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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Martyn Housden

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the Principal Allied Powers would protect the national, linguistic and

religious minorities inhabiting the new Polish state. Analogous clauses were

included in the peace terms of St. Germain, Neuilly, Trianon and Lausanne.

They were present in treaties agreed between the Allied Powers and Poland

(signed 28 June 1919), Czechoslovakia, Greece, Romania and Yugoslavia.

Consequently, when they joined the League of Nations, Albania, Estonia,

Finland, Latvia and Lithuania all stated their readiness to protect minorities

on their territories. The rights of minorities were also part and parcel of

conventions agreed over Upper Silesia.

The Åland islanders: Swedish Finns

Yet the League of Nations found itself having to do more than supervise the

implementation of rights for the national minorities of Central and Eastern

Europe; it had to try to defuse international tensions over a number of

sensitive territories inhabited by some of these people. The Åland islands was

a case in point. About 300 of these islands lie between Sweden and Finland,

and in the early 1920s, roughly 95% of the 25,000 inhabitants were ethnic

Swedes. The problem was that in 1809 Sweden had ceded the islands to

Russia and, when Finland gained independence in 1917, they became part of

that country. Before long, the islanders were becoming restless at the

prospect of life in a Finnish state. As two of their number put it in a letter to

Sir Eric Drummond, Secretary General of the League of Nations, on 22 July

1920: ―the Finnish race suffocates the Swedish mind, and no law can give us

protection against this.‖

In February 1918 the islanders sent a petition with 7,000 signatures to

the Swedish government asking for union with that country. Next the islands‘

governing Landsting wrote to the Principal Allied Powers asking for the

same thing. Islanders also attended the Paris peace conference making the

same request. Even though the Finnish government passed a law on 7 May

1920 granting the Ålanders extensive autonomy within its state, when they

kept up the campaign to secede, police arrested two ethnic Swedes for high

treason.

It was inevitable that developments such as these generated

increasing levels of ill-will at the international level, namely between

Helsinki and Stockholm.

Enough was enough, and in June 1920 Great Britain, in the form of

Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon, referred the case to the Council of the

League of Nations. He maintained that it fell under Article 11 of the

Covenant and was a problem which ―threatens to disturb the good

understanding between nations upon which peace depends‖. As the Council

began to address the situation, Sweden issued call after call for a referendum

to be held among islanders about their future, while Finland stressed that the

administration of the islands was purely a domestic affair. Mediation between

two such polarised views required a detailed investigation of the legal and

practical position of the islands, something which was provided first by a

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committee of jurists (to determine whether the Åland affair really was of

international concern), and then by a specially appointed commission of

inquiry to recommend a fair course of action.

The League‘s approach to the

Åland case proved particularly noteworthy because on one occasion, not only

representatives of states were allowed to attend Council meetings, but two

islanders were allowed to make a presentation. This was probably the only

time members of national minorities appeared formally before the Council

and the men, called Karlsson and Eriksson, emphasised the danger of the

islanders losing their traditional culture under Finnish government.

In the end, the Council decided it could only accommodate the wishes

of the Ålanders up to a point. It was held that separating the islands from

Finland completely would ―be to destroy order and stability within states and

to inaugurate anarchy in international life.‖

The islanders were only one

among many Swedish communities living in Finland; it followed that if they

were detached from the state, other communities might try to follow their

example and Finland‘s very viability might become compromised. Indeed,

detaching the islands might provoke other national minorities around Europe

to pursue comparable aims, so risking the stability of other sensitive border

regions. Rather than raise the possibility of such dire consequences, the

Council decided it was best to shore up the rights of the Ålanders inside

Finland.

On 24 June 1921, to the disappointment of the Swedish representative

present, British member of the Council H.A.L. Fisher announced the decision

that the Åland islands should remain under Finnish sovereignty.

To balance

the outcome, the Council also outlined ways in which the autonomous rights

of the islanders had to be strengthened to secure their traditional lives.

Language, culture and traditions were all to be underpinned in an extended

version of the Autonomy Law of May 1920. Local authorities on the islands

would only be required to support Swedish-language schools; islanders

would be given preferential rights when it came to buying property on the

islands; in-comers would only be able to vote there after fives years‘

residence; the local government (Landsting) would have a say over the

appointment of the islands‘ governor; steps would be taken to ensure that

taxation revenue was not drained away from the islands; and the islanders

were given the right to appeal to the League of Nations if they felt these

rights were not being respected.

Steps were also taken to maintain the

neutrality and non-fortification of the islands, a situation which had in been

in place since the mid-nineteenth century.

