Housden Martyn. Forgotten Pages in Baltic History: Diversity and Inclusion. (On the Boundary of Two Worlds: Identity, Freedom, and Moral Imagination in the Baltics) (ENG)
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Marko Lehti
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Minutes of the Baltic Conference Held at Bulduri in Latvia in 1920.
Published by the Latvian Delegation. Washington DC 1960. (MBC)
Pesonen, N. (1980), Terveyden puolesta―sairautta vastaan. Terveyden―ja
sairaanhoito Suomessa 1800–ja 1900–luvuilla. Porvoo.
Pollard, S. (1974), European Economic Integration 1815–1970. London.
Postimees (PO).
Rodgers, H. (1975), Search for Security. A Study in Baltic Diplomacy 1920–
1934. Hamden, CO.
Senn, A.E. (1966), The Great Powers, Lithuania and the Vilna Question
1920–1928. Leiden.
Skrzypek, A. (1972), Zwiazek Baltycki. Litwa, Lotwa, Estonia i Finlandia w
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Zamoyski, A. (2008), Warsaw 1920. Lenin’s Failed Conquest of Europe.
London: Harper Press.
Securing the Lives of Ordinary People.
Baltic Perspectives on the Work of the League of Nations
Martyn Housden
More than just collective security
The League of Nations is best known for promoting ―collective security‖.
The phrase, apparently, was coined by Czech politician Eduard Beneš in
1924, that is to say some years after the League had already begun addressing
sources of international antagonism.
1
Collective security‘s central elements
were contained in the Covenant of the League of Nations, where─for
example─Article 8 committed the organisation‘s members to ―the
enforcement by common action of international obligations‖. These
obligations included mutual guarantees for the territorial integrity of member
states, also a readiness to abide by given systems of conduct should
international tensions arise. According to this approach, negotiations and
arbitration, backed by the threat of economic or even military sanctions
supported by the combined weight of the League‘s membership, would
dissuade a potential aggressor from disrupting the peace of the world.
Defined in this way, however, collective security did not encompass
the full extent of the League‘s efforts to prevent conflict and underpin peace.
To some minds, it even risked being doomed to failure sooner or later since,
as international relations stood in the inter-war period, no matter what you
did, a rogue state might nonetheless decide to precipitate war at a time of its
choosing. Given that the League had no independent armed force, it was
impossible to guarantee against such an eventuality. Furthermore, since the
League was no super-state able to control the actions of its members swiftly
and easily, but an organisation of independent sovereign states each of which
had to authorise its initiatives separately and individually, the solidarity
required by collective security could not be taken for granted. So, rather than
put too much faith in collective security, a selection of statesmen and thinkers
aimed to do more than solve international disputes as they threatened to break
out. They wanted to remove the very causes of war. This is why at least some
proponents of the League of Nations did not just talk about ―collective
security‖, but ―the organisation of peace‖.
2
The idea behind ―the organisation of peace‖ is easy to find in the
minds of men such as Jan Smuts, Robert Cecil and Gilbert Murray.
3
As
Smuts put it in his early polemic in favour of a League of Nations:
―…there is no doubt that mankind is once more on the move.
The very foundations have been shaken and loosened and
things are again fluid. The tents have been struck, and the great
caravan of humanity is once more on the march. Vast social
and industrial changes are coming, perhaps upheavals which
Martyn Housden
96
may, in their magnitude and effects, be comparable to war
itself. A steadying, controlling, regulating influence will be
required to give stability to progress, and to remove that
wasteful friction which has dissipated so much social force in
the past, and in this war [i.e. the First World War] more than
ever before. These great functions could only be adequately
fulfilled by the League of Nations. Responding to such vital
needs and coming at such a unique opportunity in history, it
may well be destined to mark a new era in the Government of
Man, and become to the peoples the guarantee of Peace, to the
workers of all races the great International, and to all the
embodiment and living expression of the moral and spiritual
unity of the human race.‖
4
For someone like Smuts, the League had to do more than provide a vehicle
for traditional diplomacy; it had to address emergent social and economic
pressures in order to ensure they did not jeopardise international relations. In
the process, it had to act on the basis of ―human ideals‖ which included the
―principles of freedom and equality‖.
