Soviet ghost town sold for $3.1 million
February 05, 2010
Roman Koksarov

SKRUNDA-Latvia on Friday sold a deserted town built around a Soviet-era radar station to a Russian investor who bid $3.1 million at an unusual auction, officials said.

The town formerly known as Skrunda-1 housed about 5,000 people during the Cold War but was abandoned over a decade ago after the Russian military withdrew from Latvia following the Soviet collapse.

A representative of a Russian investor won the bidding contest in Latvia’s capital, Riga, with an offer of 1.55 million lats ($3.1 million), said Anete Fridensteina-Bridina, a spokeswoman for the Baltic country’s privatization agency. She declined to name the buyer.

It wasn’t immediately clear what plans the buyer had for the 110-acre (45 hectare) property, which is located in western Latvia some 95 miles (150 kilometres) from Riga.

It contains about 70 dilapidated buildings, including apartment blocks, a school, barracks, and an officers’ club.

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.

The Russian military dismantled the radar facilities and vacated the town after the Soviet Union fell apart and Russian troops left Latvia.

Privatization officials hailed the sale, saying it fetched ten times the starting price and signalled a new beginning for the abandoned town.

She declined to name the buyer.

According to the privatization agency’s press release the buyer is SIA Aleksejevskoje Serviss, whatever that company does..

Here is another text with pictures.

ООО “АЛЕКСЕЕВСКОЕ-СЕРВИС”
(ОБЩЕСТВО С ОГРАНИЧЕННОЙ ОТВЕТСТВЕННОСТЬЮ “АЛЕКСЕЕВСКОЕ-СЕРВИС”)
[Дата обновления] 19.10.2009

Самарская обл. Кинельский р-н Кинельская волость
[Адрес] [Адрес]
Юридический адрес: 446410, САМАРСКАЯ ОБЛАСТЬ, КИНЕЛЬСКИЙ РАЙОН, П КИНЕЛЬСКИЙ, БАЛТИЙСКИЙ ПРОЕЗД, Д 6

found this in “Delfi” forum and can’t be sure if this is genuine

Pete done his research: Юридический адрес: 446410, САМАРСКАЯ ОБЛАСТЬ, КИНЕЛЬСКИЙ РАЙОН, П КИНЕЛЬСКИЙ, БАЛТИЙСКИЙ ПРОЕЗД, Д 6

At least there is some Baltic connection with SIA Aleksejevskoje Serviss, seeing as how it is located on BALTIC DRIVE,, Building 6 (wherever the hell that is in Samara Oblast).  Latvian wifey says this is great: Aleksej has a hooker and taxi serviss company looking to expand into an abandoned metroplex, where the clients will feel right at home.  Cynics everywhere.  What’s a real patriot to do?

ak

Hello friends!

Boy, saw this on the news this morning- very upsetting.
Do we suppose if not for the economical crisis this would have taken place?

Why is this upsetting? It is an empty town with frozen pipes and caved in roofs. It is in the middle of nowhere, really. I’m personally surprised it sold at all. I wonder what they’ll do there. Or is it upsetting because it’s the Russians that bought it? Whether the crisis had anything to do with it, it’s hard to tell. The government decided to sell it off in March 2008 during the Godmanis government. For the last 10 years before that, it was basically back and forth between the local authorities (who were too broke to take care of it) and the central government (that was too far to take care of it)...

Indeed, I find it upsetting it was purchased by a Russian company.
Can’t they stay the h*ll out of Latvia!? Secondly, it is a bit disturbing being it was formerly a Russian military base and to once again be owned by Russians.
    Surely a ‘town’ would have some value for the country as well as endless uses- housing, school, orphanage, hospital, hotel, industrial?

Aleksejs - 07 February 2010 10:33 AM

Why is this upsetting? It is an empty town with frozen pipes and caved in roofs.

you never know, perhaps there’s oil in the soil? ;) whatever, it somehow doesn’t feel right, russians buying huge chunks of Latvia, after all that’s happened in the past.

ghost towns are something very special, there aren’t so many of them in the world. they have their own way of representing history. i think we should be more careful with them than selling them to russian companies.

Let’s not exaggerate. It’s not a “huge chunk of land.” 45 ha of desolate land with unkempt buildings. I’m more concerned with Russian companies owning gas and other strategic industries than with a small desolate town.  It’d be foolish to declare Skrunda-1 a place of strategic importance.

In other businesses, fine, Russians are fair game. No more or no less so than Lithuanians - who own a lot of stores in Latvia - or Estonians. Or Swedes with their banks.

You can’t help the geography. No matter what happened in the past, Russia and Russians - proper ones, not the Latvia’s minority - will always be next door neighbors.

