Military heritage in lithuania. problems of conservation and maintenance (1940-2005)

Military Heritage in Lithuania: Conservation and Maintenance Problems (1940-2005) The military heritage of Lithuania is historically one of the broadest components of Lithuanian cultural heritage. From her very inception, the state Lithuania has exerted all her energies toward military science, achieving much in technology and organisation. After the final partition of the Republic until the second half of the twentieth century, the erection of fortifications was the prerogative of foreigners. In spite of the significance of these kinds of cultural heritage sites and objects, military heritage remains unregulated as a combined subject for the protection of cultural values, and the very concept of military heritage has and is being applied only to defensive fortifications. Nonetheless, all architectural and earthwork fortification objects and sites – defensive as well as siege works – are assigned to this group of cultural heritage sites and objects. The military heritage of Lithuania reflects the development of fortification construction and technical progress using the examples provided by the Western European school of fortification. Progress is especially represented in bastion fortification construction. Due to the complex terminology of fortifications of this period, however, errors are frequently made in correctly describing military fortifications. Objects and sites are called different things, concepts often overlap and frequently don’t correspond at all with the functions of fortification. There is much disagreement among academics in assigning a given military object or site to one or another type of fortification. Contradictions also arise in trying to correctly assign sites and objects which do not have a defensive or offensive function to a military heritage site category. The protection and maintenance of the military heritage of Lithuania and appropriate exploitation are becoming ever more urgent questions for society and the state. This has happened as a result of increasing interest in military history and fortification. Military heritage sites are experiencing ever greater interest on the part of tourists and historians of military historians, but some military heritage sites and objects have not been given protected site status yet. Likewise, fortifications from the twentieth century were not included on lists of monuments made during the Soviet period, nor entered in the Lithuanian register of immovable cultural assets. Even so, many fortifications from this period have received private investments and are being maintained and put to use. Archaeological military heritage sites and objects, with the exception of grave mounds, have received the least preservation efforts, and therefore the least investigation as well, during the Soviet and post-Soviet period in Lithuania. At the same time, all protected military architecture heritage sites and objects were and are more or less maintained, although the problem of exploitation remains a problem at certain fortifications