Dark Tourism Shines Bright in Lithuania Thirty Years After Independence
In the small Baltic republic of Lithuania, intrepid locals have transformed the country’s ubiquitous Soviet relics into tools that educate citizens and tourists alike about its brutal half century of Russian occupation.
Souvenir flags for sale at the KGB Bunker Museum gift shop in Kaunas, Lithuania reading “Happy Holidays” in reference to International Women’s Day (March 8), or International Workers Day (May 1). Photo by Ann Seymour Vergara
"Come in, come in,” urged Giedrius Karpinskas as he opened the door to an unlit office building on a cold night on the outskirts of Kaunas, Lithuania. Karpinskas silently ushered me into the building, down a dark hallway, and into an empty, unlit lot. “The bunker is right over there,” he said, pointing at a rusty steel door at the end of a loading dock. Behind the corroded entryway and six meters below ground sat the KGB Atomic Bunker Museum, housed in a nuclear bunker built in the 1960s under a factory that once made harmonicas, children’s toys, and flashlights.
“The workers thought the shelter was for them, they thought they were safe,” Karpinskas said. But the bunker was only meant to accommodate the Soviet apparatchik who ran the factory in the case of a nuclear disaster, he explained.
“They were never told,” Karpinskas said. “The truth was never told.”
Docent Giedrius Karpinskas opens a set of blast-enforced doors at the entry of the KGB Bunker Museum in Kaunas, Lithuania. The museum, located in a former nuclear bunker, now holds an impressive collection of Soviet-era spy equipment.
When Lithuania gained independence in 1991, the Baltic republic may have finally thrown off the yoke of Soviet occupiers but was certainly not free of its relics. Massive nuclear power plants, covert atomic bunkers, and statues of USSR icons lay tucked around corners or looming over public spaces. Thirty years on, the country has found a way to use these ubiquitous reminders, not to celebrate the Soviet era, but to grapple with Lithuania’s complicated past.
What began as my curiosity in the shrouded life behind the Iron Curtain over time metastasized into a fixation with the impact Russia stamped on its former republics. The fascination graduated from the books I read as a kid to the plane tickets I purchased as an adult. My travels had showed how broadly the consequences of life under Soviet rule varied between countries. When I visited Georgia, most evidence of Russia’s many decades of occupation had been erased from public spaces. In contrast, I found the unrecognized Republic of Transnistria had retained its steadfast allegiance to Russia, boasting a Soviet-style coat of arms on its self-manufactured passports and currency.
In Lithuania , it appeared locals had eschewed either extreme. Instead of extirpating the heaps of artifacts abandoned by the Russians, Lithuanians had found a way to use them as a means to inform a younger generation born into freedom about a history too painful to repeat. Across the country institutions like the KGB Museum had transformed troves of Soviet relics into tools to educate citizens about its brutal half century of Russian occupation while luring inquisitive tourists like myself in the process. Which is basically how I wound up one chilly February night, in a dark, dirt parking lot in Lithuania standing on top of a nuclear bunker.
A single-bullet gun, disguised as a tube of lipstick and a shoeshine brush with a secret compartment were amongst hundreds of other Soviet-era surveillance equipment on display at the KGB Bunker Museum. Photo by Ann Seymour Vergara
My eyes struggled to adjust to the dark as I was directed through the rusty door and down a dark stairwell. A formidable set of doors constructed to survive a nuclear blast groaned as Karpinskas tugged them open, unveiling an impressive cache of gadgets - cameras hidden inside coat buttons, single-bullet guns disguised as tubes of lipstick, and other contraptions right out of an episode of "Get Smart".
Karpinskas, who also worked at a local history museum, let me indulge in the kitsch for a moment, offering a KGB officer’s uniform to try on while the quartet of well-coiffed Germans also on the tour cranked the arm on an air raid siren, filling the room with a deafening wail of caution. When the roar subsided, Karpinskas began his history lesson, focused on the terror laced through life everyday for millions living in Lithuania during the occupation.
One the eve of World War Two, Russia invaded Lithuania, along with its neighbors Latvia and Estonia, illegally occupying the entire region. Germany and Russia played tug of war over the three republics until Germany was ultimately defeated in May of 1945 and Russia recovered its control of the Baltics. A period of “Sovietization” followed which saw an estimated 280,000 Lithuanians deported to Siberian gulags. During the five decades that followed, the Soviet Secret Police or KGB (Committee for State Security) ran a surveillance campaign on Lithuanian citizens and violently repressed the partisans known as the Forest Brothers who fought for their country’s independence. When the Soviet empire finally crumbled at the end of the 20th century, Lithuania finally gained its freedom in 1991 after a half a century of occupation and resistance.
“Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were not so loyal [to the USSR] as Ukraine and Belarus,” Karpinskas said. “The KGB had a lot of work to do in the Baltics.”
The vast majority of the gadgets at the museum were used by the KGB and its predecessor the NKVD (People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs) to spy on its citizens. The KGB, whose motto is “Loyalty to the Party, Loyalty to the Motherland” encouraged its employees by offering incentives.
