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The First World War imposed a severe stigma on the Lemko people, the Ruthenian mountaineers residing on the northern mountainside of the Carpathians. Military operations, political repressions, malnutrition, and epidemics of contagious diseases caused severe damages and losses in the population and materials. In the late 1914 and early 1915, the front-line was set through the Lemko Land. The area’s eastern part was occupied for several months by the Russians. The occupational authorities planned to annex the area after the war, as they recognised the Lemkos as part of the Russian nation. On the other hand, the Lemko people were generally treated by the Austro-Hungarian authorities with suspicion, as allegedly favouring Russia. They were accused of sabotage and collaboration with the occupiers. Many a Lemko was executed, often without any proof of guilt whatsoever. Some 2,000 were sent to an internment camp in Thalerhof, not far from Graz. The war facilitated the split among the Lemkos into those who considered themselves members of a Ukrainian nation and those who recognised themselves as a separate ethnic group.
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The article discusses the refugees’ life during the Great War, focusing on the living conditions on their route to and in exile. The aim here is to grasp the experience that the refugees underwent when they were still uncertain of their future, and when they were venturing into the unknown without being aware of where their journey would take them. The source material concerns refugees who fled from the ‘Congress’ Kingdom of Poland and Galicia to central Russia and western part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. It involves personal documents, especially those created during this exile experience, and the accounts included in the press, notably in Ognisko Polskie. The evidence presented in the article shows that the exile was among the most traumatic war events. It also demonstrates that the flight and exile affected various groups in different ways. Children and elderly persons were most vulnerable and most likely to suffer damage to their health or even to lose their lives. It was particularly difficult for them to endure adverse weather conditions and malnutrition. They were also more prone to contagious diseases, especially typhus and cholera. The stay in the barracks camps established in the Austro-Hungarian Empire was another difficult experience. Especially initially the camps were not fi t for housing so great a number of people of different age and gender. Finally, the analysis of personal documents shows the use of different survival strategies in the exile. The refugees showed much determination in finding employment or seeking compensation and various benefits; and there was a significant social mobilization to organize assistance to the refugees.
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The article discusses the complex situation of Warsaw Yiddish press during the German occupation of Warsaw (1915–18), entangled in contacts with both the official German authorities as well as representatives of German Jewish milieus (namely, Zionist and Orthodox ones). It is based on press reports from Yiddish and German-Jewish newspapers, archival sources and some personal memoirs. The newspapers taken into account are Haynt, Der Moment, as well as the Germanoriented Varshaver Tageblat and Dos Yudishe Vort.
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This article discusses the photographic surveys undertaken on Polish occupied lands in the framework of the German war-time Landeskunde and Kunstschutz research projects. It presents the photographic collections produced in the General Government and Ober Ost, held in larger and smaller archives, widely popularized both on the front and at home by means of the press, albums, scientific and popular publications, postcards, lantern lectures and exhibitions. It argues that the advancement of the front provided a unique opportunity for such explorations and that the German surveys were the first of such reach and scale to cover all of Polish territories. The article also traces the possible close collaboration between German and Polish scholars, photographers and institutions. In particular it juxtaposes the survey initiatives undertaken by the Warsaw civic societies with the projects of the Landeskundliche Kommission and the Warsaw Hofbauabteilung. In addition, it focuses on the close collaboration between Jan Bułhak and the German art historians in Vilnius.
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The essay analyses the activities of the imperial German Board of Archives as a form through which the ‘moral conquest’ (moralische Eroberung) policy was pursued in Congress Poland by the German Empire in the First World War years. Central to the argument is not only the aspect of a model incarnation of a soft-power strategy in exportation of German science to a conquered country, this being a key instrument of the peaceful conquest of Poland, but also an organic incoherence of the strategy, as reflected in the way the Polish archives were managed. Such identification suggests that the German Empire pursued in Congress Poland activities typical of semicolonial policies. For one thing, the German administrators safeguarded against destruction the official (public, state-related) documents and archival collections abandoned by the Russians, catalogued them and made them available to historians, in a professional way and on civilised terms. Otherwise, in pursuance of their particular interests, the German authorities of the General Government of Warsaw endeavoured, from a position of strength, to take over the valuable documents from the Polish archives. This venture negated, in the perception of the Polish partners, the esteem for Germany and its civilizational achievements, administering a final blow to the ‘moral conquest’ concept.