5
Robert Cecil recognised something
similar when he noted that the ―products essential to the welfare and
prosperity of mankind must by its [the League‘s] agency be made available
for all.‖
6
Anything else would lead to advantaged and disadvantaged living
side by side, with all the attendant jealousies and instabilities that implied. In
similar vein, and employing a memorable turn of phrase, Gilbert Murray
voiced the increasing realisation that ―no man can prosper in another‘s ruin‖.
International arrangements simply had to take account of these realities of
life.
7
Smuts, Cecil, Murray and many others were clear that the post-war
security order had to include efforts to foster the social and economic bases
of peace. Like collective security, this idea was also expressed in the
Covenant of the League of Nations, albeit in a more understated way. Article
23 called for fair and humane conditions of labour, justice for the native
inhabitants of any given territory, measures against people trafficking and the
drugs trade, and freedom of communications around the world; Article 25
demanded improvements to world health and a fight against human suffering
around the globe. The underlying assumption maintained that once pressing
sources of social and economic discontent were removed, ordinary people
would live such satisfied and fulfilling lives that they would never be enticed
by the promises of adventurous, war-like political leaders. On this basis,
ordinary people would become a force for good in the world. Again to quote
Robert Cecil, ―What we rely on is public opinion (…) and if we are wrong
about it, then the whole thing is wrong.‖
8
As the period of general European war drew to a close, the League of
Nations began to embark on a major project to organise the peace of the
Securing the Lives of Ordinary People
97
world. Given the site of some of the most protracted fighting and, indeed,
major political upheavals associated with the emergence of a set of new states
out of the ashes of the old Romanov and Habsburg Empires, it was natural
that many of its energies would be directed towards Central and Eastern
Europe. Desolated by years of conflict, dislocated by the collapse of imperial
structures, in some cases demoralised after military defeat, and in close
proximity to the new and largely unknown revolutionary Bolshevik state, the
region was understood to be absolutely critical to the maintenance of world
peace. In this context, Central and Eastern Europe became a practice ground
for many of the sort of humane initiatives we take for granted today—steps
designed to deal with social crises before they could provoke national
disaster and international turmoil. This essay will explore how the League of
Nations intervened to address dissatisfaction at the slow repatriation of
former prisoners of war; how it helped check the spread of epidemic disease;
and how it took steps to try to prevent some minority communities feeling
swamped by national majorities. The examples all involved the Baltic region.
Returning soldiers home: Narva and Stettin
At the end of the First World War, approximately 1.5 million prisoners of
war (POWs) were left on the territory of the former Russian Empire.
9
Roughly nine out of ten were from former Habsburg lands, and most of the
rest were Germans. Red Cross reports showed they were dispersed far and
wide, with 120,000 in southern Russia, 30,000 in Turkestan, 90,000 in
western Siberia, 35,000 in eastern Siberia and 11,000 on the Siberian coast.
Far-flung locations, coupled with general disruption to Russia‘s
communications caused by war, revolution and civil war, meant that although
in 1919 Lenin declared all POWs free, hundreds of thousands were quite
unable to return home.
Many of these people had been captured during the Russian offensives
of 1915–16, and since then had endured abominable conditions. Ordinary
soldiers lived in over-crowded barracks which could be little more than holes
in the ground. Food was minimal, clothing scarce, camp officials were
corrupt and disease was rife. As a consequence, roughly half of the POWs
kept in Russia died, while more still had their health damaged permanently. If
all of this was not enough, as civil war engulfed Russia, POWs faced the
threat of being pressed to fight for White forces or else to toil in Bolshevik
munitions factories. Under the circumstances, it was hardly surprising that
emotions ran high among Central European families who were still missing
loved ones over a year after the end of the war. In 1920, a British peace
activist called Emmeline Pethick Lawrence, witnessed a public meeting in
Vienna town hall which was addressed by former POWs who had recently
returned home. A packed crowd stood for 4 ½ hours ―in a state of intense
emotion‖, hearing about the privations facing their unfortunate fellow
countrymen.
