TRAVEL GUIDE Traces of the COLD WAR PERIOD The Countries around THE BALTIC SEA Johannes Bach Rasmussen 1 Traces of the Cold War Period: Military Installations and Towns, Prisons, Partisan Bunkers Travel Guide. Traces of the Cold War Period The Countries around the Baltic Sea TemaNord 2010:574 © Nordic Council of Ministers, Copenhagen 2010 ISBN 978-92-893-2121-1 Print: Arco Grafisk A/S, Skive Layout: Eva Ahnoff, Morten Kjærgaard Maps and drawings: Arne Erik Larsen Copies: 1500 Printed on environmentally friendly paper. This publication can be ordered on www.norden.org/order. Other Nordic publications are available at www.norden.org/ publications Printed in Denmark T R 8 Y 1 K 6 S 1- AG NR. 54 The book is produced in cooperation between Øhavsmuseet and The Baltic Initiative and Network. Øhavsmuseet (The Archipelago Museum) Department Langelands Museum Jens Winthers Vej 12, 5900 Rudkøbing, Denmark. Phone: +45 63 51 63 00 E-mail: [email protected] The Baltic Initiative and Network Att. Johannes Bach Rasmussen Møllegade 20, 2200 Copenhagen N, Denmark. Phone: +45 35 36 05 59. Mobile: +45 30 25 05 59 E-mail: [email protected] Top: The Museum of the Barricades of 1991, Riga, Latvia. From the Days of the Barricades in 1991 when people in the newly independent country tried to defend key institutions from attack from Soviet military and security forces. Middle: The Anna Akhmatova Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia. Handwritten bark book with Akhmatova’s lyrics. Made by a GULAG prisoner, wife of an executed “enemy of the people”. Bottom: The Museum of Genocide Victims, Vilnius, Lithuania. Soviet security officers of the so-called “anti-bandit department”, which was renowned for imprisoning, torturing, killing and deporting partisans as well as other “national and class enemies”. 2 Traces of the Cold War Period: Military Installations and Towns, Prisons, Partisan Bunkers Execution Sites, Secret Police Offices, Soviet Architecture, Sculptures, Historical Museums Front page photos Right: Arnholma Battery, Stockholm archipelago, Sweden. One of the large costal artillery cannon that was a part of the strong Swedish coastal defence system. Top left: Museum of the Occupation of Latvia 1940-91, Riga. GULAG barrack constructed with the help of former political prisoners. Top right: Lithuania. From a video film by Albinas Kentra. People sing Lithuanian national songs in front of Parliament. From the freedom demonstrations in January 1991. Middle left: Levashovo Memorial Cemetery, St. Petersburg, Russia. Burial place of 20,000 victims of Stalin’s terror. Middle right: Druskininkai Museum of Resistance and Deportations, Lithuania. The brothers, Vincas and Bronius Pigaga, who were both born in Siberia of deported Lithuanian parents. Birikchul, Krasnoyarsk region, 1953. Bottom left: The Allied Museum, Berlin, Germany. Watchtower and remnant of the Berlin Wall. Bottom right: The Museum of Genocide Victims, Vilnius, Lithuania. The uniformed and armed partisans, Bronius Paleckas and Viktoras Krisiulevičius. Both were killed by Soviet security forces in 1948-49. Top left: Butovo Shooting Range, Moscow, Russia. From the outdoor exhibition. Photos of prisoners who were shot and buried in the area during the years of Stalin’s Great terror. Top right: Degerby Igor Museum, Degerby, Finland. The guide, Dorrit Krook, tells children about life before and after the occupation of the Porkkala area. The area was occupied by the Soviet military from 1944 to 1956. Middle left: Memorial. Cattle wagon used for deportations, Skrunda Railway Station, Latvia. Middle right: Radar Station, Iceland. Iceland was one of the cornerstones of the surveillance of the Soviet military operations in the North Atlantic. Bottom left: Memorial in front of the TV Tower, Vilnius, Lithuania. Fourteen people were killed at this site by Soviet military and security forces in January 1991 when they tried to defend key institutions of the newly independent Lithuania. Bottom right: From a Solidarity memorial at the entrance to Gdansk shipyard, Poland. The activities of the Solidarity trade union is described as one of the main reasons of the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union. 1 2 Foreword When I was a boy, I went on holiday with my parents and older history. Formerly independent nations such as Estonia, Latvia, brother to Harzen. I shall never forget the view of the Brocken Lithuania and Poland (all only 1 or 2 hours from Scandinavia by air) Mountain. We could not actually visit it, because of the Iron spent nearly half a century under Communist dictatorships. Curtain. In the evening we stood quietly, close to the border, looking at the darkness beyond. There seemed to be no people Tens of thousands of families from these countries were there. It was frightening. deported to remote parts of the Soviet Union with the aim of destroying any potential resistance in those countries. Others were Some 30 years later – in 1990 - I went back to the same place executed or sentenced to long periods in prisons or