Як Україна може заробити великі гроші якщо Кучма не піде у відставку
02/17/2001 | Broker
Welcome to Stalinworld!
Fun in the Form of Guard Towers and Gruel at Lithuanian Theme Park
Feb. 15 — Europe has an amazing new theme park — but it's probably not one that you'll want to bring your kids to.
In the tiny Lithuanian village of Gruta, an unlikely combination of Disney World and Soviet gulag has opened, called "Stalinworld."
Thousands of sightseers have already plunked down their equivalent of $1.25 to wander among the towering Communist-era sculptures, under the gaze of mannequins manning machine guns in watchtowers, and eat at a café serving labor camp standards like gruel and fishhead soup.
Eventually, visitors will also be able to watch reenactments of 'camp victims' being abused, and see recreations of the huts where the slaves slept after being worked nearly to death.
Concealed speakers will also broadcast screams of torture victims.
There are also plans to have guides dressed as red army officers, who will herd visitors into reception centers, and roads built from logs like those built by Stalin's slaves.
The owner even wants to construct a railway for the park — so visitors can be transported around in cattle cars, just like the 30,000 Lithuanians Stalin shipped to Siberia and murdered.
Mushroom King Becomes Proletariat Hero
The park is the brainchild of Viliumas Malinauskas, a former champion wrestler-turned-farmer who made a small fortune exporting mushrooms to the West.
In more recent days, the "Mushroom King" gained a degree of fame for assembling the world's largest collection of Soviet statues — towering metal Lenins and Stalins and Marxes and other heroes of the proletariat.
The statues now decorate Stalinworld.
The park has drawn its share of detractors. Almost thirty members of parliament had opposed the opening of the park, saying it was in poor taste and offensive to those who died in the camps.
Malinauskas calls them "morons." He has said he "owes it to history" to recreate the horrible world where at least 30 million victims of the Stalinist regime were starved, tortured and worked to death.
"StalinWorld will succeed because it is a trip to a past which, rather than needing to be forgotten, deserves to be remembered with all our energies so it never happens again," he said in a report in the British daily The Independent.
Scholars say Stalin's legacy is an especially touchy subjects in the Baltics. They were not initially part of the Soviet Union, and escaped incorporation until after World War II.
During World War II, the Baltic states actually fought against the Soviets, and after the war, the Soviets came down hard on them. "The Balts suffered as much or more than the rest of the Soviet Union," said Marty Sletzinger, the director of the Eastern Europe Program at the Wilson Center, in Washington DC.
Stalin, says Sletzinger was not only an unwanted, terrible foreign influence but he was also enemy of the state who caused plenty of suffering. "I'm sure someone wants to make sure that in this day in age that people never want to forget the horrors," he said.
A Likely Survivor
Malinauskas has already sunk over $1 million into the project, and the government is not expected to shut it down, especially since it will provide jobs and revenue in an area previously known only as a marsh.
Stalin is also more popular than many in the West may think. Just last December, about 500 people gathered in Stalin's hometown in Georgia to mark the 121st anniversary of the Soviet dictator's birth. Many die-hard communists still revere him.
Fun in the Form of Guard Towers and Gruel at Lithuanian Theme Park
Feb. 15 — Europe has an amazing new theme park — but it's probably not one that you'll want to bring your kids to.
In the tiny Lithuanian village of Gruta, an unlikely combination of Disney World and Soviet gulag has opened, called "Stalinworld."
Thousands of sightseers have already plunked down their equivalent of $1.25 to wander among the towering Communist-era sculptures, under the gaze of mannequins manning machine guns in watchtowers, and eat at a café serving labor camp standards like gruel and fishhead soup.
Eventually, visitors will also be able to watch reenactments of 'camp victims' being abused, and see recreations of the huts where the slaves slept after being worked nearly to death.
Concealed speakers will also broadcast screams of torture victims.
There are also plans to have guides dressed as red army officers, who will herd visitors into reception centers, and roads built from logs like those built by Stalin's slaves.
The owner even wants to construct a railway for the park — so visitors can be transported around in cattle cars, just like the 30,000 Lithuanians Stalin shipped to Siberia and murdered.
Mushroom King Becomes Proletariat Hero
The park is the brainchild of Viliumas Malinauskas, a former champion wrestler-turned-farmer who made a small fortune exporting mushrooms to the West.
In more recent days, the "Mushroom King" gained a degree of fame for assembling the world's largest collection of Soviet statues — towering metal Lenins and Stalins and Marxes and other heroes of the proletariat.
The statues now decorate Stalinworld.
The park has drawn its share of detractors. Almost thirty members of parliament had opposed the opening of the park, saying it was in poor taste and offensive to those who died in the camps.
Malinauskas calls them "morons." He has said he "owes it to history" to recreate the horrible world where at least 30 million victims of the Stalinist regime were starved, tortured and worked to death.
"StalinWorld will succeed because it is a trip to a past which, rather than needing to be forgotten, deserves to be remembered with all our energies so it never happens again," he said in a report in the British daily The Independent.
Scholars say Stalin's legacy is an especially touchy subjects in the Baltics. They were not initially part of the Soviet Union, and escaped incorporation until after World War II.
During World War II, the Baltic states actually fought against the Soviets, and after the war, the Soviets came down hard on them. "The Balts suffered as much or more than the rest of the Soviet Union," said Marty Sletzinger, the director of the Eastern Europe Program at the Wilson Center, in Washington DC.
Stalin, says Sletzinger was not only an unwanted, terrible foreign influence but he was also enemy of the state who caused plenty of suffering. "I'm sure someone wants to make sure that in this day in age that people never want to forget the horrors," he said.
A Likely Survivor
Malinauskas has already sunk over $1 million into the project, and the government is not expected to shut it down, especially since it will provide jobs and revenue in an area previously known only as a marsh.
Stalin is also more popular than many in the West may think. Just last December, about 500 people gathered in Stalin's hometown in Georgia to mark the 121st anniversary of the Soviet dictator's birth. Many die-hard communists still revere him.