10
Martyn Housden
98
Of course, if Central Europeans could not leave Russia, neither could
Russian POWs in Central Europe return home. They too were dissatisfied
with their situation and many living in camps in Germany channelled their
frustrations into political activity. They became involved in both the right-
wing and left-wing risings which typified the German political scene of the
time. Nevertheless, by the start of 1920, these POWs were so dispirited at
their lack of prospects for return home that rumours began to circulate of a
plan for them to leave their barracks en masse in order to walk towards
Russia. This raised the unappealing prospect of literally hundreds of
thousands of destitute men hiking across Germany and the lands to its East.
By early 1920, therefore, the POW question promised nothing but
problems and on 7 February 1920 the Supreme Economic Council requested
that the League of Nations take action. Just a few weeks later, the General
Council of the League of Red Cross Societies called for ―immediate
action…in the name of humanity‖ to assist especially those still languishing
in Russian camps.
11
Citing Article 25 of the Covenant, which mandated
action ―in mitigation of suffering‖, the Council of the League of Nations
moved swiftly to appoint a High Commissioner to deal with POWs. The role
fell to Norway‘s most famous son, Fridtjof Nansen. Since the world-
renowned polar explorer and scientific researcher had travelled across Siberia
in the years prior to 1914, it was assumed that he knew the terrain and could
anticipate some of the difficulties which repatriation was likely to encounter.
As he tackled the project, Nansen began to realise that several possible
transport routes were impossible. POWs could not transit Poland by train
because they would be too close to the front in the Russo-Polish war; also the
Polish Corridor was just too sensitive to permit the implementation of a
major international initiative across its territory. Meanwhile in the Far East,
Nansen managed to bring only 6,851 POWs out of Vladivostock and to
return only 2,753 Russians through that city. This was not because of the
distance and costs involved, which were bearable. Difficulties concerned the
existence of White Russian forces in eastern Siberia which were expected to
recruit any returning POWs. Hence Moscow was not content to have
repatriation run through Vladivostock.
12
Russian ports on the Black Sea also
proved unsuitable owing to difficult transport links between coast and
interior, not to say a lack of reliable information about the number of people
awaiting League ships there. As a result, only 12,191 Central Europeans were
brought out of Russia via the Black Sea, and no Russian POWs were returned
through it.
So what was the only possibility left? In late spring 1920, as Nansen
took up his post, German authorities were in the process of establishing a
transport link across the Baltic Sea. Four German ships were scheduled to run
between Narva and Stettin (today Szeczin, Poland).
13
With Russia‘s fragile
internal transport system finally starting to function, POWs began to emerge
from the Russian interior and crossed the border into Estonia. The first few
Securing the Lives of Ordinary People
99
hundred embarked on a repatriation ship on 14 May 1920. Meanwhile in
London, Nansen set up an office of largely British staff to collect much-
needed funds from interested governments to finance repatriation. Noting the
German achievements, the High Commissioner also decided to take over and
expand the Baltic initiative. British shipping experts were called on to locate
suitable vessels from German fleets and to identify additional routes for the
project.
Fresh connections were established between Stettin and Björkö
(Finland), Ino (Finland) and Riga, but the most important non-German port
by far remained Narva. Its old Swedish fortress became the centre of a major
international effort as humanitarian agencies created a tented village to
shelter exhausted former soldiers.
14
Intended to accommodate 600 souls, in
September 1920 it had to cater for 3,700. Yet, even though Nansen‘s
repatriation system could be stretched tremendously, it never broke down. As
a result, by September 1920, 100,000 POWs had already been returned home,
with 10,000 per week crossing the Baltic.