Of course there were critical voices over the autonomy granted to the

Åland islands. Swedish representative to the Council Hjalmar Branting

maintained that the solution would not offer long-term security to the Baltic

region (since dissatisfactions would continue to simmer), and political

scientist Frances Kellor argued that the happiness of the islanders had been

sacrificed to the dictates of geo-politics.

But actually the Council had

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responded to a difficult situation with creativity. Borders had been

maintained, so no precedent had been set likely to inspire groups interested in

ripping up the Treaty of Versailles. At the same time, the islanders had been

provided with a context in which they could pursue their national culture with

so little interference from Helsinki that they were Finnish citizens largely as a

matter of formality. It was not a bad solution to a difficult question.

Vilnius as Swiss canton?

The Åland case was the first international dispute which the League of

Nations had to deal with. In the next few years, it faced two further disputes

in the Baltic region over territories inhabited (at least in part) by national

minorities. In both cases the Council responded with attempts to apply the

principle of autonomy, albeit with mixed results. The first of these other

cases was probably the more difficult: Vilnius. In autumn 1920 the League

had been engaged defining Lithuania‘s western borders when Polish General

Żeligowski took matters into his own hands and occupied Vilnius and the

area around it. He maintained that his troops were ethnic Poles drawn from

the area who wanted it become part of Poland, not Lithuania.

Thereafter,

Żeligowski set up an independent government while the international

community was left to deal with the fall-out from the coup de main.

Vilnius region had a complicated population consisting of Poles,

Lithuanians and Jews, hence any attempted solution to the area‘s problems

had to take this into account. When Paul Hymans (the Belgian representative

to the Council) made recommendations over the Vilnius dispute in September

1921, he specified that both Polish and Lithuanian should be recognised as

official languages there. He also proposed that all national minorities should

have equal rights over education, religion, language and association;

furthermore he recommended that steps should be taken for Lithuania and

Poland to co-ordinate their foreign, economic and defence policies. In

essence, he was hoping that all individuals would receive such respect in the

disputed area, and interested governments would work together so closely,

that tensions over Vilnius would melt away in time and it would not really

matter which state it belonged to. More radically still, however, he proposed

that Vilnius should be established as an autonomous canton on the Swiss

model (perhaps like Bern) within the Lithuanian state. It would be

administered by a diet made up of delegates numerically representative of the

different nationality groups living there, and there would be clear recognition

of language rights for all the different groups.

This was an interesting idea which recognised that the diverse ethnic

composition of Vilnius brought special political requirements. Unfortunately

neither Poland nor Lithuania found Hymans‘s plan acceptable. Although

initially the Lithuanian representative to the Council (called Galvanauskas)

liked the idea of autonomy for Vilnius inside Lithuania, he thought that

Bern‘s independence was too extensive and that language rights in the area

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would have to be more limited. As a model for possible autonomy, he looked

to the treatment of Ruthenians in Czechoslovakia.

Poland, by contrast, was

unenthusiastic about consigning the disputed territory to Lithuania, even on

condition of extensive autonomy.

Despite Hymans‘s recommendations, therefore, the League of Nations

never brokered a deal over Vilnius. The Council recognised as much in

January 1922, making a statement of defeat and calling on all concerned to

keep the peace nonetheless.

The Polish occupation could not be undone

and eventually, in March 1923, the region generally was recognised as part of

Poland.

Although clearly the League of Nations would have favoured a

different outcome, at least war did not break out over Vilnius. Instead, ill-will

continued to be worked out between Lithuania and Poland in a series of

diplomatic appeals to the Council as well as a series of complaints about the

way national minorities were treated in the two countries concerned.

Klaipėda’s distinctive heritage

The League had better fortune over Klaipėda (Memel), where autonomy was

also called on to solve the challenge of another complicated territory. Before

the First World War, the region had been part of the German Empire.

Appropriately, the majority of Klaipėda‘s urban population were ethnic

Germans. By contrast, the rural population had a Lithuanian majority which

led to roughly a 50:50 split of nationalities among the area‘s total population

of 140,000. As part of the peace-making process, Klaipėda had been detached

from Germany and it was expected to be incorporated into the new

Lithuanian state. Nevertheless, no final decision had been made by the start

of 1923.

