Die Russische Freiwillige Westarmee in Kurland 1919. Regionale Besatzungspraxis im Spannungsfeld zwischen Imperialismus und Selbstbestimmung

Abstract

The terms “self-determination,” “democracy,” and “national autonomy” were omnipresent
after the end of World War I. Yet it was not only actors with revolutionary or nation-state
agendas who used these popular slogans. Representatives of the just-collapsed Empires in
Eastern Europe also explained their actions in the violent phase of negotiating future state
order with these terms and thus—intentionally or unintentionally—contributed to the estab-
lishment of the corresponding vocabulary. Often, however, it remained unclear which con-
crete political objectives were concealed behind the buzzwords.
The article explores this question using the example of the West Russian Volunteer Army
and its commander-in-chief Pavel Bermondt-Avalov. This army appeared for a short period
in 1919 as an occupying force in Courland and in the north of Lithuania and represents a
special example of an imperialist military enterprise in the civil wars of Central and Eastern
Europe. The personnel composition of this army and the political circles associated with it
combined objectives that included the restoration of the Tsarist empire, the retention of re-
gional self-government by the Baltic German elites, and the safeguarding of German war
aims in Eastern Europe.
Since the competition for regional state reorganization was fought not least with propa-
gandistic means, the actors tried to communicate their own understanding of a right to
national self-determination to the population of the occupied territory as well as to the inter-
ested world public. The article examines both this communicative strategy and the way in
which the political promises were institutionalized on the ground.