YELLED at by an officer with a menacing German shepherd dog. Forced to perform exercises like squatting, running and rolling in a blanket while wearing a gas mask.

No, it's not army training or something out of your worst nightmare, but a tourist attraction in Naujasode, Lithuania.

A local theatre troupe is running an interactive show in a former bunker 25km from the capital, Vilnius, to remind the country's post-Soviet generation of the evils of its communist past.

Occupied by the Soviet Union during World War II, it bore the brunt of a notoriously brutal rule. Some 360,000 Lithuanians were jailed, killed or deported to Siberia and Central Asia during the 1940s and 1950s.

The three-hour show allows visitors to get an idea of what life was like under a totalitarian regime, said Ms Ruta Vanagaite, its producer.

Visitors are treated as prisoners of the KGB, the Soviet secret service. They are made to dress the part in 'fufaika', a quilted cotton jacket worn by prisoners in the Soviet gulag (labour camps).

They have to head four metres underground into the bunker and have to put up with questions and commands barked at them by actors dressed in KGB uniforms. They are also forced to salute the Soviet flag.

"These few hours should provide a quintessential Soviet-era experience," said the show's producer. She added: "They (visitors) should realise how much progress there has been over the past 17 years."

Visitors have to sit through Soviet-style May Day speeches, complete with calls to support global communism. And then they are treated to a free medical 'check-up', where a doctor threatens to force a vintage dental drill on them.

The most unpleasant segment of the show is the part where the entire group is forced to face a wall with their hands up. One male participant is then picked out.

An actor browbeats the hapless individual into confessing that he has stolen from the factory where he works. It's an act of 'anti-Soviet sabotage', he yells.

Lina, an accountant who was in her early teens when Lithuania won its independence, said: "I was curious (about being) taken back to this period, but for me, it was really just a show."

Visitors do not leave the show empty-handed.

They are 'released' from their prison and allowed to visit a Soviet-style store, and leave with a roll of toilet paper.

Students who sign up for the show experience a toned-down version.

Adults have to sign a disclaimer saying they risk verbal abuse and will have to perform physical exercise. Jolanta, a teacher in her 40s, said: "Young people must come here to feel even a little bit of what we went through." --AFP.