In early January 1923, Lithuania took things into her own hands as

troops dressed in civilian clothes occupied the city, ousting 200 French troops

operating on behalf of the League of Nations. Next month, the Conference of

Ambassadors recognised Klaipėda as part of Lithuania, but this was not the

end to difficulties associated with the area. In the first place, it was

understood that Klaipėda was very different to the rest of Lithuania. A report

to the Conference of Ambassadors put it as follows:

―The eastern frontier of the Memel Territory, which coincides

with the former Russo-German frontier, marks an abrupt and

sudden change from one civilization to another, with at least a

century in between them. It is the true frontier between west

and east, between Europe and Asia…. Many Lithuanians who

belong to Memel fear the consequences of annexation to Great

Lithuania without secure guarantee of autonomy. They know

that annexation will mean military service, heavy taxation, an

increase of 400% in the cost of living (partially due to the

imposition of extremely high Customs dues), the

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disorganisation of economic life, and that system of bribery

and concessions which is common to all countries formerly

included in Russia….‖

Moreover, Klaipėda was (and still is) a major port lying at the mouth of the

Neman River and, as such, serviced substantial amounts of Polish trade.

Given the poor relations existing between Lithuania and Poland in 1923, it

was inevitable that steps had to be taken to ensure that access to the port was

not manipulated by Kaunas in order to put pressure on Poland in retaliation

for the loss of Vilnius. It was no surprise, therefore, that, in December 1923,

the Conference of Ambassadors requested that the League of Nations take

steps to define Klaipėda‘s exact status.

A commission was set up which visited Klaipėda, Kaunas and

Warsaw before reporting in March 1924. It acknowledged Lithuania‘s

sovereignty over the area but, echoing the concerns previously expressed

over the needs of the Åland islanders, emphasised the need to respect the

―traditional rights and culture‖ of Klaipėda‘s various inhabitants. Hence the

region was to be guaranteed substantial autonomy within Lithuania, including

its own diet and governor. Poland‘s concerns over the flow of trade through

the port were also addressed, as a three-man harbour board was set up

consisting of representatives from Klaipėda, Lithuania and the League‘s

transport organisation. The body would ensure that all goods were allowed

free transit.

Summarising about territorial autonomy

In other words, during the early 1920s, the League of Nations tried to foster

the welfare of national minorities in Central and Eastern Europe not least by

promoting autonomy for at least some of the distinctive and sensitive regions

they inhabited in the Baltic region. On two occasions the organisation was

more or less successful, with interesting political solutions being found for

the situations faced by the Åland islanders and the inhabitants of Klaipėda. In

the case of Vilnius, however, Polish intransigence meant that Paul Hymans‘s

innovative proposal never got off the ground. In all cases, however, the

League‘s ambition had been to remove a source of international tension by

ensuring that ordinary Europeans could go about their lives in decent,

civilised ways, free from discrimination owing to their national background.

And even in the least promising of the three cases, namely Vilnius, at least

the guarantees of minority rights undertaken by Warsaw meant that the area‘s

Lithuanian inhabitants (as well as other nationalities) were still supposed to

be treated properly, and that the international community was supposed to

maintain an interest in their fate.

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Conclusion: the League of Nations and the anticipation of contemporary

security

For a long time, analysts have recognised a distinction between ―hard‖ and

―soft‖ security. The former concerns the military aspects of security, while

the latter involves the social, political and economic pre-requisites of peace.

In the last few years, security analysis has developed further to take account

of Human Security. This approach was announced by the United Nations in

2003 and represents an attempt to view security less from the point of view of

states and more from the perspective of the ordinary people who suffer the

worst consequences of instability and upheaval.

As such, it builds

particularly on the idea of soft security by emphasising that the conditions of

life enjoyed by ordinary people determine their readiness to go to war.

There is much about the UN‘s Human Security agenda that is

reminiscent of the work of the League of Nations as characterised in this

essay. Take the following quotation from former UN Secretary General Kofi

Annan which is cited in the final Human Security report:

―Human Security in its broadest sense embraces far more than

the absence of violent conflict. It encompasses human rights,

good governance, access to education and healthcare and

ensuring that each individual has opportunities and choices to

fulfil his or her own potential. Every step in this direction is

also a step towards reducing poverty, achieving economic

growth and preventing conflict. Freedom from want, freedom

from fear and freedom of future generations to inherit a healthy

natural environment—these are the building blocks of human,

and therefore national, security.‖

Something about the tone of the extract, conveying a distinct idealism, recalls

the convictions of League advocates such as Smuts, Cecil and Murray; but

the parallels go further than this. As even the few lines hint (and as the report

explains at length), Human Security highlights that societies cannot be secure

if their health is parlous (for instance, if they live in the shadow of epidemics)

or if they are poorly administered (for example, if some communities are

excluded from decision-taking processes and are not empowered to look after

themselves).

