Lithuania's Soviet nostalgia: back in the USSR | Travel | The Guardian
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Lithuania's Soviet nostalgia: back in the
USSR
Feeling nostalgic for the good old Soviet Union? Then head to
Lithuania, where several theme parks let visitors feel exactly what
it was like – right down to scary, abusive guards
Dan Hancox
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 1 May 2011 20.00 BST
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No, it's not torture, but a typical welcome from a 'guard' and his friendly alsatian at Lithuania's Soviet Bunker
visitor attraction. Photograph: Lithuanian Tourist Board
'Forget your past! Forget your history!" A colossal bullfrog of a guard, in an olive-green
uniform with red epaulets, is spitting at us in Russian while a huge alsatian strains at
the leash, barking ferociously. "Welcome to the Soviet Union," snarls the guard. "Here
you are nobody!"
I can't say I wasn't warned: I had just signed a health and safety waiver that included
the following clause: "In case of disobedience participants may receive psychological or
physical punishments." This is 1984: Survival Drama in a Soviet Bunker, a three-hour
long, quasi-theatrical experience in a genuine Soviet bunker in the middle of the
Lithuanian forest; imagine Punchdrunk Theatre Company run by retired KGB officers.
While most former Soviet republics have let their memories of the period fade into red
mist, 20 years since the Russian tanks rolled out, Lithuania is confronting its
communist past head-on.
An hour earlier, Ruta Vanagaite, the creator of the Soviet Bunker, was setting the
mood. "Someone always faints – our record is five people fainting in one show," she
explained matter-of-factly, re-assuring me that my translator will have smelling salts
handy. "But be sure to answer the guards' questions promptly and clearly. They are
mostly actors, but they can get stuck in that time and forget they are actors. We had to
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Lithuania's Soviet nostalgia: back in the USSR | Travel | The Guardian
fire some of them because they were a little too hard on people. It's very easy to break
people's will – once you are down there, six metres underground, you feel like you
can't get out."
Just by the Neris river, towards the Belorussian border, a red flag by the side of the
road indicates a turning into the forest, down a path towards an anonymous, decrepit
building in a small clearing. Inside, Soviet anthems blare out from a creaking old
radio, the paint is not so much chipping as crumbling off in blocks, the few striplights
that are working are flickering maddeningly, and damp swarms over the walls like
triffids. We are given mouldy overcoats that are so damp they're virtually liquid, and a
cup of Soviet coffee – coffee with no coffee in it, made from barley. As we wait for the
actors to show up (several of them genuine ex-KGB), the 40 or so participants, mostly
Lithuanians in their 20s, laugh at the absurdity of it, smirking at the kitsch costuming.
This, it becomes clear, is the fun bit. "Do you guys understand Russian?" asks a
Lithuanian comrade. An Australian, Matt, answers for both of us: "I understand people
with dogs shouting at me." Vanagaite chips in to tell us the alsation's day-job is
working in the police's organised crime squad, digging for corpses. Oh good.
The bullfrog-guard enters and gives us our orders: we will answer only in the
affirmative or negative; dissent will be punished with beatings and solitary
confinement; and we will forget all thoughts other than the glory of the socialist
paradise in which we now live. We stand to attention for the Soviet anthem and
hoisting of the red flag, and then down we go, into the freezing-cold bunker. For three
hours, we are force-marched through icy, virtually pitch-black corridors, barked at (by
canine and human alike), humiliated, interrogated, forced to sign false confessions to
imagined crimes, shown propaganda, and taught to prepare for a nuclear attack by the
imperialist pigs. Each stage is designed to illustrate, with little allowance for subtlety –
or health and safety – an aspect of life in the Soviet Union.
Having failed to answer a question correctly in Russian, I get it repeated in broken,
angry English. The interrogating KGB officer pushes me against a filing cabinet.
"Where are y'fRRROM?" England, I say, cowering. He prods me in the chest, hard.
"You are English? English spy! English spy!" In another "scene", a KGB doctor forces
me to strip to the waist, in front of the other participants. "Jacket off! Shirt off! Strip to
waist! Quick! Quick!" She sits me down on a stool, grabs a clump of cotton wool,
douses it in alcohol, and sets it alight. This is then dropped in a glass jar and applied
to my bare shoulders: known as "fire cupping", it was supposed to draw out disease
through the skin.
Six metres underground, and comprising 3,000 square metres of tunnels and cave-like
rooms, the bunker was built in 1984 as an emergency base for Lithuanian state TV
transmissions, in case the capital Vilnius came under attack from Nato. It boasts
stand-alone heating and sewerage facilities, and communication lines to Moscow, and
a roof designed to withstand the impact of a nuclear bomb.
