ABSTRACT
The end of the Great War was also the end of the three multinational empires. In their place arose a multitude of new polities with uncertain borders and illdefined identities. Many of them were ravaged by civil conflicts and inter-state wars for several more years. Even where fighting ceased early, peace did not automatically bring about a restoration of stability and prosperity. Economic pressures that had been held under the lid by government controls during wartime were released explosively in the war’s aftermath. Inflation was high everywhere, and reached astronomical proportions in many parts of Eastern Europe. Battered economies could not reabsorb the millions of soldiers and refugees who returned to their homes. The social and economic dislocation that followed the war was almost as violent in its own way as the continent-wide military conflict that had just ended. It was amidst these centrifugal forces that far-reaching decisions had to be made about the boundaries of identity in the new polities.
