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The Logic of Violence in the Polish-Lithuanian Conflict, 1920–1923

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 November 2020

Tomas Balkelis Open the ORCID record for Tomas Balkelis [Opens in a new window]
Tomas Balkelis*
Affiliation:
Lithuanian Institute of History, Vilnius, Lithuania
*
*Corresponding author. Email: tomas.balkelis@gmail.com
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Abstract

The article is devoted to violence that took place in the Polish-Lithuanian borderland after the Great War. Using the theoretical insights of Stathis Kalyvas (2006), the author explores violent actors, types, and the dynamics of violence in the conflict over the neutral zone between Poland and Lithuania between 1920 and 1923. The focus is on the experiences of civilians and the social impact of violence on the formation of their national identities. The author suggests that violent ways of nation making forced the local populace to adopt national identities to ensure their security, but the process of forced nationalization was limited and may have resulted in the emergence of indifference among certain groups of the population.

Keywords

ethnic conflictnationalismparamilitarismviolence
Type
Article
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 49 , Issue 5 , September 2021 , pp. 911 - 925
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Association for the Study of Nationalities

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