Where did the Soviet-era dissidents like Joseph Brodsky, Lyudmila Alexeyeva, and Tomas Venclova meet and go when they were in Vilnius? A new audio guide takes you on a dissident tour, according to a press release by the Andrei Sakharov Research Center for Democratic Development.
“Modern Vilnius is the way it is because of what the dissidents, the Helsinki Group, the members of the Sąjūdis, and many other unsung heroes, most of whom are not well known and are not taught about in history books, did decades ago,” say the creators of a new interactive tour about the dissidents who worked in Vilnius.
The Dissident Tour of Vilnius, a new audio guide narrates the underground history of secret meetings of the dissidents and the various ways they resisted the Soviet government. It is available to everyone and is easy to use. The tour was created by the Andrei Sakharov Research Center for Democratic Development at Vytautas Magnus University.
“I have had the honour of meeting a number of people who fought for Lithuania’s independence on various projects. Talking to such people, you see clearly how valuable they and their friends were and how they built the foundations of the modern state, especially in the areas of human rights, democracy and civic activism,” says the tour’s author Neringa Gališanskytė, project manager at the Sakharov Center.
“Former activists still remember each other, and often a conversation with one person will lead to several more meetings with his former comrades. After such conversations, we realised how much of Lithuania’s history is hidden or simply forgotten, so we set ourselves the goal of telling these secrets to the younger generation, the diaspora, and tourists visiting Vilnius, and letting them hear the untold story through a tool that is convenient and accessible to all,” she continues.
The tour includes seven sites in Vilnius: the Neringa restaurant (where the tour starts), the apartment where Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov stayed, as well as the Supreme Court of Lithuania and other very important places where activists who opposed the Soviet system used to meet.
To use the audio guide, one does not need to download any apps or create new accounts. You just need a phone with headphones. To start the tour, you need to enter the name of the tour (www.dissident-tour.com) on your mobile phone and, listening to the instructions of the digital guide, you can walk independently to various sites in Vilnius and listen about dissidents.
The duration of the tour can vary from 45 minutes to several hours, depending on your speed and how thoroughly you want to explore the sites.
The tour is free of charge and currently only available in English, but a Lithuanian version is planned for the autumn.
The Dissident Tour of Vilnius celebrates a number of eminent personalities: the founders of the Helsinki Group Tomas Venclova and Eitan Finkelstein, members of the Sąjūdis Petras Vaitiekūnas and Vasilis Kapkanas, as well as Viktor Petkus, Andrei Sakharov, Joseph Brodsky, Natalia Gorbanevskaya and Lyudmila Alekseyeva.
The stories of Robert van Warren, human rights activist and director of the Andrei Sakharov Centre, also complement the content of the tour. The Chronicles of the Catholic Church of Lithuania and various archives were used to find the most interesting stories.
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