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Baltics trip
Day 2 - 17th May - Vilnius, Lithuania (Part 3)
Wall of photos
Evidently resistance fighters had a lot of money to buy cameras and film, since there were so many photographic mementoes.
Easter Card
"Long live the most Democratic elections in the world"
"Stalin, the eater of human beings"
The question on all our minds was: who was worse? The Nazis or the Soviets? This table of losses provides an answer, of sorts:
"Soviets (1940-1941, 1944-1990):
Arrested, interrogated, imprisoned - ~200,000
Deported - ~132,000
Prisoners who died - ~20-25,000
Died in deportation - ~28,000
Partisans and their supporters killed - ~21,500
Nazis (1941-1944):
Imprisoned and deported to concentration camps - ~29,500
Killed - ~240,000
Killed (non-Jews) - ~40,000
Deported to Germany for forced labour - ~60,000
Even if you weren't a Jew, the Nazis were worse (caveat: this was under wartime conditions, but still).
There was a special exhibition on what Stalin did to the Ukraine - he engineered a famine by stealing all their food (Holodomor). The statistics were dodgy though:
"How many victims of the Holodomor?"
"By way of scientific extrapolation" they claim a figure of 7.5-10 million victims of the Holodomor. Yet, they estimate victim figures the same way the BSA estimates losses from piracy - they extrapolated what Ukraine's population would have been without the Holodomor and subtracting actual population figures from this.
In other words, unborn children were counted as "victims", and we're not even talking abortions (forced or otherwise) here. By this logic, I can claim that condom companies are commiting mass murder by preventing conception (and, by extension, that Abstinence is Murder).
Even better, at the bottom the 14 million figure includes ""indirect losses (the result of total physical exhaustion, typhus, gastrointestinal disease, repression, suicide by those psychologically affected, and also taking into account the unborn)".
Stalin vs Hitler
"Places of deportation and imprisonment of Lithuanians"
The collapse of the Soviet Union was indeed "a major geopolitical disaster of the century".
Needlework by political prisoners
"Rocks brought by Vytautas Jonas Vaicekauskas from the surroundings of the Balkhash labour camp"
!@#$
"A piece of coal which Vladas Plikunas brought home from a mine in Vorkuta in 1990"
!@#$%^&*()
"Needlework by the political prisoner Joana Kalvaitiene in a prison in Klaipeda dedicated to her husband Juozas. 20 February 1951 'My dear Juozelis, if you return from the dark prison, and I pass away somewhere, when pressing another woman to your breast and feeling happy again, remember that my heart beat only for you..."
It's nice to see that the spitefulness of women is a cross-cultural phenomenon.
MFM: well, she didn't wish any harm upon him
Me: that's why it's spiteful, not vicious
Crosses and pendants made from toothbrushes
Bag with Lithuanian soil and bag with holy bread. This is why I treasured mainland water when I was on the Island of Doom (well, that and the taste).
Christmas card
Mockup of what one of the rooms looked like (remember this was a secret police HQ or something)
Gas masks
They had organisational charts of many Party members. Some of them are still alive. Many were smart and made their photos vanish before the Party lost power.
Bronze Age artifact (don't ask me why this is here)
The Baltic Way - 2 million linked hands for peace, from Tallinn to Vilnius. They should put it in the Baltic Book of Records.
18 coats of paint exposed in a cell. The coats were not for cleanliness or aesthetic reasons, but to cover graffiti.
"Archbishop Mecislovas Reinys... led an active political life"
So much for rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's.
Padded cell
Frankly, after Dachau all this was nothing, so I don't see what they were whining about.
The prisoners could take showers once a month, and for fun the guards would sometimes turn on only the hot or cold water.
Ingenious water torture: either you stood in the water or on an unstable platform, from which you could fall into the water if you lost your balance.
How not to die. Picture #4 is quite funky.
Exercise courtyard. The corridor on the right was flanked by little open air rooms with a bench in each. Presumably the only exercise as bench pressing.
"The execution chamber... More than a thousand people were killed between 1944 and the early 1950s... The burial places of people shot after 1950 (when the death penalty was restored in the Soviet Union) are still unknown."
I suppose this is like how gambling is illegal in Hong Kong, prostitution is illegal in Bangkok and having pornography on your computer is illegal in Singapore.
Under the floor of the execution chamber. I like this sort of exhibition style for artefacts.
Bleak desolate building (the museum, IIRC)
First Kebab stand we saw. The Turks are conquering parts of Eastern Europe they never got to the last time around.
Grey, Communist buildings.
We saw a sign pointing to a "panoramic view" so we followed it up a hill.
Dandelions
"Panoramic view". Gah. We climbed a hill for this.
We were quite bored, so I decided to roll down the hill (the video will follow this post). I checked my projected path for dog shit and glass shards, and kicked aside cigarette butts. I forgot to empty my pockets, but luckily nothing got damaged (my pen fell out, but I found it later)
Lithuanian girls sitting outside what looked like a disused Parliament house.
This is how they save money on pedestrian crossing lights - by putting traffic lights on double duty.
Presumably this was some Lithuanian RPG club or Heraldry Association. Given the youth of the kids, probably the former.
One of many derelict-looking buildings
Funky van
Before I started filming this they were shaking the van from side to side, but they stopped when I got started. Damn.
Cathedral
What must be their main street
National Theatre
They're so cosmopolitan. They have a Moliere play poster.
This may look like a woman walking her kids, but the male to her right is her significant other. I'm impressed; he only went up to her chin.
The Horse pushing the Man down
I was struck by the youth of the people in the Baltics compared to those in Western Europe.
Presumably these girls dressed as devils due to a Hen Night.
Someone couldn't open a beer bottle, and I suggested we use a door. Unfortunately the nearest door belonged to a church, and that would've caused a riot.
Gates of Dawn concert