Inside Europe's strangest 'theme park': A secret underground base offers a terrifyingly realistic reminder of Soviet occupation



A pistol-wielding guard, his snarling alsatian, a blinding spotlight in my face... why did I spend £25 to be tortured in this freezing KGB bunker?

As a snarling alsatian growls at my heels, straining at its leash, the fierce KGB interrogator barks in harsh Russian for me to face the wall for a terrifying search.



Once cleared, I am herded with the rest of this ragtag band of ‘dissenters’ to salute the Soviet red flag, our threadbare gulag-issue jackets offering scant protection against the biting Baltic chill.



We are told to stop thinking ‘because the party will do that for you’, while anyone who shows disrespect is forced to the ground and compelled to do punishing press-ups until they fall into line.



Menacing: Keri is led down into the bunker as a snarling alsatian snaps at her feet

We are then brutally frogmarched into a dark, damp underground bunker, where we are ordered to run around a maze, thoroughly disorientating us, before we are forced to watch propaganda films boasting of Soviet prowess beneath a monstrous white bust of Lenin. Anyone deemed too ‘independent’ is taken into a separate chamber and hit with belts.



Perhaps the strangest thing of all, though, is that I have just paid £25 for this sinister three-hour experience in one of the most unlikely new tourist attractions in Europe.



This once-secret bunker, 15 miles outside the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, has recently been opened up to visitors as a grim reminder of the realities of Soviet occupation.

Claustrophobic: Participants don Soviet gas masks

Theatre producer Ruta Vanagaite, who is behind the project, says: ‘Usually at least one member of each party faints, and there are always people crying – the older ones mostly. It’s intense because in two or three hours we must make them feel what it is like to suffer under Soviet oppression.’

After the disorientating maze and propaganda films, we are told to don claustrophobic grey rubber gas masks – the GP-5s that were issued to Soviet citizens during the Cold War.

Our next ordeal is in a terrifying subterranean ‘surgery’, where I am made to sit in a dentist’s chair and my mouth is stuffed full of cotton wool. I am threatened with a menacing mental implement designed to pull teeth. The intimidation is designed to wear me down before interrogation.



We are then given a demonstration of what the Soviets’ free health care, fondly remembered by many older Lithuanians, really entailed. A 15-year-old boy is told to remove his shirt as the doctor puts cotton wool between a pair of tongs. She sets the cotton wool alight and drops it into a glass jar, which she then places against the boy’s skin to create suction. I feel queasy at this demonstration of ‘fire cupping’, which is supposed to draw out disease through the skin.

We are then led into the interrogation room, where a lieutenant employs psychological tactics to wear us down. Although Ruta translates for us, being screamed at in an alien language makes the experience all the more frightening.

A single desk lamp is pointed towards us as the lieutenant, wielding a standard-issue Tokarev TT-33 service pistol – which he had earlier fired into the air to intimidate us – says we can never escape the KGB. He pulls us one by one on to a metal stool to make us sign confessions.



One man is made to admit that he has stolen from the factory where he works as an act of ‘anti-Soviet sabotage’. Others are cajoled into writing letters pledging their allegiance to the USSR.



Keri was subjected to a psychological interrogation before signing a 'confession'

One teacher fights back the tears as she refuses to comply with the bullying officer. Her reaction is moving and suddenly the historical context of the re-enactment becomes all the more resonant.



Ruta translates: ‘He is saying she will be in trouble if she does not sign. Her children will be brought here and hanged and she will have to watch.’



This is genuinely shocking. I find it disturbing that the actor playing the interrogator can maintain his composure while stirring up such bitter emotion.



To add to the realism, in the Eighties this actor served in the military where he was actually trained in psychological tactics by the Soviet secret police. As well as working here, 45-year-old Aleksejus Soldatenka is a local police commissioner who specialises in fighting organised crime.



The final act of cruelty is being told to run towards the ‘door of freedom’ – which has, in reality, been shut for 20 years. We run down the filthy dank tunnel as the captain shouts orders through a megaphone.



Midway we are plunged into darkness; and after the strains of interrogation I feel totally bewildered in the pitch blackness.

Grim reminder: Fellow 'dissenters' are lined up on the stairs

After an indeterminate amount of time, the lights come back on and we despondently trudge back into the bunker, the promise of freedom having been so cruelly snatched away.



We ‘Soviet citizens’ then sit down to a typical meal of gruel and a sweet biscuit.

Finally, we are allowed to go. Before our release, we are given vodka to steady our nerves while incongruously jovial music plays to a backdrop of multicoloured disco lights. It feels as if I am trapped in a sinister cabaret show.

We move to an upper level, where an enormous door is pushed open, letting in a welcome blast of icy air. The nightmare is over, at last.



It is hard to see how this place has become a tourist attraction, but Survival Drama In A Soviet Bunker, as the experience is known, has become popular with everyone from stag parties to corporate outings, prompting accusations that this is nothing more than a cynical ‘gulag theme park’.

But fun it isn’t. Ruta says this is a ‘social project’ to recreate life under Soviet rule in 1984 with a serious point to make.



Many Lithuanians still harbour a strange nostalgia for the dark days of Soviet occupation, choosing to remember the free health service and high levels of employment while burying memories of the tyranny that sent tens of thousands to death or exile in Siberia.



These tunnels, 15ft underground, were dug in 1983 and used to house emergency TV and radio studios in case of Nato attack. They were later used as a Soviet base during Lithuania’s successful struggle for independence in 1991, but have lain empty ever since.



Now Ruta, 52, is using them to ensure no one forgets the unpleasant truth of that era.



After my nerves settled following the experience, I asked actor Irmantas Jankaitis, who plays the Soviet captain, what it is like reliving the horrors of the past on a daily basis for the show.



Participants line up in icy temperatures outside the bunker, in the forest near Lithuania's capital Vilnius

The 39-year-old father of five says: ‘I would not let one of my children do it. But it is important that people do not become nostalgic about the past. People forget the terrible times we had.’



Ruta agrees. ‘My husband hates the show. He doesn’t understand why people would pay to be tortured.



‘It’s not for everyone. But these days children must learn that it’s not a laughing matter. Many do not understand what it was like.



‘By the end visitors should feel how, under a totalitarian regime, they are nothing. They should realise how much progress there’s been over the past 17 years.’



I was lucky. I always knew that my time bearing the brunt of the KGB’s terror tactics was both temporary and make-believe. But the harrowing experience will stay with me for ever.