Because miks mitte?

It is a weird thing, growing up with the Soviet shadow. I was born a year after indepencence, just a couple of careful steps into the rocky 90s, into a country that didn’t quite know what to do with itself now that the walls were down and hoisting the flag was allowed. To parents who grew up laughing at the irony and the hollow ideas of the Soviet while going on about their lives, still moderately hoarding soap or what have you for a rainy day. Hiding jewellery and important documents in the most creative places around the apartment.

And then we moved, switched countries and found ourselves in a culture that had known freedom for so many generations that they never cared to count. No heroic monuments. The streets named mostly after their size or some local species of trees.

Of course that was nothing I knew how to phrase, or even reflect on until over a decade later. “Culture shock” barely begins to cover it, because I could talk about the millions of little habits and values and manners that made me and my family different from the Swedes, but it doesn’t explain this deeper difference between us; this sense of displacement that to me was more than just having to learn a new spoken language and manners. It was something generational, a sense of displacement I got from my parents who in turn got it from theirs, who got it from theirs. A weird little trap door in the back of the mind, a little suitcase of habits and reflexes that I can’t really describe, but which I know I share with other post-Soviets. Little irks in how I relate to food. Little specific preferences in how I place my trust. Little tendencies of being prepared for the worst, whilst knowing that the worst is not the worst. Little bursts of grey and rainy humour which, for the Swedes, is never funny; confusing and pointless at best, outright rude at worst.

It’s a little secret we don’t talk about. At least not in my experience. We’re living in villages and cities and we walk past the old Soviet monuments and buildings daily. We grew up in the monumental apartment blocks and we hike in the forests where we know people used to hide, and we don’t even bat an eye. It’s ingrained, it’s common, it’s nothing. It means a lot of things to a lot of people. It’s weirdly charged in the most unexpected places of every day life; it’s trauma.

On the Estonian radio I hear discussions about what to do with the left-over monuments from the Soviet times. On a dance event I speak to a Lithuanian guy, my age, and he simply laughs and says, “burn them all”. Not without a small sharpness. I see it in the way his gaze wanders; nothing else gives it away.

I didn’t grow up here and so I never know how much feelings I’m entitled to have about this whole mess. Soviet is distant and somehow exotic to me; like a Swede I am emotional when hearing about the rough times, oh, how HORRIBLE! And the people were taken?! And they didn’t have food?! And then I talk to Estonians, Russians, anyone post-Soviet, and the feelings dissipate. That was that and this is this, yeah sure, it sucked but that’s in the past now. I return to the matter-of-fact-mindstate. Or, is that just a trauma-response? A wish to not deal with past shit? It’s all too tangled up to know. And as someone who grew up abroad, I am probably the wrong person to talk about this at all.

Why am I telling all this? It’s so that now, as I move on to posting pictures of statues of Lenin, you are hopefully enough disoriented to not know what to make of this. Because I don’t. Soviet remains a weird fascination, a scar I cannot not scratch while it’s barely even on my own body. I don’t know what emotions to have about any of it. I don’t know the legitimate ways to deal with the emotions I am having. Did you know that in Sweden, most people think it’s OK to wear symbols of the hammer and the sickle? Most of them don’t blink an eye at it. To me, it’s equally outrageous as wearing a swastika, and I honestly think people wearing either of the symbols are idiots. But I’ve learned that my reaction, my anger, is un-called for, over the top and confusing. Displaced. The Swedes just don’t know anything about Soviet, or the countries that were occupied by it. And the stories I hear from other post-Soviets are more quiet, undramatic and with emotions carefully hidden between the words. That was that, and this is now. And since I didn’t grow up among them, I don’t really know how to relate to that.

The Grutas Park is eerie. Snow is falling from the branches and the air is chilly. I can hear the road in the distance, otherwise mostly crows as they go about their days. I am the only tourist walking around. It’s a beautiful day, and I feel that I am spending it in the right place.
I didn’t know what to expect before I got here. I’ve read that they brought all the old Soviet-statues here, but I realize quickly when I arrive that what I thought would be the statues from all of post-Soviet only turns out to be the statues from Lithuania. I was expecting stacks of Lenins, Stalins and Marxes, all piled up with moss growing on top and birds making their nests, a beard or a pair of feet sticking out here and there, some guys missing an arm or a nose. Instead, they’re much fewer and placed out neatly. There are also local, Lithuanian communist-guys I don’t know of, but who apparently were important enough to get a statue. Typed signs tell a little about each guy’s life in Lithuanian, Russian and English with the same language and enthusiasm for facts as a fourth grader’s school assignment.

And in my overall identity-confusion and searching-for-my-roots-process and emotional ambivalence, I feel that this is good for me. I don’t know the proper response to these Lenins: do I kick them? Sit on their heads? Laugh, cry? Have a minute of silence? Do I talk about it? Do I keep it to myself? The park is quiet and undramatic. I have time to figure out what I want to do, try out different options until I find the ones that work. I take some pretty pictures, and I take some silly ones. I move slowly and notice the materials and craft methods, notice how strange it is for these statues to be in a forest.

After that, I am ready to leave. Nothing is solved and nothing is clearer, I still don’t know where to place myself in the run of things or what emotions to have but it’s still a beautiful day and I feel good after the walk. That was that.

Oh and these guys? Fuck them all.

…

(This story told in pictures.)