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| LOOSENED BELTS, CARESSED MISSILES AND MEMORIES OF THE FELLOWSHIP OF MEN Nils Konstantinovs | |
| During the day their arms lifted rifles and complex military equipment, which could potentially save or annihilate thousands. During the day they followed loudly barked orders that followed them on every tiniest step of their strictly regulated daily routine. During the day they were well-trained machines, schooled for extreme combat situations. They were known all over their world for their cold blood and cruelty: they were soldiers of the Evil Empire of Soviet Union. But at night they became followers of the muses of applied and photographic arts. Instead of guns their fingers reached for manicure scissors and colour pencils. Bent over their albums, they cut, drew, coloured and glued, night after night, for many months on end. "To have something to show back home. And to remember everything later, because things were, of course, pretty shit there, but there are some good memories as well - those of friends," says Ziedonis, who served in the Nuclear Defence Battalion of the Soviet Armed Forces in Belarus from 1977 to 1979.
Like most of the conscripts of the Soviet Army, Ziedonis started his demob scrapbook some six months before the end of his 24-month service. For his work he chose an ordinary photo album with firm leatherette covers and thick pages of grey cardstock interspersed with thin coated-paper sheets - an album of the kind that are used for photographs by most all generations that have seen the Soviet occupation. These then-widely available albums were the ones that most soldiers used as a basis for their demob scrapbooks. As soon as this album was purchased the conscript could start decorating its pages and sticking down photographs. Unfortunately, Ziedonis' album happened to be something of a miniature version, or just about half the size of the usual ones, so he had to do without one of the most traditional decorations of these scrapbooks. "Everybody traced characters from the Nu, pogodi ("Just wait") cartoons on their coated-paper pages. But I had the wrong format - the drawing wouldn't fit. If not for that, I would have traced them, too," Ziedonis says regretfully. However, thanks to skilful improvisation and meticulous work, in ingenuity and colour his scrapbook even surpasses some of the ones that boast pictures of the cartoon characters - gluttonous, aggressive wolf and slightly effeminate, artistically inclined hare - which had acquired near cult status with the youths of that era. The scrapbook is prefaced with a symbolic découpage of the Nuclear Defence Battalion logo, which depicts an atom. In the illustration, however, the atom has been split into two, with something streaming from it in an unstoppable torrent. Ziedonis admits this was his way of using creative means to express the atmosphere of pessimism and disbelief that hung over his place of service. The soldiers didn't really believe that any skills they might've been taught would save anyone in the event of a chemical attack. This disbelief was further increased by the rundown condition of the technical equipment. So, for example, the cars and military machinery was several decades old and more often in need of repairing than in any condition to be used in action. Scepticism of the technical resources is also evident elsewhere in the scrapbook design - photos of the cars are supplemented with ironic and somewhat sarcastic captions. The arsenal of materials used to decorate the album is richly diverse. It is made up of all the things that were available on the spot and also sent in from home. Thus, some foil from candy wrappers imparts a unique feel to the symbolic atom at the front of the scrapbook. Elsewhere, an air of apocalyptic, ghostly dread is conjured up by pictures cut out of army textbooks - nuclear burns, thermal scars and faces squished into gasmasks, which create a manga effect. "For the most part I took pictures from the Literatūra un Māksla ("Literature and Art") newspaper. I got it sent to me from home," Ziedonis says. Thanks to some of these cut-out pictures, the scrapbook also acquires a vaguely Latvian identity. These decoupages are enhanced with colourful contouring, with almost each of the black-and-white newspaper pictures outlined and brightened. The most important details of some photographs are also circled in felt-tip pen. One of the photographs shows several soldiers in uniform; one of them is circled in red. "Another Latvian," the owner of the scrapbook explains. The most important element of the album, however, are the photos themselves. They have mostly been taken and developed by the soldiers themselves. For the most part the pictures featured in these albums fit into one of three general categories - close friends and service mates, group pictures and posed portraits, as well as informal pictures shot in a relaxed atmosphere. This first group of closest friends usually forms the first part of a demob scrapbook. Ziedonis says these photographs are the ones he most wanted to keep safe, because friends are the only thing that holds pleasant memories from the time of forced service in the military of the occupation regime. The pictures show friends during activities and also at ease, cheerfully smiling at the camera during a breather. Occasionally the young men are shown naked from the waist up, doing sit-ups; elsewhere they are enjoying relaxing outdoor games. Their movements and expressions suggest boldness, self-confidence and also camaraderie. Under each photograph of a friend there is an inscription. The scrapbook also holds maps with painstakingly marked places of origin and residence. For each of them, Ziedonis can offer a story full of the warmth of close friendships forged over months of service. The second group consists of all other service mates. There are some swarthy men from South Caucasus, of which