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

Grutas Park - is a museum, imitating the style of the Soviet period the camps of the Gulag. Here you can see about 100 gathered from all over Lithuania monuments, busts, sculptures, bas-reliefs of figures of the period of the revolution, the regime of repression and occupation period, and reward signs, posters, and other attributes of the time.

In 2001, the Lithuanian businessman Vilyumas Malinauskas founded the famous park, now owned by him and his family. Park is the main source of income for the owner. This berry, mushroom and cochlear business. Processing products is organized directly to the park. Their main part is focused on export.

20 years ago on the site of the park was located Grutas swamp. There was a lot of work to create the necessary site for the museum. Woodland was drained. Next it was brought and poured earth, which is a layer on different sites ranging from 50 centimeters to 2, 5 meters.

Entrance to the open air museum is organized through the checkpoint, as if in a military town. It sells souvenirs. One of the most popular is the glass with the inscription: "For the Motherland, for the party, for Stalin." There is another option - "For the wife's mother, for his wife for his mistress."

The trees from the speakers poured songs of the Soviet era. The fence of barbed wire and watchtowers of the tree remind Gulag picture. Bronze Krishtalnisa ​​mother opens the exhibition. This monument, which is dedicated to the Lithuanian Red Army Division XVI. Person 8-meter-high figures weighing 12 tons is a portrait of the author's wife.

Going on a concrete path, you will see the monument to Soviet soldiers. He was brought from Siauliai. In 1947, he was cast out of the wreckage of the German prisoners Messershmity. Massive duralumin sculpture weighs only 800 kilograms. In 1991 the dismantling of the monument was found inside a bottle with a list of people who produce it. I wonder what these people (of course, the survivors) was able to find, and some time later they met in the independent Lithuania.

The Grutas you can see and sculptures made of wood, prototypes of which are public and political figures of our time. They opposed the creation of the park and needed to destroy Soviet monuments.

The museum's collection also includes monuments to Stalin, Lenin, Dzerzhinsky, Marks, Lithuanian Communists (Mickevičius-Kapsukas and others), partisan Marita Melnikaite military personalities (Baltushis-Zemaitis, Uborevich). And you're here to see examples of visual propaganda art (posters, slogans, etc.), samples of military and other equipment in those years. The park exposition "Narrow-gauge train."

Monument vodka in a metal container - one of the most exotic exhibits. The history of its creation is quite interesting. In 2005, a Lithuanian newspaper announced a contest for the worst pest of the country. After the vote was made vote count, and it turned out that people do not cause harm to Lithuania, and vodka.

The park is a small restaurant, decorated in the style of the Soviet squad. Here, in addition to the traditional Lithuanian dishes, you can taste dishes of the Soviet time: borscht "Nostalgia" in metal bowls, burgers "Goodbye Youth" with buckwheat, herring, jelly and so on. And on the street is automatic, which lowered the coin, you can drink a glass of soda.