Stalin’s World. Back in the USSR.
I paid a visti to Grütas Park (also known as Stalin’s World) in Southern Lithuania. It is a surreal experience. It combines beauty, horror, morale and nostalgia.
Grütas Park is an open air exhibition of 86 statues of Lithuania’s Soviet-era, as well as hundreds of other relics from the times of the Lithuanian SSR: pictures of Lenin, Pioneer drums, communist flags, paintings, etc
It was founded in 2001 by entrepreneur Viliumas Malinauskas, a wealthy snail, berry and mushroom farmer. From 1989-91, during the restoration of Lithuanian independence, many ideologized monuments from the Soviet times were dismantled and were about to be destroyed, as happened in the neighbouring republics.
Grūtas Park and its founder Malinauskas won the 2001 Ig Nobel Peace Prize. The Ig Nobel Prizes are an American parody of the Nobel Prizes and are given for trivial “achievements” in scientific research. The self proclaimed aim of the prizes is to “first make people laugh, and then make them think”.
To enhance the surreal athmosphere, the park also contains playgrounds, a mini-zoo and cafes. On special occasions actors stage re-enactments of various Soviet-sponsored festivals.On the 1 of April each year Grūtas Park shows “live” characters of the Soviet period: Lenin, Stalin, pioneers, partisans, secretaries of the central committee, etc.
The Restaurant offers a NOSTALGIJA menu, a hardly appetizing proposal of soviet era daily food
Watch Towers and barbed wire around the exposition to create the GULAG sensation
Tags: Communism, grütas park, Lithuania, Soviet, Stalin, USSR