concentration with my own children. There was now a hole in the Iron Curtain camps simply because their political views were different from and hoards of ”trebbies” (small East German Trabant cars) were those of the rulers. We must not forget what happened to our bumping through the former border line. What a relief! neighbours, just a few decades ago. As a student in 1968, I travelled by train through East One of the differences between recent and more distant history Germany. When I offered a lady sitting opposite me a cigarette, is that many eyewitnesses are still alive, including dissidents, she shrugged: ”I don´t want your capitalist cigarettes!” In GULAG prisoners and Baltic partisans. Many of their unbelievable Czechoslovakia, people were more relaxed: when a waiter in life stories can be found in this book, and many of them can be a night club changed my D-marks at the unofficial price, I was met at the museums described. Listen to their stories; they really approached by a policeman who dragged me into a corridor. I was have something to tell. afraid I would be carted off to prison but he simply whispered: ”I give you a better price!” If we are to remember and learn lessons from history, then these true stories must be told. And that is the aim of this book. It was absurd in that same year to witness how millions of students were turning their backs on Western democracy. They had become ”democracy-blind”, just as some of their parents had in the 1930s, when Fascism, Nazism and Communism became worldwide plagues. Bertel Haarder This guide book has a special objective that I fully support: to use the history of the Cold War period to create historical Minister for the Interior and Health, Denmark awareness and greater mutual understanding between the Former Minister for Education and Minister for Nordic countries around the Baltic Sea. This understanding is a Cooperation. prerequisite to more fruitful international cooperation between Former Member of the European Parliament. people, organizations, companies and international associations. It is now 20 years since the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed. This leads me to raise the issue of whether people, and especially the youth of today, for example in the Scandinavian countries, have fully understood what this period meant to world Vilnius. In front of the Museum of Genocide Victims. Street exhibition of children’s drawings from an annual nationwide contest with the theme of “The History of Lithuania’s Fight for Freedom and Losses”. The exhibition is organized by the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania. 3 Special Thanks Special thanks to: Mrs. Aira Andriksone, Riga, Latvia Mr. Andris Biedrins, Industrial Heritage Trust of Latvia Mr. Peer Henrik Hansen, The Cold War Museum Langelandsfort, Denmark Mrs. Roberta Havran, National Fortification Heritage, Norway Mrs. Vilma Juozevičiūtė, The Museum of Genocide Victims, Lithuania Mrs. Lidia Klupsz, National Heritage Board of Poland Mr. Dmitry Kokorin, The Human Right Organisation MEMORIAL, Moscow, Russia Mrs. Nina Lebedeva, The Danish Cultural Institute, St. Petersburg, Russia Mr. Kristjan Luts, The Estonian War Museum - General Laidoner Museum Mr. Thomas Roth, The National Swedish Museum of Military History Mrs. Audra Sabaliauskienė, The Danish Cultural Institute, Lithuania Mrs. Tatiana Shipitsina, Moscow, Russia Memorial in Moscow to the victims of the secret Soviet police has been raised by the human rights organisation MEMORIAL in front of Lubyanka, the headquarter and prison of the police through many years. The stone is from Solovetsky Island by the White Sea, the location of one the worst prison camps (later a prison). According to the writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, this camp was the “mother of the GULAGs”. 4 Introduction Get more familiar with your neighbours (members of the Warsaw Pact) and West (members of NATO The main objective of this book is to strengthen mutual and neutral states) understanding between neighbouring countries around the Baltic • The Communist regimes in the former Soviet Union and its Sea through an exchange of information on their recent history, satellite states, including activities relating to the independence not least an understanding between the former Soviet countries struggles. (and their satellite states) and the western countries. The idea is This means that the following kinds of site and museum are that history should be told from the historically valuable sites at included (providing they are accessible to the public): which historic events took place. • In all countries: military sites, such as missile bases, heavy gun So plan a trip to your neighbouring countries and visit the sites batteries, underground information centres, etc. and museums that offer information on the region’s recent history • In the former Soviet Union and the satellite states: sites and experience the historic atmosphere that can be found on the connected to the Communist regimes and the period of sites.