During the Soviet era, Latvia was the western border of the
USSR, and that made it a strategic location in which lots of
military resources were concentrated. During the Soviet
occupation, there were more than 1,000 Soviet military units in
Latvia, and they controlled some 600 facilities equalling to
more than 10% of the territory of the Latvian SSR. In other
words, Latvia was behind the Iron Curtain for nearly half a
century. Border guard posts, tank bases, aviation bases,
military airfields, storage facilities for weapons and munitions
(including nuclear missiles), military espionage facilities and
other, similar entities were mostly centred on the shore of the
Baltic Sea, where there was a special frontier regime. It was
just 20 years ago that people were allowed to be on the beach
only during sunlight and in very limited areas. Sand on the
beach was always ploughed, and giant spotlights lit up the
shoreline to seek out border regime violators who were more
imagined than real. There were border guard tower