Yesterday we paid attention to Skrunda’s auction and the new situation the east Latvian town has to deal with. A load of pictures of desolate cities and abandoned buildings inspired us to find out a little more about its history. A couple of professional news reports and home-made cinematic efforts, show a rather emotional situation. The Guardian reports about the rather mysterious history of Skundra-1:

“Built in the 1980s, Skrunda-1 was a secret settlement not marked on Soviet maps because of the two enormous radar installations that listened to objects in space and monitored the skies for a U.S. nuclear missile attack. Like all clandestine towns in the Soviet Union, it was kept off maps and given a code-name — which usually consisted of a number and the name of a nearby city.”

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, a new independent Latvia was eager to scuttle all Soviet military bases and expel Russian troops. Nevertheless, the Russians wanted to keep the possibility of using Skrunda’s radar systems for early warning purposes. As a result, the radar base was used as a important negotiation tool between the White House and the Kremlin in the mid nineties. Skrunda-1 became a symbol of the post-Cold War ‘peace dividend’ as Latvia and Russia signed an agreement on dismantling two radar bases. The first one was demolished in 1995 and the other (the largest in the Baltic) ceased operations in 1998.

Pechora, the radar building on the picture, was 60 meters high. In May 1995 it was ceremoniously blown up by a U.S. demolition firm using over a ton of dynamite. Which, of course, led to a spectacular operation combining military power and human sentiments.