Ataman Armies—armed paramilitary formations which became major players in embattled Ukraine and in the Russian Civil War. They were commanded by charismatic leaders (called Ataman, the Cossack word for ‘commander’). Since the majority of their soldiers were peasants, they are often also referred to as Peasant Armies.
Belweder camp—common designation for Józef Piłsudski and his followers after his nomination as head of state in November 1918, which made the Belweder Palace in Warsaw his permanent residence.
Endecja—stands for National Democracy (derived from its abbreviation ND), the Polish right-wing movement led by Roman Dmowski.
Fememorde—murders of political opponents and ‘traitors’ by the Freikorps in Upper Silesia.
Freikorps (Free Corps)—Paramilitary units consisting mainly of war veterans and fanaticized youths which engaged in the post-1918 German border struggles in Greater Poland, Upper Silesia, and the Baltic.
Entente—French word for ‘understanding’, synonym for the Western Allies, the coalition opposed to the Central Powers during the First World War. In a broader sense also summarily used for the ‘Big Four’, the major Western powers which, in war’s wake, negotiated the peace terms and the European postwar order in Paris: Great Britain, France, the United States, and Italy.
Hetmanate—Cossack word for ‘military leadership’, here primarily indicating the government of Pavlo Skoropadskyi in Ukraine in 1918.
Kresy—Polish word for ‘borderland’, identifying the former eastern borderlands of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, which in 1918 featured a mixed population of Lithuanians, Belarusians, Jews, Poles, Ukrainians, and others.
Kulturkampf—German word which translates as ‘Culture Struggle’. Conflict between the German Empire under Chancellor Otto von Bismarck on the one side, and the Catholic Church and the Vatican on the other, in the 1870s and the first half of the 1880s.
Ober Ost—German acronym for the ‘Supreme Command of All German Forces in the East’, the German occupation force in the northern Kresy from 1915 to 1918.
Sejm—Polish parliament in the Second Polish Republic (as well as in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth). The word is probably derived from an old form of the Lithuanian word suėjimas for ‘gathering, meeting’.
Tutejsi—Polish word for ‘locals’ (which exists as well in variations in the Lithuanian, Belarusian, Latvian, and Ukrainian languages), short for inhabitants of the Kresy.
Uhlans—Polish light cavalry, whose tradition dates back to the seventeenth century. The word stems from the Tatar language and was brought to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth by Tatars who settled down there in the fourteenth century.