War, Revolution and Terror in the Baltic States and Finland after the Great War

Balkelis, Tomas

doi:10.1080/01629778.2015.1009685

Cited by 6 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…The destruction of the old order and of old value systems contributed to the anxiety felt by the returning officers and to a so-called "culture of defeat." 19 The world they found was entirely different from the world they knew before the war. Many of them were convinced that Bolshevism was to blame for all these sudden changes.…”

Section: Paramilitaries After the End Of World War Imentioning

confidence: 95%

Taming Transylvania: Paramilitaries Building State and Peace after World War I

Mireanu

2023

East European Politics and Societies: and Cultures

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This text is a political analysis of the events surrounding the demise of the Austro–Hungarian administration in Transylvania and its replacement by the Romanian one at the end of World War I. It focuses on the months of November and December 1918. In particular, the text looks at the Romanian paramilitary groups called the National Guards. I argue that in Transylvania in November and December 1918, the National Guards played a pacifying and state-building role, through their repressive and anti-communist function. Unlike the paramilitary phenomenon in the rest of Europe, in Transylvania it was the very counter-revolutionary function of the paramilitary troops that produced constructive and constitutive effects. At the same time, unlike the Romanian historiography, which almost unanimously has seen the role of these troops as only a positive one, I underline the repressive function of the National Guards, which made them act violently against any alternative political projects of that period in the region. The revolutionary state of the province in those days had to be calmed down for Transylvania’s autonomy to be ensured under the control of the local Romanian authorities. The Romanian elite’s state-building project needed security to gain legitimacy. To this end, this elite took control of the various paramilitary forces of the region and monopolized them under the National Guards umbrella. These groups were crucial in the repression against the republican movement and the perceived Bolshevik threat.

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