When Ukraine’s pro-Russian President, Viktor Yanukovych, rejected plans for his country to join NATO the the Ukrainian people took to the streets in protest and Moscow quickly moved in to ‘protect the ethnic-Russians’ living in Ukraine. The fact that the region has been home to the Russian Black Sea Fleet since 1877 does not come into it, apparently.
Way up on the far northern end of the lengthy boarder that separates Russia from the western world things are comparatively quiet right now. The Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania joined NATO in 2004, along with Slovenia, Slovakia and Romania. Russia may have complained at the time, but the reaction was fairly muted.
The city of Liepaja, on the west coast of Latvia, was once home to Russia's Baltic Navy. Its position on the West coast of Baltic Sea and the fact that it remained ice-free in winter made Liepaja an ideal choice for Tsar Alexander III to build his war port. For the same reasons it would make an ideal place for NATO to build a base. And if local media speculation is to be believed, it is going to happen sooner or later.
I recently took a walk through Karosta, Tsar Alexander’s war port, built at the turn of the last century outside Liepaja’s city limits. From the start, Karosta was a closed military city and remained so until the Soviet navy pulled out in 1994. Parts of the district are still out of bounds to the general public as the Latvian Navy currently has part of its base there.
Although I spent the best part of a day in Karosta I only managed to see around half of it. The place is vast. Not surprising considering it was once home to twenty thousand people. The first thing I wanted to do when I got off the bus at the elegant Kalpaka Bridge that marks the entrance to the complex was to find somewhere to sit down and have a coffee. I crossed the iron bridge, built to Eiffel’s specifications - yes, the same Eiffel of tower fame - and made my way to a building that confidently displayed a sign declaring it to be a ‘Kafjenica’ (café). But a closer look revealed that the ‘e’ and ‘j’ were missing from the sign and that a few other letters were hanging off. There was no one inside the building and a notice posted on the door explained that the café was up for sale. And there is no other café in the whole complex.
Most of Karosta has become a derelict ghost town. As I headed further down the main boulevard I felt the eyes of hundreds of ghosts peering out at me from decaying buildings. It is quiet - eerily so. It's hard to believe that 8000 or so people, mainly Ethnic Russian still live here, hauled up in their austere panel apartment blocks. Employment is low and for residents there is very little to, other than gaze out at the abandoned Imperial palaces and overgrown parks.
It was in 1890 that Tsar Alexander III announced his plans to build a war port in Liepaja. Work started on Karosta in 1898, four years after the Tsar’s death, and was completed in 1906. The fortifications, built to protect the port and the city of Liepaja from the Germans, were blown up a few years later. No one can tell me exactly why this happened. There are many rumours – an agreement was reached between Russia and Germany, the forts were blown up to stop German forces from getting their hands on the guns or simply that they were destroyed because the artillery they had been built for had become obsolete.
No one who heard the thunder of the demolition is alive today. The sound must have been immense and terrifying because the extent of the damage is still evident. A chaotic jumble of staircases, artillery emplacements and batteries all remain where they were thrown, now peacefully at rest on the shores of the Baltic Sea that gently laps at the ruins.
I am yet to find any logic in the reasons I have been told for the destruction of the forts but whatever the motive it doesn't change the outcome – German troops marched into the city in 1915 and occupied Latvia until the signing of the armistice treaty in 1918 which ended World War I.
No one who heard the thunder of the demolition is alive today. The sound must have been immense and terrifying because the extent of the damage is still evident. A chaotic jumble of staircases, artillery emplacements and batteries all remain where they were thrown, now peacefully at rest on the shores of the Baltic Sea that gently laps at the ruins.
I am yet to find any logic in the reasons I have been told for the destruction of the forts but whatever the motive it doesn't change the outcome – German troops marched into the city in 1915 and occupied Latvia until the signing of the armistice treaty in 1918 which ended World War I.
The Kremlin must have spent a small fortune on the war port. Karosta is architecturally very different from Liepaja itself - built in an elegant Russian Orthodox style with its parks and palaces and wide boulevards. There would have been a number of shops as well as cafés and restaurants. There was also a manège built for the training of the Tsar’s cavalry. The manège, along with the railway station and many other majestic buildings has fallen into a state of disrepair. Karosta would have been an architectural jewel, its buildings a mixture of Russian art nouveau, classical historicism, and Scandinavian national romanticism.
