ABSTRACT
Most of the nation-building narratives on Lithuania barely examine the link between the emergence of an independent state in 1918 and mass population displacement that occurred during World War I. Between 1915 and 1918, more than half a million people (among them about 250,000 ethnic Lithuanians) were displaced from the Lithuanian provinces to central Russia.2 Many historians largely see this exodus as a disruptive episode in country’s history, which overall did not have a serious impact on the emergence of an independent state. Instead, they concentrate on the politics of state-building: the emergence of the Taryba [the Council] in Vilnius in September 1917, its complex relationship with Germans and efforts to carve out institutional structures of a new state.3 They see this state-building as a zenith of the national movement which started in the nineteenth century. This is claimed without much consideration to the fact that the diplomatic developments of 1917-1918 that led to the proclamation of independence on 16 February 1918 were a result of the political activities of a small group of leaders based in German-occupied Lithuania. Moreover, there was no broad-based movement supporting the proclamation of independence locally (it would start only in early 1919).
