Self-Determination vs. Territorial Integrity

Abstract

The protection of Imperial Russian territorial integrity was, when the peace conference convened in Paris, one of the firmest and least ambivalent elements of Woodrow Wilson's Russian policy.1 The Russia to which he applied this policy was in fact an empire, including nationality groups incorporated, often forceably, during the 17th and 18th centuries. Many of these ethnic nationalities — and especially those with which Wilson and his fellow peacemakers were familiar — were concentrated along the borders of European Russia. Finland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine were perhaps the best known of the ethnic nationalities, each with defined geographic areas, which had formed part of imperial Russia. Such nationality centers, many of which had long established administrative borders which changed little as a result of the peace conference, are the Russian borderlands to which this paper refers.