More than this, the full report emphasises the importance of

return home for those displaced by conflict, since repatriation allows

individuals to take up their lives again. It also maintains that people forced to

move by upheaval must have their rights protected just like anybody else

while they are experiencing displacement.

Repatriating prisoners of war, fighting typhus, attempting to secure

the rights of national minorities, and trying to define territorial autonomy for

certain communities: as long ago as the 1920s, the League of Nations was

pursuing all of these strategies in Central and Eastern Europe, not least in the

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Baltic. In these ways at least, the organisation was anticipating the UN‘s

―new‖ security agenda for the twenty-first century; and in the process it was

championing a very inclusive model for creating peace. It was addressing the

needs of ordinary families left dislocated after the First World War; it sought

to protect impoverished and destitute populations from the spread of disease;

and it attempted to protect vulnerable communities from the possibility of

unreasonable external pressures. In all of these ways (and indeed more), the

League of Nations pursued progressive projects in Central and Eastern

Europe that defined the region as a laboratory for humanitarian and security

enterprise. Since the role of the Baltic region in this strategy has too seldom

been commented on over the last eighty years or more, the story rightfully

can be described as one of the forgotten pages of Baltic history.

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Notes

1. Letter of 28 June 1937 from Abraham to Heald. R4211. Disarmament

General. 7A / 29805 / 29805. LoN Archive.

2. League of Nations, Ten Years of World Co-operation, p.49; Rappard,

1931, p. 69.

3. Jan Smuts helped establish the Union of South Africa and participated in

the British War Cabinet before becoming a member of the British

Commonwealth delegation to the Paris Peace Conference. Robert Cecil

represented both South Africa and Britain in the League of Nations. He was

awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1937. Gilbert Murray was a Classics

scholar who publicised the idea of a League of Nations during the First

World War before representing South Africa in Geneva.

4. Smuts, 1918, p. 71.

5. Ibid, p.14 and p. 70.

6. ―Cecil sees wide field for League of Nations‖, New York Times, 28

December 1918.

7. Northedge, 1988, p. 168.

8. Cecil quoted in Sharp, 1991, p. 62.

9. The story is given in detail in Housden, 2007. See also Housden (in press),

chapter 4.

10. 23 June 1920, Lawrence to Cecil. R 1702. Repatriation of Prisoners of

War. 42 / 5397 / 5213. LoN Archive.

11. Repatriation of Prisoners in Siberia. Memorandum by the Secretary

General and Nansen‘s report of 14 June 1920. Correspondence and Accounts

concerning the Repatriation of Prisoners of War. Commission files. C 1119.

LoN Archive.

12. Nansen also encountered problems of organising transport for POWs

from the Russian interior to the Siberian coast. The Chinese Eastern Railroad

in Manchuria expected significant payment for the transport of POWs. See

Housden, 2007, p. 72.

13. The essay uses the German name for the port because it is the less

confusing option. At the time, it was a German city involved in the

repatriation of, amongst others, German POWs.

14. For film of the camp, see Humanitarian Action and Cinema.

15. Fridtjof Nansen went on to become the first High Commissioner for

Refugees when he took up the challenge of dealing with the Russians who

flooded Europe and Asia Minor especially after the collapse of the White

armies in 1920.

16. League of Nations. Official Journal. May 1921. pp. 349–53. As two

Lithuanian doctors put it in a letter to the Epidemic Commission, ―Typhus

was unknown in Lithuania before the war.‖

17. For a recent study of the epidemic, see Piana, 2009.

18. New York Times, 27 June 1920. Balinska, 1998, p. 43.

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19. Memorandum by Rachel Crowdy. R822. Health. 12 / 12462 / 12462. LoN

Archive.

20. Balinska, 1995, p. 92.

21. Epidemiological Intelligence. No. 3. June 1922. R 829. Epidemiological

Intelligence. 12 B / 21620 / 17928. LoN Archive.

22. Numbers passing through quarantine and entering Lithuania were 60,000

in 1918, 32,000 in 1919 and 34,000 in 1920. Report by Dr. R. Sliupas of the

Lithuanian Red Cross. R 836. Warsaw Conference, March 1922. 12 B /

19927 / 19927. LoN Archive.

23. Dr. Sliupas, Lithuanian Red Cross, 21 February 1921. R 823. Typhus in

Lithuania. 12 / 12618 / 12618. LoN Archive.

24. ―The Problem of Repatriation in Latvia and Lithuania‖ in the Second

Annual Report of the Epidemic Commission of the League of Nations, 1

August 1922. R823. Health. 12B / 15002 / 15002. LoN Archive.

