A nest for new Lithuanians: Hostels,discipline and nation-building in Ober Ost and Russia,1914–1919

Abstract

World War I represented a turning point not only for the emergence of the Lithuanian nation-state but also for the implementation of nation-building practices. Throughout wartime, the Lithuanian War Relief Committee profited from its position as a tool to develop a network of facilities devoted to children assistance. While having unprecedented rights to autonomously administer relief facilities, the Committee, as far as financial conditions allowed it, supported isolation in hostels as the favourite child relief format. Through formal and informal educational activities as well as the adoption of particular hygiene norms and, later, children relocation, the Lithuanian élite tried and transformed hostels and relief in veritable tools of nation-building aimed at transforming children in would-be conscious nationals. The goal to create prototypical Lithuanians, however, at least partially failed due by children’s alternative (if not opposite) agency.