Description of the attraction
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 mimics the style of the Soviet-era gulag camps. 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. The processing of products 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 the 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 the 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 the 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 museum's collection also includes monuments to Stalin, Lenin, Dzerzhinsky, Marx, Lithuanian communists (Mitskevichius-Kapsukas and others), partisan Marita Melnikaite, military figures (Baltushis-Zhemaitis, Uborevich). And here you will also see examples of visual propaganda creativity (posters, slogans and the like), samples of military and other equipment of those years. The exposition "Narrow-gauge train" is presented in the park.
The vodka monument in the form of a metal container is one of the most exotic exhibits in 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 was not people who harm Lithuania, but vodka.
On the territory of the park there is a restaurant 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, Goodbye Youth cutlets with buckwheat, herring, jelly and so on. And on the street there is a vending machine where, by dropping a coin, you can drink a glass of soda.
