Didžiojo karo sureikšminimo Rytų Prūsijoje ir Klaipėdos krašte prielaidos: nuostolių kompensavimo klausimas

LTImperijų žlugimą paprastai suvokiame kaip esminį postūmį buvusių „pavergtųjų tautų“ valstybėms susikurti Vidurio Rytų Europoje. Klausimas, kaip buvę imperijų pavaldiniai šiame kontekste transformavosi į nacionalinių valstybių piliečius, dažniausiai atskleidžiamas per nacionalinių sąjūdžių puoselėtų idealų įgyvendinimo perspektyvą. Visgi ne visi šie piliečiai buvo vienodai pasirengę atsisveikinti su imperijų palikimu. Ypač jis slėgė tuos, kurie transformaciją paspartinusiais Didžiojo karo metais patyrė fizinių ir / ar materialių nuostolių bei tikėjosi, kad jie bus kompensuoti. Straipsnyje analizuojama, kaip šis klausimas spręstas Klaipėdos krašte – teritorijoje, kurios gyventojai dėl Pirmojo pasaulinio karo rezultatų atsidūrė tarp dviejų valstybių – Lietuvos ir Vokietijos. [Iš leidinio]Reikšminiai žodžiai: Pirmasis pasaulinis karas, 1914-1918 (Didysis karas; World War I); Karo nuostoliai; Nuostolių kompensavimas; Sužalotieji kare; Netekę maitintojo; Poimperinė situacija.

ENAs generally stated in historiography, after the First World War, the public remembrance of the Great War in the newly established states of East-Central Europe never acquired such forms as in those (particularly Western European) countries whose troops in the war fought against each other. In the present paper, an attempt is made to qualify the statement through the choice of a specific group of population (those who experienced physical and/or material losses) as the research object. The newly emergent states in the post-imperial situation were in no hurry to take over the obligations of the loss compensation to those people that the collapsed empires had taken. The paper argues that in the above mentioned states the fact became an important, even if so far insufficiently evaluated by historians, precondition for giving prominence to the Great War: those who experience losses in the war expect compensation, and when the expectations fail to be met, people are forced to again and again remember the experiences due to which the losses were incurred. The paper explores the loss compensation practices that the Memel Territory (Klaipėda Region) war victims went through during and after the Great War. It shows that the post-imperial Germany and the post-imperial Lithuania–the two states in whose Governments’ fields of interest the Memel Territory population occurred in the interwar period–differently dealt with the issue of what to do with the war legacy of no longer existing states and with the social obligations assumed by them. The first part of the paper shall clarify the scale of the issue, i.e. specify the part of the population to whom it was relevant.In the second and third parts, the efforts of the governmental institutions to manage the problem shall be analysed by separating the periods before and after January 1920, when the Memel Territory under the Versailles Peace Treaty was cut off from Germany and later, in 1923, became part of the Republic of Lithuania. The paper seeks to compare how the expectations of the Memel Territory war victims and their implementation changed before and after the aforementioned political transformations. Therefore, it shall focus not merely on the disclosure of the long negotiations between the Memel Territory, Germany, and the Lithuanian Government that ultimately led the latter to the assumption of obligations. It shall also focus on East Prussia whose part the Memel Territory was before 1920 and with which various kinds of relationships were further maintained even after the separation from Germany. Attention to both the Lithuanian and East Prussian context in the paper enables the author to reveal the special character of the expectations of the Memel Territory war victims in the context of Lithuania and also to consider the war losses compensation issue an additional, so far unnamed by historians, reason which prevented the successful integration of at least part of the region population into the state of Lithuania. [From the publication]