The KGB

Whenever Lee encounters anything to do with the KGB or the prisons or Gary Powers is mentioned I shudder inside because I have the faintest idea what that was like.

A few years ago, while I was living in Lithuania, I visited The Museum of Genocide Victims in Vilnius. It was the former KGB headquarters in Vilnius and it was terrifying. There are things about it that I absolutely can not forget. When I was there, it had been less than 20 years since the prison had been in active use, but it had rooms that seemed like Medieval torture chambers. Between 1940 and 1960, over 1000 executions took place in the basement of the building.

There are pictures which can not convey the awfulness that you feel when you are inside that building but  they might give you some idea:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mental_cell_in_museum_of_genocide_victims.jpg A torture cell.

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/About/General/2011/4/29/1304097386882/A-cell-at-the-Museum-of-G-007.jpg
A normal prison cell.
http://www.way2lithuania.com/sites/way2lithuania.com/files/museum%20of%20genocide%20victims.jpg
The execution room. The glass cases hold objects found in the room.
http://tampaxtowers.blogspot.com/2012/01/vilnius-kgb-museummuseum-of-genocide.html
A series of pictures from the prison and descriptions of the various rooms.
http://www.t52.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/lithuania-105.jpg
The basement hallway.

I know that what we sometimes read about the KGB and see in movies about the cold war is scary, but I haven't come across anything that conveys the true horror of what I saw in the Lithuania headquarters and I know that was just the tip of what they did. The true impact of the horrors was evident in the way people walked and interacted.

I heard that before the Soviet Union collapsed they used to display the bodies of people they had recently executed on the streets. They would post guards by the bodies and if anyone reacted as they walked by, those people were arrested because they must sympathize with the executed. So even twenty years later, people generally keep their eyes on the ground and they don't greet one another in the street. Every one has been trained to ignore others in case they are being watched by how the react to someone.

Anyway, that is a not very cheerful blog post but something to keep in mind as you read about the KGB. And it also makes you wonder what CIA headquarters are like.