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Lithuania's Soviet nostalgia: back in the USSR | Travel | The Guardian
Those seeking even
grimmer times can visit the Museum of Genocide Victims in Vilnius, where they can
see old KGB cells. Photograph: Alamy
Ignes, the young project administrator, thinks it is more of an educational experience
than a dramatic one, especially for those, like him, who are too young to remember the
parades, the food shortages, the paranoia and the rest. His parents would never even
dream of enduring the bunker, he laughs, "but for us, for my generation, we should all
come, so we can feel what it was like too". This isn't the first time a Lithuanian in their
early 20s has used that very physical verb about their Soviet history to me – you have
to "feel" it; just reading about it isn't enough, because it is almost too strange to be
believable. "The young people, they don't understand what it was like," Vanagaite
insists. "They say: 'How come you couldn't get out of the country? You just take a train
and you leave.' They think they could just overpower Soviet guards. We try to show
them the reality."
Less theatrical, but equally harrowing, is the Museum of Genocide Victims, housed in a
former KGB prison in central Vilnius where hundreds were tortured and killed. The
exercise yard is adorned with poignant children's paintings in response to school trips
here. "We encourage them to imagine what it was like," says Remigija Paldauskaite,
herself only five years old when the Berlin Wall fell. "The best way to learn it is to feel
it." She mimes a bored child flicking through a text book. "It's a better way than
history lessons."
The final, stunning plank in the trinity of Lithuanian exercises in Soviet memory is
Grutas Park, known slightly glibly to some as "Stalin's World". It is not exactly a theme
park (though there is a playground, and a zoo featuring llamas and bears), but a
massive outdoor collection of the country's Soviet-era statues, as well as log cabins
containing thousands of other exhibits, from rugs with Lenin's face on them to Pioneer
drums, communist toys, flags, paintings and Soviet-era calculators. Now celebrating its
10th anniversary, this macabre oasis of socialist realism was built on snail money (the
owner Viliumas Malinauskas is a wealthy snail and mushroom farmer), and is situated
deep in the tranquil Lithuanian forest. It is a surreal experience, walking for a mile
through the tiny village of Grutas, past a solitary fisherman sitting by a lake, to
discover a world where Stalin stands quietly gathering cobwebs in a clearing, and Marx
and Engels peek out from the shadows. Glimmers of sunlight pass through the cedars,
dappling totemic statues to collective farm chiefs and partisan martyrs: it's both
fascinating and oddly beautiful.
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Lithuania's Soviet nostalgia: back in the USSR | Travel | The Guardian
Lithuanian
schoolchildren pose beside a sculpture of Stalin in Grutas Park, Vilnius. Photograph:
Alamy
Malinauskas brought them there at a point when they were facing destruction, either
deliberately or via neglect; the only Soviet statues left standing in Vilnius are the
socialist-realist figures that adorn the four corners of the famous Green Bridge – and
they are frequently doused in green paint by nationalist protesters.
But again, perhaps problematically, they are beautiful statues – inspiring, optimistic,
and utopian; totems to the radiant future that was always promised, but never quite
arrived. "We will never escape our history," the daughter of a Lithuanian communist
chief said, upon visiting her father's monument in Grutas Park recently – and
Lithuanians are rare in recognising that fact. Hungary has a monument park similar to
Grutas, and so does Poland – but generally former eastern bloc countries have chosen
to remember the cold war by trying to forget it, sweeping their Lenin busts under the
carpet and hoping people won't trip up over them.
But then Lithuanians have a number of endearingly eccentric characteristics. This is a
country where the capital's mayor travels everywhere on a Segway and is not ridiculed;
beaver and mashed potato is served as a delicacy; and a high-profile monument has
been erected to Frank Zappa, even though he never once visited, sung about – or even
mentioned – Lithuania. The Zappa statue was audaciously suggested by local artists in
1992, as a slightly flippant test of their country's newfound democratic freedoms; to
their surprise, the authorities called their bluff.
There are inevitable differences of opinion about how best to commemorate the Soviet
occupation; Grutas Park in particular has attracted criticism for creating a shrine to
communism, rather than a mausoleum for it. Vanagaite is dismissive of its softer
approach: "What we are doing is the opposite of Grutas Park – you cannot buy
anything here, this is not about nostalgia." She suggests that the extensive gift shop
and nostalgia-channelling Soviet-style cafe – featuring "Russian-style sprats" and a
minimal "Nostalgija" borsch – make it a "Stalinist amusement park". Grutas Park is
unapologetic about using mockery as a weapon: on special occasions, they employ
lookalikes to pose as Lenin, Stalin et al, and put on performances by young actors
dressed up as Pioneers. "Now we can laugh at our Soviet past," announces the park's
audio guide at one point. Vanagaite eventually agrees there is a role for this, as well as
shock tactics: "I suppose it's about finding the right mixture of absurdity and horror."
What they have in common is a recognition that, 20 years on, whether it provokes
laughter or terror, the spectre of communism is still haunting certain parts of Europe –
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Lithuania's Soviet nostalgia: back in the USSR | Travel | The Guardian
and ignoring the ghost is not going to make it go away.
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