Lithuanians Know How to Put On A KGB Show!

Lithuanian interactive KGB show replays brutal past
2 days ago

NAUJASODE, Lithuania (AFP)— As Lithuania's post-Soviet generation comes of age, a local theatre troupe is making sure the evils of the communist past are not forgotten, offering a three-hour refresher course -- as KGB prisoners.

"These few hours should provide a quintessential Soviet-era experience," said Ruta Vanagaite, producer of the interactive show that runs in a former bunker in Naujasode, 25 kilometres (15 miles) from the capital Vilnius.

"By the end visitors should feel how, under a totalitarian regime, they are nothing," she said. "They should realise how much progress there's been over the past 17 years."

Before heading four metres (13 feet) underground, participants begin a journey back in time by swigging a cup of ersatz coffee and donning a "fufaika", the quilted cotton jacket worn by prisoners in the Soviet gulag.
From then on, the curious tourist is treated as a simple "comrade-prisoner" -- obliged to respond to barked questions and commands from a half-dozen actors with a simple yes or no.

After saluting the Soviet flag, participants are made to perform physical exercises, such as squatting, running and rolling in a blanket while wearing a gas mask.

The ryhthm is dictated by an actor in KGB uniform, who screeches orders in Russian as his German shepherd dog strains on its leash.

The Orwellian show is set in 1984, and takes place in a bunker that until 1991 housed emergency radio and television transmitters which were meant to be used if a NATO attack knocked out other Soviet facilities.

Lithuania, which was occupied by the Soviet Union during World War II, declared independence in 1990 and won international recognition a year later as the Soviet bloc crumbled....

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jnrkqu9tT...

Ukraine should have this show to remind youth what the previous generation had to suffer under Russian colonialism enforced by the genocidal and criminal KGB.