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The essay describes the Polish episode in the 1918–20 influenza pandemic, situating the occurrence in the European and international context, and covering some relevant research issues. The topic is introduced by a brief discussion of the most recent hypotheses regarding the genesis of the pandemic and how it related to the World War in its declining phase. The core section, discussing the situation in Poland, begins with a description of the civilisation crisis caused by the frontline recurring across the country and the policies pursued by the occupational powers and the tough sanitary conditions implied by these developments. A survey of accessible sources is preceded by an outlined reconstruction of the course of the epidemic in various areas of the country, delineation of its timeframe, description of the symptoms and of the responses to the disease, attempts made to prevent its dissemination, and treatment methods in use at the time. The author seeks to determine the basic figures such as the morbidity and mortality rates, as compared against the data available for the other countries. In conclusion, considered are the presumed reasons behind the disappearance of the ‘Spanish flu’ epidemic experience from Polish collective memory.
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The aim of the undertaken analysis is to identify linguistic ways of the glorifying approach to the struggle for independence and a try to determine the role of such descriptions in the society of the Second Polish Republic. The material for analyzes is the volume titled Służba Ojczyźnie. Wspomnienia uczestniczek walk o niepodległość [Serving the Homeland: Memories of 1915-1918 Independence Struggle Participants] (1929) which is a valuable source of research that has not been used so far for research on independence discourse. Memories respond to the official need of remembering and experiencing a moment valid for the national community, and they also realize a social expectation of the imagined role of women in an extreme situation of the statehood threat. Hence the specificity of the description of past events, in which one must see the active organization of the discursive space. One of the expressive mechanisms of this activity is the apotheosis of independence actions. The observations made allow to state that the most visible and most frequently occurring mechanisms of the apotheosis of pro-independence actions in the memories of the participants of World War I are: 1) an idealized image of female soldiers characterized by determination in action and ideological maximalism, 2) exaltation of the description manifested in the accumulation of names of feelings, especially positive ones, and stressing the intensity of emotions, 3) finally the atmosphere of sublimity, which at the level of language is revealed in the presence of the highest values. These mechanisms are strengthened by the presence of various graphic elements and stylistic means.
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The principle of equality before the law was of utmost importance in the eastern part of the Habsburg Monarchy (1867-1918). This article presents the legal status of women and particularly problematic questions concerning the above mentioned principle in the constitutional rights of women. Female suffrage, the context that rendered it possible, and the legal changes that were made before it was finally granted make up a crucial chapter in the history of women's struggles for equality. Reflecting on how this chapter unfolded in a particular country thus reveals some of the features that women's broader struggles for equality and equal citizenship took in that country. The modern concept of citizenship was based on the liberal ideas of individualism and equality, developed in the West in the 17th century, and signalled a radical break from traditional ideas of society. The contradictions that this concept of citizenship brought along for women underlie the histories of female suffrage. In Hungary, local voting rights were granted to some tax-paying women in 1871. In some Austrian lands, women could vote for municipal councils and provincial diets throughout the 19th century as long as they paid with a certain amount of property or income taxes. In spite of the early results of the civil era and the Hungarian Soviet Republic, there was a regression in political rights after 1919. The women's movements were able to obtain results in Hungary only after the World War II.