Besides, the ghost town has been sitting abandoned and no one cared for it for the last 10 years… At least it’s off taxpayers’ back now.

Aleks wrote, inter alia:

In other businesses, fine, Russians are fair game. No more or no less so than Lithuanians - who own a lot of stores in Latvia - or Estonians. Or Swedes with their banks.

I agree that the reaction can be over the top, knees jerking to symbols as always, but I don’t at all agree with the above—Lithuania, Estonia and Sweden are in the EU and subject to the same rules. They supposedly hold to the same values (ha, ha). Russia does not play by those rules and has values that are inimical to those we supposedly uphold. But your sentence is sort of in reverse, isn’t it—don’t you mean we’re fair game? 

Russia can overwhelm Latvia with money in a jiffy. It’s been able to do this for a while, to the point of mystery—why fight us if they could just buy us, pretty cheaply, an especially large part of the ruling class here being for sale, and the vast underclass not especially caring one way or another.

I don’t mean to suggest that Swedes are immaculate or anything Lithuanians do is forgiven ‘cause they’re brothers—not at all. But the terms are very different. If you look at the shadows of the Latvian economy, some of the darkest parts are Russian. Sweden is not going to demand that we pull a documentary, is it?

I think it’s silly to pretend that economic realities and politics do not dovetail—they always do. That doesn’t mean that businesses won’t play hardball and their governments won’t defend them—that’s their job. It’s a bit different, though, if it’s our brothers to the south or the kingdom or the vabariik.

The people who believed that Latvia’s turning West was a big mistake are having their little revanche. I don’t think it will succeed. Maybe only because of those jerking knees.

Vysu lobu,
/P

The new purchase of Russians will become a pig farm. As someone told me, “From Red Pigs to Real Pigs.”

I have no problems with Russians investing in Latvia, if they follow the EU laws because they do business in the EU.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intensive_pig_farming

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/12840743/porks_dirty_secret_the_nations_top_hog_producer_is_also_one_of_americas_worst_polluters
 

http://www.organicconsumers.org/toxic/porkfilth.cfm
http://www.goveg.com/factoryFarming_pigs_farms.asp

Thank you, Google. Once we cleaned up the Baltic Sea - the most polluted sea in the world - we’ll get on to the ecologically-friendly pig farming.

Okay, Aleksejs.  First the Russians as Soviets exploit Latvia and pollute the Baltic Sea.  Now you want the Russians as Capitalists to exploit Latvia and pollute the Baltic Sea.  Where is the love?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3007228.stm

Russian pollution ‘killing’ Baltic
Sweden’s Commission on Marine Environment has warned that the Baltic Sea is in a “critical” condition and in danger of dying unless pollution from the Russian city of St Petersburg is drastically cut.

The Neva river
Untreated sewage flows straight into the Neva river -and from there to the Baltic
Half of the fish species in the Baltic are at levels below the critical biological level, while pregnant Swedish women are being warned not to eat herring - a staple diet - because of dioxins.

There is little dispute that St Petersburg - Russia’s second-biggest city - is the Baltic’s single biggest polluter, and behind many of the problems.
/.../

Maybe you would like to google on the subject of “Soviet industrialization.”  Also, “Soviet occupation of the Baltics and their ensuing exploitation.”  Latvia should charge Russia for pollution cleanup of Latvia and the Baltic Sea.  Unfortunately, Russia doesn’t even modernize factories in Russia to make them less polluting or repair and rebuild outdated, over-capacity sewer systems in Russia.  Instead, Russia wants Latvia to thank it for all the polluting industry it built in Latvia and all the Russians that flooded into Latvia to work in these Latvia-exploiting factories.  Who would have thought that the sewer capacity needed to be increased in Latvia to protect our beloved Daugava and Baltic waterways before the Sputniks could send all the sh#t into space.  That was the plan, wasn’t it?  Do you wonder why I question the Russian Pig Farm plan?  Are the Sputniks ready for all that pig refuse?  Where will it go otherwise?  Trucked to Russia? 

How is the mackerel? 

 
http://www.science-parliament.eu/forums/2010-water-science-society/906/baltic-sea-pollution

And that has to do with what exactly, ambersun? How about blaming Hitler for pollution as well? After all, the Baltic Sea was a sight of World War II battles and every so often you hear about mine sweepers roaming around the Baltic Sea in search of old mines. But what does it have to do with the price of rice in China, ambersun?

If you think I jump to the occasion to defend Russia for all its worth, I hate to disappoint you. I’m not a Russian citizen. I’m a citizen of Latvia, which means that if a Russian company decides to have a pig farm in Latvia, it should be a subject to Latvian laws and regulations. Are our laws and regulations in tact and up to date? Or should we assume that Russians will behave here as they do at home, following the Russian laws?