Gulag tourists line up for 'KGB beatings'

TOURISTS are lining up at an adventure park which offers a journey back to the Soviet Union with KGB interrogation methods and "beatings".

AN adventure park offers a journey back to the Soviet Union with KGB interrogation methods and "beatings" with a leather belt.

The 1984 Soviet Union theme park is located outside the Lithuanian capital Vilnius in an old bunker which served as a secret TV station in case of a nuclear attack.

Visitors to the park pay to be "beaten, interrogated and shouted at" by tour leaders dressed as agents of the Russian secret police, the KGB.

Throughout the Cold War, the KGB became increasingly obsessed with hunting down allegedly ideological subversives in the Soviet Bloc. Most dissidents were sent to gulags for indefinite periods.

Organisers say they wanted to show life under Soviet rule. For those old enough to remember, the two-hour tour can aid in the healing process.

"There are still many people in Lithuania who are sick with Soviet nostalgia so we've started this show to help them recover," a spokeswoman for the park told Reuters.

For the younger visitors who did not live through the years of KGB terror, the park is an effective lesson in Soviet era history.

At the conclusion of the tour, visitors receive a special certificate to honour their two hours as "Soviet citizens" and a shot of vodka, presumably to settle their nerves.