Watch tower of border guards in Salacgrīva
Infrastructure

Located in Salacgrīva, NE direction, 1 km from the bridge over the Salaca River.

The Soviet Army military base in Salacgrīva is one of the former locations of the occupation troops. An air defense unit was located in Salacgrīva. It was relatively small and became the first military unit to leave Latvia in 1992. During this time, there was a large-scale looting of Latvia, when the Latvian state gave in to Russian demands to have the occupation army leave the territory as soon as possible.

After World War II, the rapid and ambitious construction of military facilities by the Soviet Army continued on the territory of Latvia. Military bases were like a state within a state. It is believed that occupied Latvia became the most militarized place in the world and would be completely destroyed in the event of war. Criminal crimes, imperial attitude and permissiveness most vividly characterized the presence of the Soviet Army in Latvia. The carefully maintained myth of a “happy life in Soviet Latvia” and the Soviet Army as a “liberator” was in reality a “life on a powder keg”. After the restoration of Latvia’s independence, the foreign army left Latvia only in 1994, but tens of thousands of retired Soviet military personnel and their families remained in Latvia.

Today, you can visit the base area.