When Nansen made his final report to the Council of the League of
Nations in September 1922, he deployed an impressive array of statistics.
427,886 POWs drawn from 26 different national groups had been returned
home under the League‘s aegis. Of these, 406,091 had transited the Baltic
Sea, mostly via Narva. It had been a peculiarly international undertaking,
with a Norwegian High Commissioner relying on British civil servants who
tasked German ships to pick up multi-national POWs from especially an
Estonian port, with them having transited an international aid camp.
Remarkably (and perhaps reflecting the infamous parsimony of British
officialdom), the POWs were brought home at a cost of less that £1 per head.
It was no wonder that the Council of the League of Nations responded by
heaping praise on Nansen and requesting that he continue working with other
people displaced from their homes.
15
But it was equally incontestable that
without the Baltic Sea region providing an effective channel of
communication between East and West at a time when all other possibilities
were bedevilled by chaos and conflict, his success would have been
impossible—and the suffering of families in Central Europe and Russia
would have endured much longer than it did.
The fight against typhus: Poland, Latvia and Lithuania
Population displacement creates security challenges, but so does a
phenomenon which can be associated with it: the spread of epidemic disease.
In Europe, the First World War had turned disease into a distinctly
international matter. Moving armies, evacuated populations and refugees had
all carried infections with them. The privations of the period left populations
too weak to fight off viruses and bacteria, while many states were slow to
reconstruct public health systems left ruined by years of conflict.
Martyn Housden
100
In the wake of the First World War, typhus emerged as a major
challenge to the reconstruction and security of Central and Eastern Europe.
The disease is carried by fleas, thrives in cold conditions and, if its victims
are already weak, can produce mortality rates of between 10% and 50%. As
two representatives of Lithuania‘s government noted, typhus was little known
in the region prior to 1914, but war changed everything.
16
Russian troops
spread the disease during the offensives of 1914–15, producing an outbreak
of 150,000 cases in Serbia alone. Their retreat in 1916 was associated with
154,000 additional cases across Central and Eastern Europe. Russia‘s post-
war upheavals only intensified the incidence of the disease. The country‘s
official statistics indicated that in 1919 some 2,229,071 cases occurred in
European Russia, the figure rising to 2,649,816 in 1920. Bearing in mind that
Russia‘s official statistics were far from complete, League of Nations staff
later estimated that the actual incidence could even have been 25 million
cases over the same two year period. In other words, it was possible that a
quarter of European Russia‘s population fell prey to the disease at this time.
17
The significance of the epidemic was heightened because populations
were in such a state of flux. Hundreds of thousands of POWs were
desperately trying to get home from Russia, joined by similar numbers of
civilians who had been evacuated from their homes by Russian authorities as
their armies retreated. On top of all this, the Russo-Polish war stimulated
fresh sets of refugee movements. The result was that, between November
1918 and February 1922, at least 3 million people swamped Polish quarantine
stations—and many had travelled on unsanitary trains, passing through
typhus-infested regions. As a result, between 1918 and 1922, Poland
experienced roughly 4 million cases of typhus. Clearly an epidemic on such a
scale posed a substantial risk to the surrounding countries too, including the
Baltic States.
18
Reports about the threat of disease to especially Poland were compiled
by Red Cross organisations in autumn 1919. In due course, they were
forwarded to the League of Nations. Given its obligation framed in the
Covenant to improve the health of the world, the organisation established an
Epidemic Commission to co-ordinate international responses to typhus. It
was staffed by a number of personalities who later would play influential
roles in its organisation, including Dame Rachel Crowdy (head of the section
for social affairs and opium), Norman White (the Epidemic Commission‘s
medical commissioner) and Ludwik Rajchman (who went on to head the
League‘s health organisation). The commission organised a conference which
took place in Warsaw in March 1922. It was attended by 27 states (including
the Baltic States, Soviet Russia and Ukraine) and planned the best response
to the disease. The event gave people such as Crowdy the chance to inspect
frontline medical facilities at first hand─including ones in Vilnius─and in
time its resolutions were recognised by the Genoa Conference.
