REPORTER:  Nick Lazaredes

RECORDING:  You will hear the authentic recording - the speech of Josef Stalin recorded on 9 May 1945.

JOSEF STALIN (Translation): Comrades, compatriots, men and women! The great day of victory over Germanyhas come.

At Grutas Park, deep in the Lithuanian countryside the darkest days of the Soviet occupation have been preserved for posterity - giving those who visit a privileged peak behind what was the Iron Curtain. Visitors have dubbed it 'Stalin World', although it could easily be called Lenin World. Both images on display in virtually every conceivable art form. Remarkably a decade after the park was founded, amidst a storm of skepticism, it has become one of Lithuania's most popular tourist attractions. But its mere existence in a country which saw hundreds of thousands of its citizens dragged off to Soviet work camps in Siberia, the gulags, many never to return, remains a contentious and divisive issue within Lithuanian society.

POVILAS DIRSE, GULAG SURVIVOR (Translation):  Because Stalinism, just like Hitlerism, has caused so much pain to the people that we do not want to remember it.

VILIMAUS MALINAUSKAS (Translation): Things that are quickly forgotten can easily be repeated. By creating this park here, we want to constantly remind people about these things.

NEWS REEL:  Russian tanks circle the city, spearheading a drive into Russia, the siege is a bitter battle.

When the Red Army threw the Nazis out of Lithuania in 1944 the so-called 'Liberators' remained, the country was quickly absorbed into the Soviet Union, and the people forced to adhere to a new ideology, those who opposed the strict Stalinist doctrine were forcibly exiled to the dreaded gulags. It's hardly surprising that the creator of this Totalitarian-style Disneyland is also a little offbeat. Vilimaus Malinauskas is a temperamental millionaire who made a fortune exporting mushrooms and snails.

VILIMAUS MALINAUSKAS (Translation):  Today my turnover is small, 20 million euros, when I was dealing in mushrooms and berries it was between 80 and 100 million euros. It’s enough for us.

RECORDING:  The Summer Cafe, which as its name implies operates through the warmer part of the year, and provides guests the opportunity to try Soviet era entrees.

Vilimaus has gone to extraordinary lengths to offer a truly dower Soviet experience. The park’s recreation of a Communist era cafeteria with its bland menu has proven popular with curious customers.

WOMAN:  A lot of people order just these dishes.

VILIMAUS MALINAUSKAS (Translation):  87% of our population said that Lithuania needs a park like this. This is the only answer necessary - if this park was not interesting people would not come here.

Certainly Vilimaus's massive mushroom fortune was enough to turn his vision of Totalitarian tourism into reality, during much of the 1990s he traversed Lithuania buying up as many Soviet monuments and relics as he could lay his hands on - it was an astute investment. But forLithuania's estimated 60 to 70,000 survivors of the gulags, creating a theme park from these icons of oppression is appallingly insensitive.

POVILAS DIRSE (Translation):  At some point we wrote quite a lot of documents protesting against the creation of this thing. There’s history, there are books, let them read. But when tours go there – that is propaganda – pro Soviet propaganda. That’s all – I am against it.

Gulag survivor Povilas Dirse, unsuccessfully campaigned to stop the construction of the theme park.  Povilas, vividly remembers how his family's Siberian nightmare began, when, without warning Soviet troops arrived at their home in the dead of night.

POVILAS DIRSE (Translation):  The soldiers surrounded our house and that was it…. They got us all together… they got us all together and we… I was nine years old and my sister was seven years old, my brother was fourteen. When the dawn came, they walked into the room and said “You are going to be resettled – not exiled – you are to be resettled away from Lithuania.”  They did not say where “away from Lithuania.”

Of course mother started at once…..well, to scream and weep…. We calmed her down, it couldn’t be helped.

Nobody knows exactly how many Lithuanians were sent to Stalin's notorious penal colonies, some estimates of up to a quarter of a million people. Certainly the KGBs own records show that  by the time of Stalin's death in 1953 well over 100,000 Lithuanians had been banished to the gulag camps, more than half never to return. 

POVILAS DIRSE (Translation):  Grandpa died at once and actually.. father died around the New Year – he just lasted half a year.

ANTON TERLECKI (Translation):  These are symbols of the beastly Communist regime, I mean really…of a political organisation that engaged in genocide. So why keep them?

NIJOLE SADUNAJTE (Translation):  I don’t need it, I haven’t been there and I am not going to.

Anton Terlecki, and Nijole Sadunajte are Siberia Gouging a survivors, and their recollections of Soviet repression and brutality are crystal clear.  

ANTON TERLECKI (Translation):  When they started to exile people to Siberia, they were the poorest – they did that to scare the rich. The three poorest families, they had sent them to Siberia and almost all of them died. That is how, in my soul was born such a hatred for Communism.

