PARANOIA

I'm months late noting this May 1, 2011 Guardian story by Dan Hancox, "Lithuania's Soviet nostalgia: Back in the USSR":

This is 1984: Survival Drama in a Soviet Bunker, a three-hour long, quasi-theatrical experience in a genuine Soviet bunker in the middle of the Lithuanian forest [...] We stand to attention for the Soviet anthem and hoisting of the red flag, and then down we go, into the freezing-cold bunker. For three hours, we are force-marched through icy, virtually pitch-black corridors, barked at (by canine and human alike), humiliated, interrogated, forced to sign false confessions to imagined crimes, shown propaganda, and taught to prepare for a nuclear attack by the imperialist pigs. Each stage is designed to illustrate, with little allowance for subtlety – or health and safety – an aspect of life in the Soviet Union.
Six metres underground, and comprising 3,000 square metres of tunnels and cave-like rooms, the bunker was built in 1984 as an emergency base for Lithuanian state TV transmissions, in case the capital Vilnius came under attack from Nato. It boasts stand-alone heating and sewerage facilities, and communication lines to Moscow, and a roof designed to withstand the impact of a nuclear bomb.
Less theatrical, but equally harrowing, is the Museum of Genocide Victims, housed in a former KGB prison in central Vilnius where hundreds were tortured and killed. [...]
The final, stunning plank in the trinity of Lithuanian exercises in Soviet memory is Grutas Park, known slightly glibly to some as "Stalin's World". It is not exactly a theme park (though there is a playground, and a zoo featuring llamas and bears), but a massive outdoor collection of the country's Soviet-era statues, as well as log cabins containing thousands of other exhibits, from rugs with Lenin's face on them to Pioneer drums, communist toys, flags, paintings and Soviet-era calculators. Now celebrating its 10th anniversary, this macabre oasis of socialist realism was built on snail money (the owner Viliumas Malinauskas is a wealthy snail and mushroom farmer) [...] Grutas Park is unapologetic about using mockery as a weapon: on special occasions, they employ lookalikes to pose as Lenin, Stalin et al, and put on performances by young actors dressed up as Pioneers. "Now we can laugh at our Soviet past," announces the park's audio guide at one point. Vanagaite eventually agrees there is a role for this, as well as shock tactics: "I suppose it's about finding the right mixture of absurdity and horror."

(Thanks to loyal citizen Allandaros, who sent the link promptly back in May.)