19
Securing the Lives of Ordinary People
101
Admittedly the League‘s response to typhus was not as extensive as
had been hoped originally, not least because only 5% of the desired £2
million funding was forthcoming from the member states. Nonetheless,
Poland spent 1.5% of her national revenue fighting the disease, private
organisations contributed supplies and manpower, while the League made
available medical experts. Consequently a notable medical response was still
possible. A sanitary cordon of 152 facilities was set up between Poland and
Russia, while Rajchman and White took the fight to the source of the
disease.
20
In September 1921, they travelled to Russia to negotiate with
Soviet authorities the best way to manage evacuees and refugees as they
travelled through infected areas.
Although Poland, Ukraine and Russia bore the brunt of this period‘s
typhus epidemic, the Baltic States (particularly Latvia and Lithuania) were
affected too. So although Estonia only saw 345 cases of typhus in 1921,
incidences in Latvia and Lithuania for 1920–21 were 2,952 and 8,366
respectively.
21
During this period, Baltic refugees and evacuees were
returning home and bringing infection with them. They were travelling out of
Russia by rail to Narva in Estonia, or else to Rēzekne and Daugavpils in
Latvia. Lithuanian refugees travelled through the main Latvian termini before
going on to Obeliai. Riga was used as a transit site for Baltic peoples
returning by sea. The main transport centres all had quarantine facilities in
which refugees could be checked for disease, and the numbers involved were
substantial. So although far fewer Baltic peoples returned home than did
Poles, nonetheless 67,000 people transited Obeliai in 1921, while 180,481
returned to Latvia.
22
Lithuania and Latvia both wanted assistance from the League of
Nations in the fight against typhus. It was generally recognised that Latvian
and Lithuanian quarantine facilities needed to be updated, a situation made
all the more necessary because in February 1921 it was estimated that
170,000 people were awaiting return to Lithuania alone.
23
In summer 1922,
repatriation movements were still expected to last for at least another twelve
months.
24
That the necessary work outstripped the capabilities of the two new
states quickly became apparent. Responding to reports from the Lithuanian
Red Cross and to a request from the Lithuanian government, the Warsaw
conference agreed that the country needed support to extend the Obeliai
facility from 1,200 to 1,500 beds. In the end, however, the League was
unable to offer funding for the project. It seems to have given Lithuania little
more than moral support and advice, since her situation was considered much
less serious than that of Poland.
25
The Warsaw conference also considered
plans to extend the Daugavpils quarantine facility at a cost of £20,000, and to
build a new maritime sanitary institution at Liepāja. In the event, expected
costs for the initiatives rose to £35,000 and so they became impossible to
fund in full. The League only made a smaller grant to Latvia which at least
permitted the development of the Liepāja facility.
26
Martyn Housden
102
There was a strong impression that Western European countries
wanted protection from typhus, but were unwilling to pay Central and
Eastern European states to make systems of defence really effective.
Consequently, just as Poland had to fund her own participation in the
League‘s campaign against the disease, so too (for the most part) did
Lithuanian and Latvia. It was later estimated that Lithuania contributed
£2,000 towards the project (a figure which seems so low that it is likely to be
an under-estimate), while Latvia‘s work was valued at £70,000.