other young men did well to be careful, as their wildness was widely known; there are the dedi - the "grampses", or older conscripts - and other privileged men, carelessly leaning back against car bonnets. Here there is considerably more daring and self-confidence, but the undercurrent of camaraderie is gone. It is replaced by a more pronounced individual pose, a withdrawal behind the walls of rank and status. Ziedonis points out that anyone well acquainted with the army traditions of that era would have no trouble recognising each soldier's social position and rating. A lot can be revealed by such seemingly small details as the position of the belt: according to regulation it has to be fastened quite high, almost over the navel. But if the soldier in the photo has his belt loosened and lowered, it means this is no newbie soldier and may well be the informal leader - or simply has considerable nerve. Much is also revealed by the five-pointed star that is worked into the metal of the belt buckle. The regulations prescribed daily polishing to keep the star shiny and clearly discernible. The new conscripts usually stuck to this rule. In time, however, as they reached a certain status which also gave them a sense of security, the soldiers stopped polishing the star. Thus a tarnished, unpolished buckle indicates a higher rank within the informal hierarchy of the place of service. The highest degree of this was not just to stop polishing the buckle, but even to bend it - however, only those respected not just by peers but also by higher ranking officers ever dared to do this. This group of photographs also contains photos taken at professional studios, in which young, stern soldiers' faces gaze off toward some boundless horizons of victory, hiding their slight embarrassment behind manly posture. "For good conduct you'd sometimes get taken into the city where there was a photo studio. And that's where those pictures were taken," Ziedonis remembers. Sometimes the studio brought its equipment to the barracks, and it appears this kind of picture - in uniform, in a traditional setup - was very popular among soldiers. Posing beside military machinery was another favourite. "We made a special trip to the testing-grounds, because we had no tanks of our own. And there we quickly took the pictures, to have those photographs for our scrapbooks," Ziedonis describes the soldier's love for grand military equipment. Another popular object for posing was various missiles, which the soldiers, depending on the size of the missile, embrace fondly like a lover or gently cradle in their hands like a baby. The least represented but at the same time most expressive group is the third category - informal photographs that show the conscripts having fun in their free time. Here only boldness remains, but its presence is strongly felt. The atmosphere is set by influences and images borrowed from popular culture - acoustic guitars, scattered bottles, omnipresent cigarettes in the corners of the soldiers' mouths, untucked shirttails, relaxed and sprawling poses. A hint of rock groups' backstage life and a bit of a retro version of Trainspotting, Soviet-style. This category is also the one with the most elaborate decorations of decoupage, witty inscriptions and glued illustrations. It is here that you will find Postmodern and Pop Art style collages of gasmasks and mutilated limbs. Although the overall look of the scrapbook was down to the individual limits of each imagination and the effort the particular demob soldier was prepared to put into creating it, there is one element in particular that will be found in each and every one of these compilations - the scrapbook concludes with a newspaper clipping of a demobilisation order. This was the accepted practice of the Soviet era - the end of the compulsory service of each call-up was announced in print. However, the demob scrapbook culture of the Soviet Armed Forces eventually died out. Ilmārs Šlāpins, philosopher, poet and veteran of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, tells Studija that at his time of service demobs no longer practiced these creative pastimes, and neither he nor his service contemporaries have anything like these scrapbooks. "In January 1989, as the troops were withdrawing from Kabul, there wasn't much time to devote to scrapbooking or making the demob uniform. Besides, as far as I can remember, there was a formal ban on taking any kind of photographs out of there. I think art at that time had fallen into decay and was enjoyed only by a few conscripts in some remote, God-forsaken military units somewhere in Sakhalin or East Germany," the vet recalls. No similar tradition has been reborn within the ranks of the armed forces of the renewed Republic of Latvia, either. "These days everything is either stored on the hard drive of a computer or burnt onto CDs," points out Mareks, a former conscript of the Latvian Armed Forces. However, digital technologies are not the only reason why collecting and preserving photographs from military service isn't deemed to merit that much effort. In Marek's opinion, these and other strong traditions can only exist under the conditions of compulsory military service. Certainly, the soldiers still have a taste for immortalising themselves and their peers at the important time of service and military action. But no-one is going to devote a whole six months to working and perfecting their scrapbook, especially because the most popular kind of photo album among soldiers and others alike is the one found on draugiem.lv, a social networking website: it can be set up in just a few minutes by sending off a single text message. But even these albums prominently feature the same symbolism that used to reign in carefully decorated demob scrapbooks a couple of decades ago. For example, a love of machinery and tanks. And most of all - of missiles. | |
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