Observations on the Population of Vilnius: The Grim Years and the 1942 Census

An American geographer, commenting on the preceding paper in this issue (Weeks, 2006), focuses more deeply on the results of a little-known but significant census organized by the Germans in May 1942. The author seeks to produce a credible estimate of the city's Jewish population (excluded from the census) some 11 months after the German invasion of Vilnius, and explores the factors underlying various claims that the census distorted the size of the Lithuanian and Polish populations. In the process, he sheds light on a deep interlayering of relationships among the city's diverse ethnic groups that contributes to a unique "sense of place" experienced by city residents. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O15, O18, R14. 7 figures, 3 tables, 63 references.     

An unlikely alliance: the 1907 Ukrainian–Jewish electoral coalition

This paper contextualises a political alliance between Ukrainian and Jewish national activists in Austrian Galicia during the 1907 parliamentary elections, Austria's first elections with universal manhood suffrage. This alliance represented a milestone in the making of a new paradigm of Ukrainian–Jewish relations. Ironically, the Ukrainian and Jewish nationalists, portrayed elsewhere as staunch enemies, were uniquely able to overcome the profound social, religious, political, and cultural barriers separating the two communities. Ukrainian nationalists recognised the potential of a nationalised Jewish community to undermine Polish hegemony in Galicia, while some Zionists saw the potential to elect Jewish parliamentary representatives in rural Ukrainian districts where Poles and Jews competed for the districts' second mandate. The alliance mobilised the Ukrainian and Jewish electorate around shared slogans and goals. It was a qualified success, leading to a more powerful national Ukrainian faction as well as the first Zionist faction in any European parliament. Although the two sides failed to repeat the alliance in the subsequent elections in 1911, the coalition sparked a new sense of history for both communities. It created a pro‐Ukrainian discourse in Jewish politics, and a pro‐Zionist one in Ukrainian politics. The alliance also exposes Zionism as a response to the European‐wide nationalist revivalism rather than a reaction to rampant turn‐of‐the‐century racial anti‐Semitism.     

A Multi-ethnic City in Transition: Vilnius's Stormy Decade, 1939-1949

An American historian traces major changes in the demographic character of Vilnius during 1939-1949, a period encompassing the dislocation of its population and destruction during World War II as well as the city's ethnic and physical transformation prompted by incorporation into the USSR. More specifically, the paper, based in part on archival material, details and contrasts the circumstances prevailing during several distinctive periods in the city's mid-20th century history (September 1939-June 1941, June 1941-July 1944, and July 1944-1949), when it was exposed to five successive state jurisdictions (Poland, Lithuania, twice USSR, and Nazi Germany) and became the new Soviet capital of Lithuania. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O15, O18, R14. 1 figure, 89 references.