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The article focuses on the impact made by combats fought by the Polish Legions on the events that during the First World War put the Polish question into the international arena and prepared favourable conditions for the formation of the Blue Army, and also on the attempt to answer the question what could have happened had there been no Polish Legions. An attempt was made to assess the potential consequences that would result if there had been no Blue Army in Poland in the summer of 1919, and to analyse Józef Piłsudski’s influence on decisive moments of the war between Poland and Bolshevik Russia.
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The text presents the most important problems of the everyday life digging legionaries during the Great War, from matters of provision, through health problems and counteracting of demoralisation, to the occupation of their leisure time. On the basis of preserved memoirs an analysis was conducted of changes in the life of young people maturing in the Legions.
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The existing descriptions and analyses of fierce combats fought by legionaries in Volhynia in 1915 and 1916 need to be completed with a picture of everyday existence, tiredness, hunger, illnesses, stress and distress tormenting soldiers in the front line. Help was provided by medical personnel. The present article attempts to fill in this gap, presenting the state of organisation, tasks, problems and results of activities conducted by the -legionary health service. It was based on archival research as well as on sparse and dispersed reports.
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The Battle of Kostiuchnówka (Kostyukhnivka, in modern Ukraine) fought on 4–6 July 1916 in Volhynia by three Brigades of the Polish Legions with the prevailing Rus sian forces taking part in the Brusilov Offensive contributed to the internalisation of the Polish cause during the First World War, and in consequence – to the regaining of independ ence by Poland. The course of the battle and its political outcomes in the form of the Act of 5th November, announcing the formation of Polish Kingdom, were presented on the basis of memoirs, journals, diaries and other documents of the period as well as the literature on the subject.
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Józef Beck joined the Polish Legions as a volunteer. With his technical education, he was assigned to the artillery. As second lieutenant he fought in the Battle of Kostiuchnówka (nowadays the village of Kostyukhnivka in Ukraine) on 4–6 July 1916. At the time of the Russian attack he was in an advanced observation point, from where he successfully commanded artillery fire. He held out until the enemy approached and withdrew in the very last moment. Beck was not only a diplomat and politician, he was also a military officer and his war experiences influenced his political concepts.
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The article traces back the trends in the economic discourse about Europe in Bulgaria in late 19th and early 20th centuries. The debates included the West in general as a synonym for superiority, prosperity, and advancement as well as particular countries with their peculiarities or branches of economics. Represented are the main Bulgarian and foreign (translated) authors, different types of media and issues such as the role of foreign capital, European fashion as a threat to national wealth, the problems of traditional native artisanship, challenges for Bulgarian agriculture. The economic discourse about Europe in Bulgaria is regarded in its cognitive functions in a country under unfavorable historical conditions and as a self-reflection.
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The text presents political opinions of one of the leading politicians of the early twentieth century – the last Armenian Catholic archbishop – Józef Teofil Teodorowicz. His attitude towards the irredentist movement developing in the Polish lands is analysed, and then his choice of a political option at the outbreak of the Great War together with his attitude towards the Supreme National Council (SNC). Archbishop Teodorowicz’s views on the most important events occurring in the Polish lands up to the end of 1917 are presented.
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Because of its geographic location at the meeting point of the Western world and the Orient, the Balkan Peninsula for many centuries had figured largely both in the European politics and in its economy, and its importance increased in the mid-nineteenth century, when the European powers entered the so-called “imperial phase.” It is hardly surprising then that at this particular period this small region, situated at “the edge of civilized Europe,” had become the arena of fierce fighting for spheres of influence. Germany and Austro-Hungary joined this struggle, too. Even though these two states variously defined their ultimate objectives in the Balkans, it was widely acknowledged both in Berlin and in Vienna that gaining an advantage over the rivals could not only significantly influence the development of domestic industry, which would acquire new markets for its output, but it could also affect the state of European politics. Nevertheless, the new developments and deep transformations occurring in the Balkans at the outset of the twentieth century, misjudged and belittled by the diplomatic services of the Central Powers, resulted in a heavy defeat that they suffered in the endeavors to consolidate their position in Southeast Europe.
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