27
Moreover, the Baltic States participated in a political response to the
health crisis. In February 1922 their representatives met with Polish counter-
parts in Riga to draft an international sanitary agreement outlining steps to
prevent the spread of disease across frontiers. It allowed for the observation
and isolation of individuals suspected of carrying disease, and recognised the
need to communicate information about infectious diseases from government
to government as quickly as possible. The principles recognised in Riga were
agreed at the Warsaw conference which followed in March. The next year, a
series of comparable conventions followed involving Poland, Russia, White
Russia and Ukraine. The realisation that states had to collaborate closely to
defeat disease was underlined just a few years later. In 1926 League of
Nations authorities organised an exchange of sanitary staff working at Baltic
and North Sea ports. The aim was to spread awareness of good practices in
the fight against infectious disease, and Riga, Liepāja, Danzig (today, of
course Gdańsk) and Stettin were all involved.
28
By this point, the typhus outbreak was well and truly over. It had
begun to fizzle out as early as the end of 1923; but as they had tackled the
epidemic, League of Nations staff had always been clear that their fight had
not just been about the welfare of Central and Eastern Europe, but about its
security too. Norman White once commented that the war-time devastation of
the region could never be repaired so long as typhus was at large; but Brazil‘s
representative to the League and member of the Council, Gastoa da Cunha,
put it better still. In spring 1920 he said that ―health and wealth, prosperity
and peace, are closely bound up with one another‖. Inadequate hygiene
would only lead to disease and consequently ―social and political troubles‖.
He thought it was impossible to restore ―social equilibrium‖ to important
parts of the globe until health was taken seriously. Furthermore, he was clear
that no one in Europe could remain unaffected by the crisis of the time:
―If an epidemic breaks out in any region, laying hold of its
inhabitants, it threatens all surrounding countries which have
commercial or other relations with the infected areas. The
civilised countries of the present day cannot in their interest
afford to dissociate themselves from the fate of the region
which forms the centre of the infection.‖
29
Securing the Lives of Ordinary People
103
In other words, the fight against typhus in Central and Eastern Europe
had been a fight for the post-war stability and reconstruction of Europe as a
whole. More than this, it began establishing practices which are taken for
granted today around the globe. Recognising the importance of timely
information about the spread of disease, in January 1922 the League of
Nations began publishing situation updates about health in Central and
Eastern Europe. Within a few months, extensive reports were being published
about Russia too. The initiatives proved so successful that the Japanese
representative to the League requested that something similar be done for the
Far East. As a result, an epidemiological intelligence office was opened in the
shipping hub of Singapore.
30
So, in this instance, success in Central and
Eastern Europe paved the way for global practices and benefits.
National minorities, territorial autonomy
31
and the management of
international tensions
The challenge of national minorities
As we have seen, in the early 1920s Narva and the Baltic provided a channel
for the repatriation of POWs, while Latvia and Lithuania played a part in
protecting Europe against the spread of epidemic disease. More than this,
however, the Baltic region became a kind of socio-political laboratory as the
League of Nations attempted to identify forms of government suitable to the
preservation of peace in multi-national lands.
Old empires had crumbled and new nation states were being formed
as part of the peace-making process, but the drawing of fresh political borders
could never be straightforward. A number of territories remained hotly
disputed, a reality which in large measure reflected the utter impossibility of
producing national frontiers without creating set after set of national
minorities. For all manner of reasons, these could have difficult relations with
national majorities, while their treatment would be watched carefully by the
governments of the nation states inhabited by their co-nationals.
32
The
difficult position of national minorities was compounded by the fact that
national self-determination had been one of the watchwords of the peace-
makers. The idea had stood behind Woodrow Wilson‘s 14 Points as they
applied to the Romanov and Habsburg Empires. Lloyd George recognised
that the Allies should fight for a territorial settlement ―based on the right of
self-determination or the consent of the governed‖.
33
Jan Smuts, too, had
identified ―the self-determination of nations‖ as of central importance in
peace-making.
34
Such rhetoric only helped encourage unrealistic sets of
expectations about the creation of ethnically homogeneous states and the
unification of all members of given national groups within a single state.
The League of Nations took up the challenge of multi-national lands
as guarantor of the peace settlement. Article 92 of the Treaty of Versailles
had paved the way for the creation of a regimen of rights for national
minorities established under international guarantee. According to this article,