"Russian to Polish to Soviet: Vilnius in Two World Wars” with Theodore Weeks

In the first half of the 20th century, Vilnius (Vilna, Wilno, Vilne) went from being a provincial capital in the Russian Empire to a “Polish” city on the eastern edge of the Polish Republic to the capital of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic. The two World Wars accelerated change, destruction, migration, and ethnic violence during these decades. This talk will concentrate on the political and ethnic changes that Vilnius underwent from ca. 1910 to ca. 1950. 

Theodore R. Weeks is Professor of History at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, where he teaches courses in modern world, European, and Russian history. He has also taught at the College of Europe, Natolin (Warsaw), and spent one year as a Distinguished Fulbright Professor at the University of Warsaw. Among his works are Nation and State in Late Imperial Russia: Nationalism and Russification on the Western Frontier, 1863-1914 (1996), From Assimilation to Antisemitism: the “Jewish Question” in Poland, 1850-1914 (2006), and Vilnius between Nations 1795-2000 (2015). His research interests include nationalism, ethnic relations, antisemitism, and, more recently, the history of technology.

Co-sponsors: College of Arts and Letters, James Madison College, College of Social Science, International Studies and Programs, Center for European and Eurasian Studies, and the Department of History.