"Wind. Despite. And the Liv flag. ” (excerpt) - Ghost ships and barbed wire

However, the years of occupation have left their mark. Turning along the forest path, several fishing boats ingrown with trees and ground suddenly open up. Wreck. Like a ghost ship, like the shadows of the past. When they have collapsed, they seem to be still trying to maintain their stature and spite. Until the Second World War, there were 48 fishing boats in the village of Mazirbe. Then came the Soviet regime with a desire for destruction and destruction. The order was strict - burn the boats! "But the Livs are stubborn," said Gunta. "It didn't burn! The boats were pulled further ashore. With the idea that the occupiers would leave soon, everyone hoped that the English would come to the rescue and that Latvia would be free again. ” Historical sources indicate that the boat cemetery originated after 1960, because the border guards did not allow it to be burned on the shore, as was traditionally done in the evening on Midsummer with the boats that had served their time. Those boats stayed there. Decades passed and the boats grew into the trees. The spooky wrecks are such an expressive testimony of the era that the official writings of history pale in front of it.
Among the absurd bans of the Soviet era was the fact that the sea was not "open to everyone." Standards were set for coastal fishermen, a pass regime was introduced and the old traditions of seafarers were destroyed. Every evening the beach was run by horse, in later years - by tractor. To leave traces in the freshly eroded land if someone thought to flee across the sea to Ziedria, which was affected by "blowing capitalism". Only a strip of beach about 200 meters wide was open, which had a barbed wire fence on both sides and where border guards and dogs patrolled. There was also an inscription: “Stoi! Pļaj otkrit do 22.00 ”.
Did the Soviet authorities really think that people would flee to the sea across the sea? "We have to laugh! No one even tried to escape anywhere - in the first years after the war, but later there was no such idea, ”says Gunta, adding that they, the children of the village, lived their children's lives, did not think much about adult affairs, and it was not the worst childhood. Maybe not as sunny as it could be in another time and place, but nice enough to remember it now, years later, with warmth in my heart. Well yes, poverty… But where were they not? Mazirbe had both a fisherman's and a common farmer's collective farm. And, as was customary in Soviet times, nothing could be bought in stores. Everything - one single deficit! The girls of the village could only dream of standing up. Then you had to use your creative mind and master from nothing. The sewing machine was considered a whole treasure! ” My mom learned to sew, and at the time it was a million. She sewed a school dress from my father's old jacket. Ladies made of feather clothes for pillows, sewed dresses - pink, blue, orange. But if you got a cat! ... ”Gunta's eyes flash in his memories. "Then I walked all summer with one dress." And then you could go to a party at the Liv Culture House. In the Soviet years, social evenings were very popular in the fashion of the "Goluboj ogoņok" (TV show "Blue Light"), which is popular throughout the Soviet Union, with a program and dances. Of course, the soldiers of the army unit located in Mazirbe also came to social events. "We had a guy that could be mixed with wood," laughs Gunta. Didn't marry local girls? "Married! Almost all! Russians, Lithuanians, and Latvians… There were quite a few civilians and local boys. ”