I’m responding here to the question you just PM’d me so others can also read in case they are interested:

I am very familiar with Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary. From my experience there the most visible traces of socialism are to be found in the city planning and architecture. The anti-communists can tear down monuments, erase symbols and rewrite history, but they can’t redesign whole cities or tear down every building, every dam, every factory built by socialism.

So just keep an eye out for brutalist architecture. The Baltics have less of it than other former Soviet and Eastern Bloc states due to their more medieval historical architecture in the city centers, but i’m sure there is still plenty of architecture from the Soviet period even in the Baltics if you go outside of the medieval city centers and fortresses (which, fun fact, were mostly built by German colonists who subjugated the local population and ruled over them for hundreds of years - this makes the Baltics’ present day infatuation with western Europe and with Nazi Germany particularly ironic).

There is also still a sizeable Russian minority in the Baltics and i suspect some of them might be less hostile to the Soviet period; if you happen to find a guide or a local who is a native Russian speaker they may be more inclined to speak positively about it. Finally, you should be careful about openly displaying communist symbols.

As for Belarus, if you have time definitely try and fit in a trip to Minsk if you can. It’s a very beautiful, clean and peaceful city with a lot of still visible Soviet history, including statues of Soviet leaders. It will probably give you the closest impression of what life in the Soviet Union was like (or rather what it could have been like if it opened up like China).

However, i am not sure what the situation is exactly with the border at the moment or what kind of visa you need. It would be best to look into that in advance because Belarus is of course not in the EU and you can’t as easily just hop over the border, plus the Baltics are not exactly on good terms with Belarus at the moment, though there is still some trade happening and people from the Baltics do still visit Belarus and even Russia, so it’s not like a full iron curtain or anything.

There’s Lazdynai. CCK Philosophy made a video about it. He might also know more about Lithuania in particular. There are also the Military towns, used to still have Lenins face around sometimes, but who knows if they’re still there lol

It’s mostly just the infrastructure and some brutalist architecture that’s left, there’s an airport with soviet era tapestry in Spilve, but I’m not sure how difficult it is to get entry access. They also haven’t removed some of the more depressing memorials like in Ančupāni and Audriņi as well as there’s some statues built for the graveyards of red army soldiers.

There’s maybe some more things I could add, but honestly I just get depressed when dwelling on it. Ya know we had an incident here not that long ago where secret police was sent to investigate a book club and they just admit it openly, which I’m more incline to believe is intentional as in to say: “Hey we’re watching you. Don’t get any ideas.”