Tourism and the Soviet Past in the Baltic States

105 Prison Experiences and Socialist Sculptures — Tourism and the Soviet Past in the Baltic States Hanna Kuusi The bags in this cell are filled with documents cut up by a shredder. They were destroyed by Lithuanian KGB executives between 1988 and 1991 to cover the tracks of their activities. (The Genocide Victims Museum, Vilnius) Heritage tourism and heritage sites are commonly associated with something to be proud of — intriguing, heroic or industrious local or national history. The literature on heritage tourism has concentrated in pleasant sites. A number of scholars, however, have noticed that tourist interest in death, disaster and atrocity has been growing. Concepts such as dark tourism, thanatourism, black spot tourism and atrocity heritage have been introduced to make sense of the marketing and consumption of violence and suffering as a tourist experience.' For investigating atrocity heritage Gregory Ashworth and Rudi Hartmann have sketched a definition for the concept of atrocity. They want to distinguish it from a wider understanding of dark tourism. Atrocity presupposes that there has been a human perpetrator and a human victim. The perpetrator must have been engaged in a conscious action and the victims have been innocent. The scale of events has been out of the ordinary, which means a degree of extreme seriousness. Furthermore, the event has to be remembered — it can be used "to create and sustain collective memory by those with an interest to do so". In their strict definition the atrocity itself should be a major element in the tourism product — not a place with dark history qualities.2 The sites founded to present the Soviet occupation in the Baltic states meet all these criteria. In this chapter I will discuss five sites of Soviet period dark heritage: three occupation museums in the capital cities of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, a Soviet sculpture park in Lithua- nian countryside and a cultural park in a former prison in Tallinn, Estonia. All but the last one have an important role in the local tourist scene. My purpose is to find out how the traumatic Soviet past is presented at the sites and what kind of different modes of display are used. I will also discuss the ways the sites have been interpreted by the visitors.3 According to the Baltic Cultural TOUri SM Policy Paper, which was produced for UNESCO in 2001-2003, Soviet period heritage has attracted many visitors. This is claimed to be caused by its dramatic and recent nature, "not so much because of its content". However, according to the paper, the Soviet heritage is currently not used to its full potential. This refers to still intact sights, for instance the luxurious Soviet spa hotel Auska in Palanga and the Academy ' Lennon & Foley 2004, Strange & Kempa 2003, 387. Ashworth & Hartmann 2005, 2-5. 3 The article is based on personal visits to the sites in April—July 2007. 106 of Science building in Riga. The paper suggests that the Soviet heritage should be used wisely to attract more tourists. This could be done by giving visitors a glimpse into the contrasts of Soviet life.4 In other words, at the present the Soviet heritage concentrates in dark tourism precisely for the reasons of its content. Occupation Museums — Education and Commemoration Each capital city of the Baltic states has a museum presenting the Soviet occupation. The first was the Museum of Genocide Victims in Vilnius Lithuania founded in 1992. It was set up on an order from the Minister of Culture and Education and the Union of Politi- cal Prisoners and Deportees. In 1997 the responsibility of the museum was given to the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania. The Latvian and Estonian museums have been initiated and maintained by private foun- dations. The Museum of the Occupation of Latvia was founded in Riga in 1993. The major support for the Occupation Museum Foundation comes from foreign donations. The Museum of Occupation and of Fight for Freedom in Tallinn was set up in 2003 by an expatriate organisation Kistler-Risto Foundation. The modern building is designed for this specific purpose. The museum in Vilnius is located in former KGB headquarters and the one in Riga in a disputed ugly Soviet era black windowless cubicle from 1970. The latter was built to commemorate the Latvian Red Riflemen of 1917-20. Education and information distribution are major missions for each museum. The exhi- bitions present vety detailed facts. These include authentic audiovisual material the Estonian exhibition one could watch film compilations for several hours. By the entrance of the museums a selection of literature is sold: academic research work, survivor an- thologies, and pocket-size theme booklets with high quality graphic design. In the oldest museums there are also exhaustive printed catalogues available.5 Authenticity, disclosure, and objectivity are emphasized. The Lithuanian museum wants to help the nation to