Skrunda-1

Bri recently had a chance to go to Skrunda-1, an abandoned Soviet military city from the cold war, with the DCM, the ODC commander, and some of his fellow officers.  He took some fun photos, and I asked him to write it up:  

Beginning in the 1960s through the early 1990s, the Soviets installed and maintained an early warning radar installation in Latvia called Skrunda-1.  A contingent of Soviet military personnel and their families were stationed in Skrunda and a secret/closed town was built to house them all.  The Russians refused to abandon/clear out fromSkrunda for a few years after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Latvia's 1991 declaration of Independence, but finally pulled out by the end of 1998, dismantling and then abandoning the radar installation and the purpose-built town that had housed the officers and their families.  When the deputy chief of mission and the Office of Defense Cooperation commander offered to give some of the embassy officers a tour of the facility, I jumped at the chance.  We were met at the entrance gates by our Latvian military colleagues, who guided us through the tour. 

Skrunda is a ghost town – a place where generations lived and raised families and worked during the cold war.  But the place was so suddenly abandoned it looks like Chernobyl: you feel the sense of disrupted living, of a sudden crisis, in the empty residential buildings and military facilities.  It was a sobering look and taste of life on the other side of the cold war.     

A Soviet military memorial.

The officers' club, complete with local artists' military scenes  and a large crumbling mural of Lenin.

The old movie/performance hall.

Entering one of the dozen or so large residential buildings.  In the apartments were still discarded clothes, jars, etc.  The facilities have been stripped of most of the light fixtures and plumbing, but the rest of the residences were in tact (albeit dilapidated and crumbling).  

This was the highlight for me.  In one of the side rooms in an officer's quarters, I found a wall where old posters of western rockstars were taped up on the wall.  I love the thought of cold war warriors manning early warning nuclear radar installations by day and secretly worshipping Freddie Mercury and Queen and western culture when they got off work at night.  

The DCM with an old accordion he found.  

Inside the community's hospital.  

What's left of an old x-ray machine.

The grocery store ("trading house of Bent").

A small tree/vine growing out of this window casement blended in with the decay inside and the trees outside.

Ironically, начина́ется means "beginning/start."  This is in the gymnasium.

View through the glass-block windows in the sauna.  

Instructions on how to use the baths.

Inside the kitchen for a communal cafeteria.

Instructions for how to use the industrial ovens/pressure cooker.

There was a bird's nest inside of this fuse box.

Paintball fortifications on top of one of the buildings.  Skrunda has been essentially abandoned for years, and at one point it was used for paintball.  It seems a little insane to have paintballing going on in a place where you could easily fall through rotting floors and roofs and there is broken glass and sharp rebar everywhere.

Inside the community prison and yard.

Skrunda is a cold-war relic that is about to be repurposed to a Latvian/NATO urban warfare training and practice facility in a few months.  We were lucky to get a good look at this enigmatic place before it fundamentally changes.  It was interesting to imagine the life and living that occurred there and to note the passage of time and geopolitical changes that have entirely obscolesced and then repurposed this "company town" that was so integral to USSR's cold war defenses.  

After Skrunda, we headed to a nearby country estate that survived Soviet occupation (no doubt a highly prized location for well-heeled Soviets) that has been repurposed to a hotel and restaurant, and had lunch.  It was a surprising relief to leave Skrunda and its decay behind -- it's hard to overstate how destroyed the place was and how much glass and brick littered every nook and cranny.  Heading back out into Latvia's sprawling rural countryside felt like a breath of fresh air.  

I loved this -- I could have spent many hours reading in this nook.

Skrunda was a walk back in time and a fun and eye-opening trip.  Back at the embassy, it seemed even more surreal and out of time.  This type of look behind the curtains at history and the world is why I joined the foreign service -- I loved this trip.