As I peered through the cold, damp leaves at Joseph Stalin and Vladimir Lenin’s foreboding scowls, I was reminded of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s determined gaze from high atop his horse. I was walking through the shadowy gray forest of Gruto Parkas, the outdoor memorial where Soviet statues are sequestered in Lithuania, when I became haunted by the controversy surrounding Confederate statues in my former home state of Virginia. Now that Virginians will be allowed to remove those statues, putting them in a Lithuanian-style forest memorial like Gruto Parkas could minimize cost and controversy while maximizing historical and learning opportunities.

On April 11, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam signed a bill allowing localities “to remove, relocate, or contextualize Confederate monuments” in a way their community finds suitable starting July 1. The bill stipulates that the locality hold a public hearing before voting on the statue’s fate, and that it must be offered to “any museum, historical society, government or military battlefield.” Unlike these statues, the mission of Gruto Parkas is to teach future generations of Lithuanians, and visitors such as myself, about the horrors and oppression inflicted by the Soviet Union so that this chapter in their history can never repeat itself.