25. 1 July 1921, Norman White to Rachel Crowdy. R 823. Typhus in

Lithuania. 12 / 12618 / 12618. LoN Archive.

26. League of Nations Health Committee. Fifth Session held at Geneva,

January 8th to 13th 1923. R 819. Health. 12 B / 25549x / 11346. LoN

Archive.

27. The Work of the Health Organisation. Report presented by the Second

Committee. September 1922. R 819. Health. 12 B / 23519 / 11346. LoN

Archive.

28. R 983. Baltic and North Sea Interchange. 1926. 12 G / 52523 / 52515.

LoN Archive.

29. Report by G. da Cunha, League of Nations. Official Journal. June 1920.

pp. 128–31.

30. League of Nations. Ten Years of World Co-operation, p. 236.

31. For discussions of cultural autonomy, see the chapters in this collection

by Garleff, Hackmann, and Housden and Smith. Incidentally, Articles 100 to

108 of the Treaty of Versailles left a lot unsaid about the ethnic composition

of another ―autonomous‖ territory not discussed here: Danzig (Gdańsk).

32. For a brief discussion of the rights of national minorities in Central and

Eastern Europe in the inter-war period, see Housden, in press, chapter 3. For

extended studies of the history of national minorities in the inter-war period,

see Jankowsky, 1945; Claude, 1955; Scheuermann, 2000; and Fink, 2004.

33. ―British War Aims. Mr Lloyd George‘s Statement‖, The Times 7 January

1918.

34. Smuts, 1918, p.12.

35. Aun, 1951, pp. 25–26. League of Nations. Ten Years of World Co-

operation, pp.358–59.

36. Bendiner, 1975, p. 173.

37. Barros, 1968, p.240. During the process of planning for the law of May

1920, Finland asked Britain for copies of the draft constitutions of the

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Channel Isles and the Isle of Man. They were supposed to provide ideas of

how best to establish autonomy. Foreign Office note or 13 February 1920.

R544. Åland Islands. 11 3066 / 468. LoN Archive.

38. The jurists‘ report from September 1920 can be found at Report of the

International Committee of the Jurists entrusted by the Council of the League

of Nations with the Task of Giving an Advisory Opinion upon the Legal

Aspects of the Åland Islands‘ Question. R546. Åland Islands. 11 / 6561 /

468; the report of the commission of inquiry dated 16 April 1921 can be

found at The Åland Islands Question. Report submitted to the Council of the

League of Nations by the Commission of Rapporteurs, 16 April 1921, R547.

The Åland Islands. 11 / 12233 / 468. LoN Archive.

39. The meeting happened on 23 June 1921. League of Nations. Official

Journal. September 1921, p. 692.

40. Kellor, 1924, 1924, p. 291.

41. In addition, and amongst other things, the rapporteurs investigating the

situation of the Åland islands also felt it would be wrong to remove the

islands from Finland given the good work the country had done in fighting

Bolshevism and preventing its spread westwards. League of Nations, The

Åland Islands Question. Report submitted to the Council of the League of

Nations by the Commission of Rapporteurs, 16 April 1921. R547. The Åland

Islands. 11 / 12233 / 468. LoN Archive.

42. League of Nations. Official Journal. September 1921, p.699.

43. League of Nations. Official Journal. September 1921, pp. 701–02.

44. League of Nations. Official Journal. September 1921, p. 699. Also

proceedings of 30 August 1921 reported in League of Nations. Official

Journal. December 1921.

45. League of Nations. Official Journal. September 1921, pp. 701–02. Kellor,

1924, p. 297.

46. The Times, 12 October 1920.

47. League of Nations. Official Journal. November 1921, pp. 990–92.

48. League of Nations. Official Journal. November 1921, pp. 995.

49. League of Nations. Official Journal. February 1922, pp. 9–100.

50. The Conference of Ambassadors recognised Vilnius as part of Poland.

Lloyd, 1995, p. 165.

51. See for example League of Nations. Official Journal, April 1922, p. 327

and May 1922, p. 437.

52. Report to the Conference of Ambassadors by the Extraordinary

Commission at Memel, 6 March 1923, reproduced in League of Nations.

Official Journal. January 1924, pp. 127–28.

53. See League of Nations. Official Journal. April 1924, pp. 515–18 and

pp.598–624.

54. I am thankful to Patricia Clavin of Jesus College, Oxford for drawing my

attention to Human Security in the first place. The Human Security report is