Grutas park description and photos - Lithuania: Druskininkai (Topic)

Grutas park description and photos - Lithuania: Druskininkai. Detailed information about the attraction. Description, photographs and a map showing the nearest significant objects. The name in English is Grutas park.

Photo and description

Park Grutas, or Gruto, is one of the most famous museums in Lithuania, located near the city of Druskininkai. In the West, this place is known as Leninland or Stalinworld.

Grutas Park is a museum that imitates the style of the camps of the Soviet period of the GULAG system. Here you can see about 100 monuments, busts, sculptures, bas-reliefs of figures from the period of the revolution, the regime of repression and the period of occupation, collected from all over Lithuania, as well as decorations, posters and other attributes of that time.

In 2001, Lithuanian businessman Vilyumas Malinauskas founded the famous park, which now belongs to him and his family. The park is the owner's main source of income. This is a berry, mushroom and snail business. Food processing is organized right on the territory of the park. Most of them are exported.

20 years ago, there was a swamp on the site of Grutas Park. A huge amount of work has been done to create the necessary territory for the museum. The woodland has been drained. Further, the earth was brought and poured, the layer of which in different areas ranges from 50 centimeters to 2.5 meters.

The entrance to the open-air museum is organized through the checkpoint, as if in a military town. Souvenirs are sold here. One of the most popular is a glass with the inscription: "For the Motherland, for the Party, for Stalin." There is another option - "For mother-in-law, for wife, for mistress."

Songs of the Soviet era are pouring from loudspeakers on the trees. The barbed wire fence and wooden watchtowers are reminiscent of a Gulag painting. The bronze mother of Krishtalnis opens the exhibition. This is a monument dedicated to the Lithuanian XVI Red Army Division. The face of an 8-meter figure weighing 12 tons is a portrait of the author's wife.

Heading along the concrete path, you will see a monument to Soviet soldiers. It was brought from Siauliai. In 1947, it was cast by captured Germans from the wreckage of Messerschmitts. The massive duralumin sculpture weighs only 800 kilograms. In 1991, during dismantling, a bottle with a list of the people who made it was found inside the monument. It is interesting that these people (of course, who survived) were found, and after a while they met in independent Lithuania.

In Grutas, you can also see sculptures made of wood, the prototypes of which are public and political figures of our time. They opposed the creation of the park and demanded the destruction of Soviet monuments.

The collection of the museum also includes monuments to Stalin, Lenin, Dzerzhinsky, Marx, Lithuanian communists (Mitskevichius-Kapsukas and others), partisan Marita Melnikaite, military figures (Baltushis-Zemaitis, Uborevich). And here you will also see samples of visual propaganda creativity (posters, slogans, etc.), samples of military and other equipment of those years. There is an exposition in the park called Narrow-Gauge Train.

A vodka monument in the form of a metal container is one of the most exotic exhibits of the museum. The history of its creation is very interesting. In 2005, one of the Lithuanian newspapers announced a competition for the worst wrecker of the republic. After the vote, the votes were counted, and it turned out that it is not people who harm Lithuania, but vodka.

There is a restaurant in the park, decorated in the style of a Soviet club. Here, in addition to traditional Lithuanian dishes, you can taste dishes of the Soviet era: "Nostalgia" borscht in metal bowls, "Farewell to Youth" cutlets with buckwheat, herring, jelly and so on. And on the street there is a vending machine where you can drop a coin and drink a glass of soda.

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Topic: Grutas park description and photos - Lithuania: Druskininkai.