“They had a worker of the month award, kind of like you have at McDonald’s,” Karpinskas said, pointing to a plaque with a photo of an apparatchik on the wall.
A wall of gas masks demonstrating an array of technologies used during the Soviet Era, on display at the KGB Bunker Museum. While the museum’s focuses on covert Cold War surveillance equipment, it also includes an array of military paraphernalia used during the Russian occupation of Lithuania. Photo by Ann Seymour Vergara
In one corner of the museum, a small side room lit with a dim, red glow held a collection of photos of citizens and partisans known as Forest Brothers who had been killed by the KGB. A somber contrast to the gadgets and gizmos that made up most of the museum’s collection, the images showed the heavy human cost of Soviet occupation. The Germans took a cursory glance at the pictures before gravitating toward a wall of gas masks like moths drawn to a flame. Karpinskas’ voice dropped and his tone grew heavy as he explained the trauma captured in the photographs, displayed in a room with a small capacity and sequestered from the main exhibition. I listened in silence, reaching to fathom a life lived in mortal fear of your neighbors.
Photos of the partisans known as Forest Brothers, who fought for Lithuania’s Independence under Russian rule, and other victims of Soviet forces on display at the KGB Bunker museum. Photo by Ann Seymour Vergara
Citizens were encouraged to report anyone suspected of disloyalty to the USSR. Paranoid and desperate to demonstrate their fealty, scores of citizens turned on their own friends and colleagues, resulting in the imprisonment, deportation, and death of hundreds of thousands of Lithuanians.
Before leaving we passed through a small gift shop selling stickers, posters, and propaganda from the bygone Soviet era. I picked up a little vintage communist flag reading “Happy Holidays” in yellow cyrillic lettering on a red background. Karpinskas took my two euros for the flag and cautioned me to be discreet with my souvenir.
“Be careful,” Karpinskas warned. “It is illegal to display Soviet propaganda in Lithuania.”
Out of the Shadows and into the Light
The KGB Bunker Museum had only whetted my appetite. Eager to see another example of how Lithuania was processing its past, I headed to Grūtas Parkas, a sculpture garden located in the south of the country. Millionaire mushroom magnate Viliumas Malinauskas had funneled his fortune into creating an open-air museum composed of Soviet monuments. Concerned that destroying these effigies could leave future generations ignorant of Lithuania’s dark past, Malinauskas amassed a collection sourced from across the country, relocated them to a bucolic rural park, and added plaques authored by the Genocide and Resistance Research Center of Lithuania for context.
A large head of a Russian soldier carved in granite greets guests at Grūtas Parkas, an open air museum filled with Soviet-era statues located in the south of Lithuania. By Ann Seymour Vergara
Now in its 20th year of operation, today the park includes a few motorized kids rides and a small menagerie of animals, ostensibly to offer younger visitors some entertainment. The eclectic collection of animals included a pair of black swans, some shaggy miniature ponies, and a Bactrian camel. Near the entrance, a lone albino kangaroo hopped around a fenced in yard, pausing to gnaw on grass and eye me warily. In the other direction, a massive head of a soldier carved from granite stared me down. I had been lured into a Werner Herzog fever dream, trying to penetrate the realm of ecstatic truth.
Inside the grounds, busts of Stalin and Lenin looked down from their pedestals on their new subjects – the occasional passing duck or chipmunk. Though the park claims to draw over 200,000 visitors annually, I was alone for most of my visit, unless you count the inhabitants of the surreal mini zoo.
A solitary albino kangaroo in its enclosure inside the mini zoo at the Grūtas Parkas open-air museum in southern Lithuania. The park, which attracts thousands of visitors annually, houses thousands of statues as well as a small menagerie of animals and a playground for children. Photo by Ann Seymour Vergara
I strolled slowly through the grounds enjoying the curious combination of chirping birds, the scent of pine trees, and the trove of effigies representing military officers, politicians, and Soviet intellectuals. The 86 statues comprising Grūtas Parkas’ collection were arranged into several categories, including the “Totalitarian Sphere” and the “Terror Sphere”, dedicated to specific chapters of Russian occupation.
The sculpture park also included a few contemporary additions. Towards the far end of the grounds, I heard a tinny voice calling from a distance. What I mistook for an untuned radio was in fact a loudspeaker bolted onto a recreation of a wooden guard tower from a Siberian gulag, barking orders at a crowd of invisible prisoners.
While the park worked to foster a sense of pride amongst Lithuanians for enduring years of oppression, the memorialization of Soviet atrocities has a dark side as well. By concentrating exclusively on resistance, the role Lithuania played in the extermination of its own Jewish citizens during World War II is conveniently obscured.
Grūtas Parkas focused on condemning the Soviets, not indicting Lithuanians for antisemitism or their complicity in the Holocaust. Instead, the park’s website states its objective is to “provide an opportunity for Lithuanian people, visitors coming to our country as well as future generations to see the naked Soviet ideology which suppressed and hurt the spirit of our nation for many decades.”
