Between Intermarium and Eastern Switzerland: Belarusian and Ukrainian Federative Projects, “Imperializing Nations,” and the Making of National Territories (1914–1920)
Between Intermarium and Eastern Switzerland: Belarusian and Ukrainian Federative Projects, “Imperializing Nations,” and the Making of National Territories (1914–1920)

Summary/Abstract: In the autumn of 1920, the fourth Prime Minister of the Belarusian People’s Republic Anton Lutskevich stressed that, in the aftermath of the First World War in East Central Europe, “nations and new states must attain close cooperation between each other, because historical fate has placed them between two shattered but already revived titans Germany and Russia.” The idea “between Germany and Russia” had long appeared in essays and political speeches, and was often adduced during ideological debates among Ukrainian and Belarusian national activists. In this article, I argue that federalism evolved as one of the concepts of the statehood of lands “between Germany and Russia.” In my opinion, federalist ideas contributed to the conceptual and territorial formation of nation-states in East Central Europe. The core argument of this research is that the Ukrainian and Belarusian federalist projects had emerged as a reaction on the geopolitical situation between Germany and Russia, and so the making of the national territory has to be understood in the process of “imperializing nations” (as a continuation of “nationalizing empires” in 1914).

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