Abstract
The article explores various linkages between the violence of the Great War and the postwarconflict in independent Lithuania. The author focuses on several key Lithuanian paramilitarygroups that emerged as a result of the collapse of the German occupying regime, the Bolshevikadvance, and the ensuing power struggle in 1918 and 1919. It explores their grassrootsorigins, their motivation to fight, and their role in processes of forming a community, and stateand nation-building. The author argues that these armed paramilitary formations contributedto the militarisation of the country’s civilian life. Having emerged in the contested peripheralregions of Lithuania, they were led by veterans of the Great War acting as independent warlords.Besides providing security for local people, these formations occasionally engaged interror against civilians who were perceived as harmful elements that had to be purged fromlocal communities. These paramilitary formations also showed a degree of operational freedom,by controlling certain peripheral regions for considerable periods of time. But the statewas able to share its monopoly on legal violence with them only for as long as its own survivalrequired the mobilisation of all economic and human resources for the war. KEY WORDS: paramilitarism, revolution, nation-building, terror, war veterans, refugees. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/ 10.15181/ahuk.v28i0.921
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