prvá svetová vojna

In this text the writer analyses the formation of attitudes of the Ukrainian civilian population settled in the territory of Eastern Galicia towards the representatives of the Polish civilian and military powers in the period of the Polish-Ukrainian (1918-1920) and the Polish-Russian (1920) war conflicts and in the immediately following period when Poland seized power over this territory. He develops the issue against a background formed by a complicated military and political situation in this area (including the consequences of Civil War in Russia which was fought also here).

The paper dealing with the fates of men mobilised to fight on the battlefields of the Great War treats them from the aspect of creating new, specific social relations, nets and communities. Having deprived them of their families, relatives and local communities the warfare also caused that many of those who survived were separated from their dearest and nearest not only during the War but also during the years immediately following the conflict.

Atrocities committed in the Civil War in Russia in 1917-1920 had no parallel at that time. Both sides participating in the conflict, the Bolsheviks and "the Whites", led their operations in a way much different from the period war standards. Executions and pacifications of the citizens, committed both by the Red Army and soldiers of "the Whites", were the rule of the day. They war events caused famine and mass migration of the civilian population, attempting to find protection and help from the allied armies that took part in the intervention in Russia.

An impact of the war events and war regimes upon the family opens space for comparative studies of social consequences of the WWI and WWII. Survival and behavioural strategies may be another starting point for a study of models of behaviour and mental reactions to extraordinary conditions created by a war conflict. The study focuses on these two schemes and highlights their potential to become universal concepts acceptable for studying an impact exerted by war on a society in general.

The family history of the writer Tereza Vansová (1857-1942) was affected by two world wars. She lived through the Great War and World War II as an adult person – as the wife, later widow of an Evangelical pastor, socially engaged member of the Slovak intelligentsia aware of their national identity. There is no doubt that her distinguished position in society and her religion as well as her social status determined the character of her personal and family experience; furthermore, they influenced her conditions during and after the wars in terms of the applied "strategies of survival".

In the last days of the First World War soldiers returning home, along with civilians, attacked representatives of the Hungarian state and wealthy individuals, especially Jews. They expelled them from their homes and looted them, or they simply destroyed their property. In some places regular Hungarian troops executed the leaders of these rioters. This study seeks to offer an alternative to the prevailing interpretation of the looting, which emphasize the social or ethnic motivations of the economically and nationally oppressed Slovak rioters.

This article explores the phenomenon of the ‘Green Cadres' at the end of the First World War in Austria-Hungary, with a focus on events in western Slovakia 1918-1920. The Green Cadres were bands of army deserters and radicalized peasants who hid in the forests and mountains of the monarchy during the last year of the war and then violently attempted to topple the social-political order in many localities as the state collapsed.