Finding remains of recent history

Latvia has changed fast. A lot of things have been destroyed, especially houses and even areas. New ugly houses and towns have been build, but still, Latvia has a lot of forgotten sites that might be completely erased one day. There’s a group of people in Latvia that like to creep in such wrecks – abandoned houses, half destroyed factories or unfinished buildings and even empty Soviet army military sites. You can see some photos on Bradajumi. Unfortunately, they don’t have an English version, but you can go straight to the gallery and see some photos. Time to time those guys organize creeping into abandoned places collectively, so you might drop an email, maybe you are lucky and they take you on board, the only thing we have to warn you that it’s not always legal, however there’s no danger that you can get any fine, but you should be rather aware that there’s no health and safety once you get in, so don’t come in high heels or most expensive dress.

We have also entered a few interesting sites on our own, for instance, forgotten Russian army village near Skrunda in Western Latvia. It was a small village that used to belong to Soviet army. The village had military area and also about 8 block houses where families of militarists lived. They also had a school, kindergarten, shop and, imagine, they all lived there behind the fence for many years. Russians left it only in 1999.

Abandoned Soviet army village in Skrunda.

Why Latvians don’t like to talk about Soviet times?

You have probably realized that Latvians are not keen to talk about Soviet times, the time when Latvia was Soviet Socialistic republic within USSR (1940-1991). In fact, most young Latvians don’t even know much about it. If you look at history books, it just mentions the fact in a few lines (that it was occupied and all that crap) and that’s it. However, Latvia’s first independence years (1918-1940) are glorified in every paper and website, while you won’t find much about what happened between 1945 and let’s say 1987, when the awakeness happened (nationalism, demonstrations and all that staff). Try googling or open today’s history book for pupils in Latvia, you will hardly find anything. Now, the main question – why? Denying or forgetting history of Soviet times seems like been engineered since early 1990s. Latvia wanted to be the part of Europe so much that it seemed that those fifty years were wasted by being “friends” with “wrong guys”. Being called “post communist” or “ex-USSR” was the worst trademark you could give to the country and Latvian nationalists, so they tried to destroy, repress and forget everything that reminded of those years. Instead, it become popular to refer to Soviet times as years under occupation and that nothing really important happened there. But actually Latvians were very loyal communists and members of the party. During these years it was rumored that Latvians are the most passionate communists within Soviet Union. There were almost no dissidents. Let me tell you just a few facts. Latvians were very keen on building monuments of Lenin. From 1970 until 1987 there were 21 monuments of Lenin build in Latvia, while in Lithuania – 4, but in Estonia only one. This is obviously something Latvians want to forget – that they were the biggest collaborationists of the regime.