Statues such as this figure of Mother Russia, once situated in town squares and public spaces throughout Lithuania, now look out into the woods surrounding Grūtas Parkas. Photo by Ann Seymour Vergara
And it appeared the efforts of people like Malinauskas had made progress. A couple days later in Vilnius while discussing the statues with a local woman in her 20s, I asked what she thought about the park. The figures used to represent a menace, especially to older generations she explained.
These days, “they don’t think of Stalin, Lenin, or (Felix) Dzerzhinsky,” she said. “Now my grandmother passes by a statue and thinks of a first date, or breaking a heel on her way to work.”
The Power of Giants
I had traced the arc of Soviet occupation in Lithuania from its early days of NKVD surveillance through the propaganda campaign that populated the country with countless Russian icons. But what of the USSR’s enterprises as the 20th century wound to a close? To find out, my final stop was to the far Northeast corner of Lithuania to visit the enormous Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant.
With construction beginning in 1974, at the height of operations the INPP employed over 13,000 employees and provided Lithuania with 70% of its power. After 26 years in operation, the INPP began decommissioning in 2001 as a pretext for Lithuania joining the European Union, an ongoing project slated for completion in 2038. Today, the plant holds tours that bring thousands of visitors from around the globe to peer inside the complex that remained inaccessible to the public for decades.
A series of control panels at the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant in Visaginas, Lithuania. Concerned that a button could be accidentally pressed, cleaning staff were barred from entering the room. Instead, the engineers working shifts in the control room were responsible for cleaning the space. (Photo courtesy INPP)
A dusting of snow covered the wooded eastern edge of Lithuania the morning of my visit, leaving the roads slick and my heart beating fast as I careened through the remote countryside in my rental car, anxious about being late for my tour. Pulling into the parking lot with minutes to spare, I was confronted by an eerie feeling of déjà vu as I scanned the imposing structure in front of me. The popular HBO series “Chernobyl” had been filmed at the plant, a show that castigated the same Soviet authorities Lithuania endured for half a century.
By the time the INPP finally shut down its last unit in 2009, the number of workers employed at the plant had ebbed to about 2,400, mostly hailing from the neighboring town of Visaginas. The loss of jobs at the plant over the past couple decades paralleled the decline in population of the town, now home to 18,000 residents, down from the 31,000 who lived in Visaginas in 1996 when the INPP was in full operation. In an attempt to staunch regional unemployment and to promote the plant as a tourist destination, almost two thousand employees stayed on to dismantle the plant they formerly kept in operation.
The INPP also attracted younger locals like Nina Lebedeva, who came to the plant that day not as a worker but instead as a tourist in her own town.
“I grew up in Visaginas. My father used to work here,” Lebedeva said, explaining why she joined the tour. “Today, I came to see the plant for myself.”
A dosimeter, small enough to fit in a shirt pocket, is used to monitor radiation exposure at the INPP. (Photo courtesy of INPP)
Employees at the INPP transitioned from operating the plant to dismantling it piece by piece. Equipment must be broken down and cleaned before it can be cleared to sell on online auctions to customers across the globe. (Photo courtesy of INPP)
“Ignalina NPP had the most powerful reactors in the world. Standing on the top of the RBMK 1500 MW, you could realise how small you are compared to such a power,” Norvaišienė said. “We do not hyperbolise.”
On April 26, 1986, 400 miles south of Ignalina, another of one of the planet’s most powerful RBMK nuclear reactors exploded at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in present-day Ukraine, resulting in the death of between 31 and 4,000 people. Despite the magnitude of the accident, the plant remained in operation for over fifteen years, continuing to leach dangerous radiation from the destroyed reactors and creating the Sisyphean task of containing the contamination when the plant finally shuttered twenty-some years ago.
Today, those of us (like myself) susceptible to the lure of dark tourism can visit the radioactive wasteland of Chernobyl to gape at the aftermath of an avoidable disaster worsened by the refusal to accept accountability for the past. But I preferred the less lethal attractions of the KGB Museum, Grūtas Parkas, and the comparatively safe nuclear power plant in Ignalina. Accompanying the trauma woven through these destinations was not just the feeling of loss, but also a soft shimmer of progress, of lessons salvaged from the wreckage of history.
At the end of the tour, we carefully shed our protective gear and had our radiation levels checked as part of the exit process. Standing in the lobby afterwards, Norvaišienė gazed back in the direction of the reactor. “Chernobyl operated until 2000. After the disaster they did not opt for immediate dismantling,” she said, lamenting Russia’s failure to learn from its own past.
“Now they have a problem.”
One of the two massive, deactivated RBMK reactors at the INPP in Lithuania. Construction on a third reactor began in 1985, but was put on hold after the Chernobyl disaster, and demolished in 1989. (Photo courtesy of INPP)