The exhibition covers the period 1965-1993. The rise of Leonid Brezhnev as leader of the Soviet Union in the mid-1970s ushered in a period of relative (!) calm in domestic and foreign policy, which soon turned into the so-called "Brezhnev stagnation". The exhibition tells the story of ordinary people's everyday attempts to survive, to think, to communicate, to engage in various forms of life creation, despite the ubiquitous moulds of existence and domesticity.

This was a period in which, in an unfree society, people had to learn various strategies and tactics of (re)living, moving cautiously through the territory of the existential trap and its perimeter. In this epoch, the average statistical homo sovieticus was not required to believe in the postulates of Marxism-Leninism, but rather to ritually commit himself to ideological dogmas, while leaving the possibility of living a non-ideological life in his daily existence and of taking care of a meagre domestic life. 

The Soviet era de jure ended on 11 March 1990, but the final stage of the occupation de facto can be recorded at 11pm on 31 August 1993. The last units of the Russian army stationed in Lithuania left the country at the end of August 31 August, 45 minutes later. And when did the experiment in the Soviet trap come to an end in politics, economics, culture, daily life, mentality and other areas? At first glance, it seems that the Soviet era has turned into a foreign country, which, for the frequent researcher, is no longer its own, but a fundamentally different, and therefore surprising, perplexing, horrifying, and sometimes laughable, reality, the most appropriate place for the relics of which to find a place in a museum. But the events of recent years raise the question: has homo sovieticus really become a thing of the past? 

We invite you to find the answer to this and many other questions by revisiting the cells of the Former Detention Centre, each of which tells the story of the mechanisms that created Soviet reality, ideology and rituals, economy and labour, earnings and deprivation, scarcity and fashion, the transformation of history into propaganda, lies and willful oblivion.This year, those who have already visited the exhibition last year will discover a new thematic narrative "Gastronomas" with an immersive experiential counter installation, and the exhibition will be complemented by a comic strip about shopping in a Soviet gastronome and a story about coffee in the Soviet era, created by Miglė Anušauskaitė.