NIJOLE SADUNAJTE (Translation):  For 10 months I was held by the KGB, in their basement, they were investigating me. The prosecutor asked for nine years imprisonment, but the court ordered just six years.

After years of hardship in Gulags, both Anton Terlecki, and Nijole Sadunajte returned home and driven  by contempt for the system, started working underground against the Soviet communist state. Even when the Soviet Empire collapsed in 1991, the transition to independence for Lithuania, the first of the Russian satellites to gain statehood was marred by the violence of the retreating Russians. Anton Terlecki, and Nijole Sadunajte are deeply troubled about the commercialisation of the symbols and icons of a much-hated regime.

ANTON TERLECKI (Translation):  The majority of our people did not want this monument, I mean – putting all those beasts, the Stalins and the Lenins there. But he is making money – I mean that guy…. the man who created it.

In the capital Vilnius, continuing anger over Soviet symbolism was recently raised a notch. Authorities there declared that the city's last remaining Soviet sculptures adorning its well-knownGreen Bridge were protected items of cultural heritage. That provoked widespread anger, along with calls for vigilante style direct action to destroy the bridges' sculptures, which experts consider to be prime examples of Soviet socialism realism.

VILNIUS, DEPUTY MAYOR (Translation):  The only thing we did was, we affixed special information plates there that said very legibly and clearly to all who might want to dismantle these statues, that the statues were our cultural heritage, to be protected by the state.

With little tolerance for mob action, Vilnius Deputy Mayor said the city was determined to protect and preserve the Green Bridge sculptures, regardless of their tainted heritage, and he said it was simply a matter of commonsense.

VILNIUS, DEPUTY MAYOR (Translation):  Not a single state would try – in a flash of anger – to destroy everything to do with the previous era. Countries of culture treat their history in a cultured way.

VYTAUTAS LANDBERGIS, EUROPEAN PARLIAMENTARIAN:  Some people maybe feel, and maybe some still feel the coming back of old times

One of Lithuania’s most respected citizens has been lending his voice to the debate. As a past chairman of the Supreme Council of Lithuania, and a member of the European Parliament, Vytautas Landbergis's campaigned unsuccessfully for an EU ban on all Nazi and Soviet symbols.

VYTAUTAS LANDBERGIS: Why, what reason? We have to keep those symbols and idols of stupid and criminal ideology, and our conquestors and executioners. This is crazy. I think we are not crazy.

A sentiment shared by the Lithuanian survivors of Stalin's camps.

NIJOLE SADUNAJTE (Translation):  Our people were slaves, so are we supposed to kiss our fetters and respect them? What do we need them for?  In Germany, in the West, if someone built a monument to Hitler, what would they say?  Compare Stalin and Hitler…. They are two brothers.

In 'Stalin World' souvenir shop the ghosts of the Soviet Union are offered for sale in the form of vodka glasses, fridge magnets and dozens of other trinkets, there's no shortage of eager customers. It's just one of the elements that has turned this unusual tourist venture into a real money spinner for Vilimaus Malinauskas. But while he is happy to tout its success, any suggestion that he's profiting at the expense of Stalin's victims draw an angry response.

VILIMAUS MALINAUSKAS (Translation):  You know, it is the first time I have heard such an idiotic question, do you think I should spend my life making money elsewhere and maintaining this place?

For the communist theme park owner, Grutas Park a labour of love, and his vision is not yet complete.

VILIMAUS MALINAUSKAS (Translation):   Of course this is not the end and it is going to grow and we have got lots of plans and so forth.

Although drawing in the tourists is the bottom line at his Stalinist sculpture park, Vilimaus Malinauskas also regards it as his legacy, ultimately planning he says, to surrender it to the state as a gift to the people.

VILIMAUS MALINAUSKAS (Translation):   Those people who engage in business… I think that anyone who is active, anyone who makes a bit of extra money, should leave something behind for his country. I think I will leave this park for the people of Lithuania.

POVILAS DIRSE (Translation):  We are cursing it now and we will curse it to the end of our days because it has robbed us of our lives.

GEORGE NEGUS:  Fascinating, Nick Lazaredes filming and reporting, is it a back to the future scenario or what. What do you think, is what we just saw commemoration or commercialisation. Give us your views on that or any of tonight's stories.

Reporter/Camera

NICK LAZAREDES

Producer

ASHLEY SMITH

Researcher/translator 

ANTON TARAS

Fixer

ILYA KUZNIATSOU

Editor

WAYNE LOVE

Translation/Subtitling 

HELENA MIKHAILIK

Original Music composed by

VICKI HANSEN 

26th  September 2010