Savanoriai: fotografinė atmintis: iš Eugenijaus Peikštenio rinkinio

LT1919 m. suburta ir skubiai apmokyta Lietuvos kariuomenė padarė stebuklą - apgynė šalį net nuo trijų priešų (bolševikų, bermontininkų, lenkų) ir sudarė sąlygas įtvirtinti valstybę. Artėjant nepriklausomybės atkūrimo šimtmečiui, knygoje prisimenami svarbiausi šios istorijos veikėjai - savanoriai ir šauktiniai kareiviai, eiliniai ir puskarininkiai, kurių portretus surinko kolekcininkas Eugenijus Peikštenis. Tradicinėse ateljė fotografijose - mūsų atminties kariuomenė.

ENThis book celebrates the centenary of Lithuanian independence. The director of the Museum of Genocide Victims, Eugenijus Peikštenis, has been collecting photographs of volunteers and conscripts who fought in the war for independence in 1919-1923. He started looking for them in collectors' clubs, forums, antique shops in 1995-1996 and now has around 900 portraits of approximately 1800 soldiers. He focuses on soldiers and under-officers because there has been too little attention to them: officers and commanders have been commemorated in albums and books, there is a ten volume encyclopaedic publication "Officers of the Lithuanian Army 1918-1953", but nothing has been done to commemorate ordinary soldiers. Only the first soldier who fell in battle, Povilas Lukšys, represents the privates and the under-officers en masse in the story of Lithuanian wars. A monument was erected to commemorate his death nearTaučiūnai (Kėdainiai District) after the war: a grand pyramid whose three steps meant the colours of the flag, and the triangular form reminded of the triangle on the soldiers' hats and eternity. Other soldiers had more modest "monuments" - the photographs.Their stance in the photographs expresses hope that their resolution to sacrifice life would be always remembered. But would it be? Their photographs have left family albums and frames to be sold to the collector because there is no one left to remember these people personally. But Peikštenis gathers these young men with their unexpressed desires, hopes, plans for the future, fears, into the army of collective memory. Redde quoddebes - "return what you owe" was written on the grave of the unknown soldier in the garden of the War Museum. The citizens of the independent Lithuania between the wars knew the value of that gift. Although the monument was destroyed by the Soviets, the debt did not disappear. The leader of one battalion who had emigrated to the West, Juozas Lanskoronskis, wrote what it meant: "Return what you owe. What? Freedom, if you have lost it, you owe it to us for our lives". The debt was returned in 1991. What the Latin dictate means to us now, a hundred years away from the first and thirty from the second restoration of independence? By looking at these photographs dense with silver, peering into the faces and into the "self" of each soldier, reading the history of the war from their perspective we can look for an answer.