The opening party at the Admiral's palace must have been a grand affair - attended by dignitaries, officers and their wives. I can imagine a splendid hall crowded with military men wearing their best dress uniforms while elegant ladies in silk ball gowns and diamonds stood chatting with one another. The marble hall would have been decorated with exotic palms. A string quartets would have played gentle music as guests wafted into the hall from the grand staircase cut from Crimean marble. If this were not ostentatious enough, a sumptuous palace was built for Tsar Nicholas II who stayed there only once, presumably in 1903 when he consecrated the magnificent maritime cathedral.
The Tsar’s palace is now being used by the Latvian military. The building’s exterior is as marvelous as it was the day it was built but all the sumptuous fittings have apparently gone, taken back to mother Russia by a retreating military. One of the few Imperial-era buildings being used by a private company is the old prison. It is now home to a museum where you can stay overnight and, if you so wish, experience life as it was in the Soviet era.
After the Bolshevik revolution took hold in Russia, Latvia enjoyed a brief spell of independence and the Latvian navy moved into Karosta. The grand Russian buildings were re-assigned and Latvian style houses built for servicemen and their families. Sadly, little remains of these wooden structures today other than the concrete foundations that nestle among the trees, the wooden structures most likely having been salvaged for fuel or building material during the Soviet occupation.
The opening party at the Admiral's palace must have been a grand affair - attended by dignitaries, officers and their wives. I can imagine a splendid hall crowded with military men wearing their best dress uniforms while elegant ladies in silk ball gowns and diamonds stood chatting with one another. The marble hall would have been decorated with exotic palms. A string quartets would have played gentle music as guests wafted into the hall from the grand staircase cut from Crimean marble. If this were not ostentatious enough, a sumptuous palace was built for Tsar Nicholas II who stayed there only once, presumably in 1903 when he consecrated the magnificent maritime cathedral.
The Tsar’s palace is now being used by the Latvian military. The building’s exterior is as marvelous as it was the day it was built but all the sumptuous fittings have apparently gone, taken back to mother Russia by a retreating military. One of the few Imperial-era buildings being used by a private company is the old prison. It is now home to a museum where you can stay overnight and, if you so wish, experience life as it was in the Soviet era.
After the Bolshevik revolution took hold in Russia, Latvia enjoyed a brief spell of independence and the Latvian navy moved into Karosta. The grand Russian buildings were re-assigned and Latvian style houses built for servicemen and their families. Sadly, little remains of these wooden structures today other than the concrete foundations that nestle among the trees, the wooden structures most likely having been salvaged for fuel or building material during the Soviet occupation.
In 1939, following the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Russia walked into the Baltic States in violation of several peace treaties. The three countries became part of the Soviet Union and Karosta once again became a Russian military base, this time under a Communist government. It was during the occupation that a series of hideous panel high-rises went up around the imposing Orthodox cathedral. These bleak buildings remain today – a crumbling monuments to Soviet austerity. The cathedral, used by Russian Orthodox Christians, Catholics, Lutherans, Anglicans and Jews during Latvian independence, now became the recreation centre for Karosta. It housed a sports hall and movie theatre. During my recent visit I watched a service in the cathedral attended by five people, most of them elderly. As I squeaked across the sprung wooden floor I realised that something was not quite right. What you would normally expect from an Orthodox cathedral, the aroma of frankincense, was not there. Instead, the air was infused with smell of old tennis shoes – more ghosts?
It is more than a little depressing to see this once glorious city-within-a city in such a state of abandonment and decay. If NATO were to base a Baltic fleet here it would mean a much needed cash injection and regeneration for Karosta, and Liepaja as a whole. The old Imperial buildings would be occupied once more and cared for, the parks would be tended and the Soviet era panel buildings would be given a welcome face-lift, just as is happening in other parts of Liepaja. There would be employment and a sense of community. And who knows, Karosta might even get a café.