Lithuania

Formerly a part of the Russian Empire’s northwestern periphery, Lithuania emerged as an independent country after World War I. Like the other states that were constructed from the ruins of the Central and Eastern European empires, Lithuania was in the process of state-building and consolidation when the Great Depression hit. An agrarian reform, designed to redistribute land from the Polishspeaking nobility to the Lithuanian-speaking peasants, was still in progress, as was the integration of the formerly German Klaipėda region, annexed by Lithuania in 1923, as the new state’s outlet to the sea. This chapter will argue that, although the Lithuanian economy displayed striking resilience, the crisis fundamentally fragmented Lithuanian society, in terms of both nationality and class, and reshaped the relationship between society and state. Lithuanian scholars have stressed the depression’s transformative impact on Lithuania’s state structures, society, and agriculture, emphasizing how the attitudes of peasants toward farming traditions changed and how ethnic Lithuanians increasingly moved into the commercial sector. ¹ Yet we know little about what social and political developments drove these changes.