. Alfred Erich Senn, the editor of the diary, is emeritus professor of history at the University of Wisconsin ¿ Madison in the USA as well as Visiting Professor at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, Lithuania. He has written extensively on the history of Lithuania in the twentieth century. His father, Alfred Senn, was professor of Lithuanian language at the University of Lithuania in Kaunas at the time Heingartner was working there.

Robert W. Heingartner kept this diary during his two year service as American consul in Kaunas, the provisional capital of Lithuania, 1926-1928. First titling the work “Impressions of Kaunas,” he wanted to record all his impressions of this small city about which he actually knew very little. He started with negative impressions, but he soon came to like it. He watched its growth with considerable sympathy. The diary’s appeal lies in its picture of daily life in Kaunas as the “provisional capital” of a newly independent small state – the conditions of life in the city, the social life of the diplomats, and backstage episodes in the life of the foreign diplomats. The diary records some unusual details about the family of Antanas Smetona, the ruler of Lithuania from 1926 to 1940, and it abounds in interesting commentary on the attitudes of both Lithuanians and foreigners.

In this book, Tomas Balkelis explores how the Lithuanian state was created and shaped by the Great War from its onset in 1914 to the last waves of violence in 1923. As the very notion of independent Lithuania was constructed during the war, violence is seen as an essential part of the formation of Lithuanian state, nation, and identity. War was much more than simply the historical context in which the tectonic shift from empire to nation-state took place. It transformed people, policies, institutions, and modes of thought in ways that would continue to shape the nation for decades after the conflict subsided. In telling the story of the post-WWI conflict in Lithuania, War, Revolution, and Nation-Making in Lithuania, 1914-1923 focuses on the soldiers and civilians involved in the conflict, rather than the strategies and acts of politicians, generals, or diplomats. The volume's two main themes are the impact of military, social, and cultural mobilizations on the local population, and different types of violence that were so characteristic of the region throughout the period. The actors in this story are people displaced by war and mobilized for war: refugees, veterans, volunteers, peasant conscripts, POWs, paramilitary fighters, and others who took to guns, not diplomacy, to assert their power. This is the story of how their lives were changed by war and how they shaped the society that emerged after war.

Discusses the political cooperation between Jews and Lithuanians in the Tsarist Empire from the last decades of the 19th century until the early 1920s. These years saw the transformation of both Jewish and Lithuanian political life. Within the Jewish community, the previously dominant integrationists were now challenged both by those who believed that the Jews were not a religious but an ethnic or proto-nationalist group and those who believed that only with the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of a socialist state would Jewish integration be possible. Among the Lithuanians, the emergence of a modern national identity became increasingly prevalent.

This book argues that – contrary to contemporary Lithuanian nationalist rhetoric – Lithuanian nationalism was modern and socially constructed in the period from the emergence of the Lithuanian national movement in the late nineteenth century to the birth of an independent state in 1918. The book brings into sharp focus those aspects of the history of Lithuania that earlier commentators had not systematically explored: it shows how, in this period, the nascent political elite fashioned its own and the emerging nation’s identity. Moreover, factors such as the elite’s social isolation, educational experience, marital strategies and narrowly based, fragmented and uncoordinated political activities were crucial factors in shaping identity and nation-building. It demonstrates how the elite was often in conflict with the peasantry, the religious establishment and other ethnic groups, and how critical considerations such as class, religion, displacement and ethnicity – rather than national ideology – were. The book’s conclusion that Lithuanian nationalism is a construct emerging from modern social forces is highly significant for understanding nationalism and contemporary political developments in Eastern Europe more generally.

The book focuses on peacekeeping as a device for maintaining international stability, and for remedying situations in which states are in conflict with each other. Alan James examines around fifty cases, explaining the background to each one, and analysing its political significance. There is also a detailed examination of the concept of peacemaking, and a look into its increasing importance in international affairs, emphasised by the fact that the United Nations won the Nobel Peace Prize for its peacekeeping activities.

This book examines the treatment of joint ventures (JVs) in EU competition law, and, at the same time, provides a comparison with US law. It starts with an analysis of the rather elusive concept of JVs, encompassing both concentrative JVs (subject to merger control) and non-concentrative JVs. Although focused on possible definitions of JVs in terms of competition law, it also includes a broader perspective (going beyond competition law) on the different legal models of structuring cooperation links between undertakings. At the core of the book is an attempt to build an analytical model for the assessment of JVs in terms of antitrust law, especially as regards Article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. The analytical model used proposes a set of sequential analytical levels, taking into account structural factors and specific factors related to the main constituent elements of the functional programs of JVs. The model is applied to a substantive assessment of four main types of JVs, identified on the basis of their prevailing economic function: R&D JVs, production JVs, commercialization JVs, and purchasing JVs. Also covered are particular situations of joint ownership of undertakings falling short of joint control. In the concluding part of the book, recent developments in JV antitrust law are put into context, within the wider reform of EU competition law. The book is comprehensive and up-to-date in terms of the reform of the EU framework on horizontal cooperation between undertakings, which was introduced at the end of 2010. (Series: Hart Studies in Competition Law - Vol. 6)

Modern Belarusian nationalism emerged in the early twentieth century during a dramatic period that included a mass exodus, multiple occupations, seven years of warfare, and the partition of the Belarusian lands. In this original history, Per Anders Rudling traces the evolution of modern Belarusian nationalism from its origins in late imperial Russia to the early 1930s. The revolution of 1905 opened a window of opportunity, and debates swirled around definitions of ethnic, racial, or cultural belonging. By March of 1918, a small group of nationalists had declared the formation of a Belarusian People's Republic (BNR), with territories based on ethnographic claims. Less than a year later, the Soviets claimed roughly the same area for a Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR). Belarusian statehood was declared no less than six times between 1918 and 1920. In 1921, the treaty of Riga officially divided the Belarusian lands between Poland and the Soviet Union. Polish authorities subjected Western Belarus to policies of assimilation, alienating much of the population. At the same time, the Soviet establishment of Belarusian-language cultural and educational institutions in Eastern Belarus stimulated national activism in Western Belarus. Sporadic partisan warfare against Polish authorities occurred until the mid-1920s, with Lithuanian and Soviet support. On both sides of the border, Belarusian activists engaged in a process of mythmaking and national mobilization. By 1926, Belarusian political activism had peaked, but then waned when coups d'etats brought authoritarian rule to Poland and Lithuania. The year 1927 saw a crackdown on the Western Belarusian national movement, and in Eastern Belarus, Stalin's consolidation of power led to a brutal transformation of society and the uprooting of Belarusian national communists. As a small group of elites, Belarusian nationalists had been dependent on German, Lithuanian, Polish, and Soviet sponsors since 1915. The geopolitical rivalry provided opportunities, but also liabilities. After 1926, maneuvering this complex and progressively hostile landscape became difficult. Support from Kaunas and Moscow for the Western Belarusian nationalists attracted the interest of the Polish authorities, and the increasingly autonomous republican institutions in Minsk became a concern for the central government in the Kremlin. As Rudling shows, Belarus was a historic battleground that served as a political tool, borderland, and buffer zone between greater powers. Nationalism arrived late, was limited to a relatively small elite, and was suppressed in its early stages. The tumultuous process, however, established the idea of Belarusian statehood, left behind a modern foundation myth, and bequeathed the institutional framework of a proto-state, all of which resurfaced as building blocks for national consolidation when Belarus gained independence in 1991.