i'm going to gulagworld!
Unusual reminders of a dark past.
East Germany, the so-called "Republic of Workers and Peasants", vanished into history in 1989, annexed by its western counterpart as the Berlin Wall literally crumbled at the hands of Germans eager to be free of one of the world's most oppressive societies. The East German Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, a.k.a. the Stasi, cultivated an extremely vast network of informants. Many former East Germans, after Stasi records were opened to the public, were startled to discover that friends and family members were filing reports with the East German secret police.
Nevertheless, a German firm is planning a 10,000 square meter "theme park" where visitors can relive the East German experience. Attractions will include East German films, food, and fun - including a drive in the infamous Trabant.
The park, financed by Massine Productions, will not be the first of its kind, however. Viliumas Malinauskas, a Lithuanian businessman considered one of that nation's wealthiest citizens, has created "Stalin World" (officially, the "Soviet Sculpture Garden at Grutas Park"), a 300,000 square meter park populated with statues of Lenin, Stalin, and other notable communists. Visitors also enjoy actors playing Lenin and Stalin roaming the grounds, not unlike the costumed actors who play Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck at Orando's primary tourist attraction. About 120 kilometers south of Vilnius, "Stalin World" will soon boast its coup de grace, a passenger train that will "deport" Lithuanians from downtown Vilnius to the park.
Meanwhile, an actual Soviet work camp has opened to visitors in the Ural Mountains. Perm 36, the last of the Stalin era gulags still standing, is now a museum and tourist center managed by Andrei Sakharov's Memorial Society and Permtourist. Visitors to Perm are fed balanda, the prison soup that made up for its lack of flavor by being completely devoid of nutritional value. An overnight stay in a Perm cell is also available.
Perm 36 housed numerous political prisoners in its day, including Astra Gumner, jailed for translating Orwell's 1984 into Estonian, and Balis Gayauskas, for translating Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago. Vladimir Bukovsky was inprisoned in Perm 36. Vasyl Stus, nominated for the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, died in Perm 36 under mysterious circumstances.
Several Nazi concentration camps have been converted into museums as well. Auschwitz-Birkenau and Gross-Rosen in Poland, and Buchenwald, Dachau, and Sachsenhausen in Germany are all now open to the public. Sachsenhausen is a double museum of sorts, as it represents both the history of Nazi oppression as well as Soviet. After World War II, Sachsenhausen became "Special Camp No. 7", a Soviet internment camp and part of the NVKD's network of gulags.
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One of the more bizarre tales of Perm did not happen at the camp, but in the nearby forest. In March 1965, Alexei Leonov performed the first "walk in space." Despite that success, his craft, the Voskhod 2, was plagued by technical problems and eventually crash landed over 1000 miles off course near the Perm camps. Rescue crews could not reach the ship for over a day. Leonov and fellow cosmonaut Pavel Belyayev started a campfire near the landing site, but had to retreat back to the crashed ship when the fire attracted the attention of a pack of wolves.
The Perm forest was also the site of the murder of Grand Duke Mikhail Romanov and his secretary in June 1918. Mikhail was the younger brother of Tsar Nicholas II. When Nicholas II adbicated in February 1917, Mikhail became Tsar, but issued a statement that he would only accept the throne within the structure of a constitutional monarchy and called for free elections. In part, his statement read:
"I ask all citizens of Russia to obey the Provisional Government [of Alexander Kerensky], which has arisen and has been endowed with full authority on the initiative of the Imperial Duma, until such time as the Constituent Assembly, called at the earliest possible date and elected on the basis of universal, direct, equal, and secret suffrage, shall by its decision as to the form of government give expression to the will of the people."
These elections were held, but the new elected body was dissolved by force by the communist takeover of the Russian government. Grand Duke Romanov's life ended soon afterward.
07.03.2003 © ljr