Lietuvių moterys Didžiojoje Britanijoje Pirmojo pasaulinio karo metais | Lithuanian Women in Great Britain during the First World War

Abstract

The Great War had a devastating impact on some Lithuanian immigrant families living in Great Britain. In 1917, after Britain and Russia signed a military agreement, the mobilisation was announced of foreign men living in Britain who were former subjects of the Russian tsar. The Lithuanians had to decide quickly whether to join the British army or return to Russia and fight on the Russian side. For disadvantaged immigrant families, the mobilisation of men and the loss of the main breadwinner were a major misfortune, and the British government had to provide benefits to the families of the mobilised soldiers. After the war, only a few of the Lithuanian men who had been transported to Russia were able to return to Britain to rejoin their families. The repatriation of these families to Lithuania was organised through the efforts of the British government and the Lithuanian Embassy in London. This article uses historiography and the Lithuanian weekly newspaper Išeivių draugas, published in Scotland from 1914, to describe the Lithuanian community during the Great War, and to analyse how the outbreak of the war, and in particular the Convention of 1917, affected the families of Lithuanian immigrants. The author focuses on the situation of Lithuanian women, their activities during the war, and their concern for the fate of their mobilised men and their families.

Keywords

• the Great War
• Russian subjects in Britain
• the Lithuanian diaspora in Britain
• Scottish Lithuanians
• women in the First World War