reconstruct its authentic history, to find out and to inform the public about the sufferings it endured during the years of the occupation, about the resistance, about perpetrators of the reprisals and about the methods they resorted to and for that purpose "to provide comprehensive information".6 The primary aim of the Latvian museum is "to uncover and illuminate the 51 years of occupation" and the most important elements of the museum's content are "the exposure of Latvia's human, material and political losses and of the degradation of Latvian culture, language, society and spiritual Life"! The Estonian museum seeks to give an objective cross section oflife in the Estonian society during the three occupation periods.8 Baltic Cultural Tourism Policy Paper, 34, 51. 5 Nollendorfs 2005. 'The Museum of Genocide Victims, 3. Nollendorfs 2005, 12. 8The Museum of Occupation and of Fight for Freedom, leaflet. 107 In addition, there are other important values. The museums aim to commemorate, to share the memories of their own people and to help not to forget the memories for the sake of future. The exhibition of the Vilnius museum begins with a reference to collective experience of Lithuanians: "This experience [persecutions of 1940 and 1941] is still alive in the memories of people of that generation, and to others through stories of grand parents or parents. It has affected their fate and the fate of succeeding generations..." In one of the last rooms the reason for the exhibition is made clear: "This is how it was. We are showing all this so as not to allow it to sink into oblivion." In similar tones the Latvian museum is concerned about the future: "the forgetting, deni- al, and failure to know and understand the occupation period threatens Latvia's future". The author of the Museum's conception Paulis Lazda quotes Santayana: "if we forget our past or allow someone else to steal it we will be condemned to repeat it". 9 The idea is suggestive of the writings of Dominick LaCapra on tvvo different kinds of memory connected to significant historical anxieties. He has developed psychoanalytic concepts of Freud for the purpose of historical studies. The problematic memory, the traumatic one, is the process of "acting out". It means compulsive repetition, flashbacks with no distance taking from the past. At worst it is destructive or self-destructive. The desirable memory is the process of "working through". It contains a critical distance on a problem and a distinction between the past, the present, and the future. LaCapra wants to take psychoanalysis in more ethical and political directions and sees "working through" as a countervailing force. According to him "it is via working through that one acquires the possibility of being, an ethical and political agent".") Another type of memory process is presented by the Estonian museum. The museum is commemorative, but it also is meant to be a connection between the past and the future. The exhibition space is claimed to have a memorial function: it simulates the atmosphere and state of mind of the past — it takes the visitor into the historical past." This is done by presenting things and artefacts from the daily life of the Soviet era in the museum. However, the selection of the items has been careful — I will discuss this later in this article. The message of the museums carries open political tones in some instances. The Latvian museum complains that not all of Latvian society fully understands the occupation. Consequently, "if the history of occupation is not recognised, the inheritors and suc- cessors of the occupation powers evade their responsibility about the wrongdoings of their predecessors." In the same introductive text, however, the museum opposes narrow prejudices and recognizes that only criminal regimes and individuals bear responsibility for the crimes committed, not ethnic groups or social classes.'2 This brings up the issue of inclusion and exclusion of dark heritage. In Budapest when the House ofTerror Museum was opened in 2002, a controversy emerged about the rela- 9 Nollendorfs 2005, 11-12. LaCapra 2001, 141-144. 11 The Museum of Occupation and of Fight for Freedom, leafiet. 12 Nollendorfs 2005, 11-12. 108 tive weight of the two perpetrating regimes, the Nazis and the communists. According to a journalist the Hungarian Jews were vety upset: By presenting ali victims as equal, and ali victimizers as equal, the museum diminishes the uniqueness of the Holocaust, not to mention the Commu- nist era; by painting Hungary as one of Germany's victims rather than an accomplice, it continues a trend in which right-wing Hungarian historians are whitewashing Hungary's role in death of some 550 000 Hungarian Jews; and by devoting only one of nearly two dozen rooms exclusively to the Holocaust, it implies that communism was far worse than the Holo- caust.'3 The Estonian and the Latvian museums include the German occupation in their exhi- bitions.

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