Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 15 – Ukraine’s new legislation
on de-sovietization is a necessary step toward restoring historic justice,
Vadim Shtepa says. “Without the liquidation of the imposed heritage of
communism … it is impossible to achieve the complete liberation of national
mentality from soviet-imperial stereotypes and real Europeanization.”
But the Russian regionalist writer
says, “the brutal destruction of monuments and ideological prohibitions are
hardly likely to be effective,” given that one cannot “’exclude’ from memory
the decades of Soviet history.” Trying to do so risks its repetition, he argues
(ru.delfi.lt/opinions/comments/vshtepa-kreativnaya-desovetizaciya-pouchitelnyj-opyt-litvy.d?id=67696862).
On the one hand, any ban makes the
thing banned seem sweeter to some; and on the other, it only encourages those
who want to restore that past to use the imposition of such prohibitions
against the post-Soviet regimes. But,
Shtepa says, there is a way out that can provide “a vaccination against the
idealization of the USSR.”
He argues that “it would be much
wiser not to ‘ban’ the Soviet era but rather put it on display with all its
tragedy and absurdity … Contemporary museum technologies allow this to be done
quite successfully as the Czech Republic, Hungary and Bulgaria have done with
their Soviet propaganda museums and the Baltic countries with their occupation
museums.
But Shtepa suggests the largest and “most
original” of these is Lithuania’s Gruto Park which has its own website at www.grutoparkas.lt. When Lithuania
restored its independence at the end of the 1980s, many Soviet statues and
propaganda pictures and books were destroyed or at risk of destruction.
Then, a local
businessman Viliumas Malinauskas proposed creating a privately funded park
where they could be displayed. He collected Soviet items from around the
country and the park, near Vilnius, opened in 2001. Anyone who visits it gets a dose of Soviet
reality that will prevent him or her from wanting more, Stepa says.
Visitors pass
through a barbed wire perimeter “like those surrounding Soviet military sites
or jails.” The first thing they see is an old cattle car, the kind which was
used to deport Lithuanians in Stalin’s time; and the first thing they here are
old Soviet songs blasting from loudspeakers hung in the trees.
All of this
creates “an unbelievable atmosphere” which combines historic tragedy and irony.”
“Hundreds of sculptures and busts of Soviet leaders produce a certain unreal
impression,” Shtepa says. “Initially, they frighten one by their terrifying
faces and clenched fists, but then they begin to elicit a smile” when seen
altogether and contrasted with Lithuania outside the gates.
To complete the
scene, Gruto Park features other things from the Soviet past: a museum with
examples of Soviet fine art, a reading room with the works of classics of
Marxism-Leninism, and a Soviet-style restaurant where visitors can drink vodka “Russian
style,” eat off metal plates and use aluminum utensils.
Perhaps
especially impressive under the circumstances, the Russian regionalist says, they
can order a cutlet prepared “Soviet style” – that is, one contained 70 percent
bread!
There is an
analogue to the Lithuanian park in Moscow, the Muzeon next to the Moscow TsDKh.
But it isn’t nearly as effective “because there is practically no contrast with
the surrounding environment. One feels that around the museum is exactly the same
country on whose streets stand the very same Lenins.”
In Lithuania, no
one visiting the park would ever come away with that feeling. Instead, Shtepa
says, younger visitors will go away with the question on their minds “’Was this
really possible in our country?” and with the conviction that “no one would want
to see this in ‘reality.’”
Ukraine could
benefit from a similar approach, he concludes, as could at some point in the future
Russia itself. After all, Shtepa says, Marx was right about one thing: “When
humanity says farewell to its past, it does so with a smile.”
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