today i woke up, read and went shopping. i bought my breakfast at the local supermarket chain (Iki). luckily, the branch closest to my hostel happens to be in the bus station... so while i was there i bought a bus ticket to Riga tomorrow at 10 a.m.
after that, i walked the length of Old Town Vilnius, stopping for a cappucino, on my way to finding the museum dedicated to the victims of both the Nazi and Soviet genocides. and finding it was tough. i read that the museum was in an old KGB prison. i lost my good (free) map of Vilnius yesterday, so i was relying on the map in the back of my Vilnius in Your Pocket Guide. the guide is good and the maps are good as well, because they label where various museums, restaurants, etc are... except they forgot to mark the KGB museum, which they also recommend. so i wandered around lost for awhile, even circling a still in use (and terrifying and old) prison. i eventually located the museum, which is in a deceptively nice building for an old KGB prison.
the museum is miserable. it's not badly designed. on the contrary, it's great. i chose to take an audio tour (via a Walkman) of the basement, where the old prison has been left in the same state it was in 1991, when the KGB finally vacated the building. on the tour, i saw (amongst other rooms): solitary confinement cells - again, only a few square meters; water torture cells - people would either stand in ice cold water all day or, alternatively, they were left standing on a small platform in the middle of an ice cold pool of water and when they were drowsy, they'd fall in. oh, and they were naked and the room was unheated, so in winter the water would freeze and the prisoners would freeze; a padded room which looked horrifying. what these people struggled through is incredible. i cannot imagine living in a soviet state. thank goodness their repression is over.
on the ground floor of the museum, there are two exhibitions: one is a multi-room exhibition dedicated to the resistance forces who fought against the soviet occupation from 1944 until 1952, the other exhibition was a single room temporary exhibition dedicated to the Armenian genocide of 1914 and 1915.
i didn't know anything and had never even heard of the Lithuania resistance against the occupation. i mean, i knew there inevitably had to be one, but the Lithuanian movement was enormous and extremely well organized. it lasted a long time, but eventually succumbed to both the Soviet's overwhelming numbers and the West's indifference. the movement relied heavily on the West starting a war against the Soviet Union.. but as we know, the Cold War wasn't a traditional war and never involved direct engagement.. which helped cripple the movement, because no help ever came.
if you're interested, i suggest reading that link, since it offers up a good summary of what was described in the museum.
amongst the things on display were badges and photos of the resistance, and likewise the soviet occupation forces. there was also a staged film of some soviet troops capturing some resistance fighters. there were also several photos of executed resistance fighters, whose bodies had been placed on public display in towns known to be resistant to the occupation. it was chilling.
they also stated that Lithuanians suffered the worst out of all ethnic and national groups under the soviets. this is easy to understand, because simply walking around here one gets a sense of a heavy nationalistic streak in the local population.
all soviet territories suffered. but one gets the sense that the Lithuanians are much more vocal about their troubled past. i love prague and czech people are excellent people, but they seem so caught up in the whirlwind of the present that the past seems to have almost evaporated. at least, in prague. (it's quite likely, however, is that i just haven't gone to the right places and spoken to the right people in prague...)
and then there was the Armenian genocide exhibition. it was jaw-dropping. it was one room with nothing but photos and descriptions. but, considering that i had never heard of it before today... it's unbelievable that these things ever happen. but the photos alone are humbling and drive the cold spike of reality through your eyelids. millions of armenians were killed just prior to the first world war in a purely genocidal campaign carried out by the Ottoman turks.
another day, another mind-boggling glance into the depths of evil.
after that museum, i hiked back to old town and headed to the Applied Arts Museum, housed in the former arsenal of the Vilnius Royal Palace. it actually had very little in the way of applied art. it was more an exhibition of religious art and relics and/or items they've found while excavating and preparing to rebuild the Palace.
i was underwhelmed.
to add on to the dynamics of Vilnius that i mentioned yesterday, i thought that i would mention how weird it is to walk past countless old buildings and occasionally being able to glance into the courtyard and seeing a dirt road and old wooden shacks/sheds. it's an awkward experience. even some of the recently renovated buildings have their driveway doors open and when you glance back into them, you see the wood sheds. it's awkward but also gives you the complete sense of where the city is coming from and where it's going.
and so, now i will head off for some dinner and to pack and to shop for my breakfast and to read some more and to sleep. and then tomorrow, i will go to Riga, Latvia, from where i will be typing my next update.
Posted by iain at August 16, 2005 06:26 PM