Упишкалнс

The military base at Upīškalns was established on land which, until 1956, had been the Smiltnieki homestead. For reasons of secrecy, the base was first known as Smiltnieki and became Upīškalns later. The first structure on the land was a large underground bunker, where commanders and their electronic equipment were. Above-ground buildings are barracks were also erected.
The army unit at Upīškalns served guarded the shoreline and maintained contacts with submarines and Soviet warships in the Baltic Sea. They used a long-wave radio frequency, so it can be said that the unit was a communications base. Because the army basically served the needs of the navy, officers and soldiers wore naval uniforms. Upīškalns was in a strategically perfect location, because it was at the highest point of the Kurzeme highlands, in the centre of Kurzeme and with good access roads despite the forested area.
The unit used not just large antenna towers, but also, in the 1960s, a balloon that was released from a truck and was known as local residents as “the pig.” Sometimes the pig was hit by lightning, and soldiers eventually learned to drag it back down to Earth when a storm was approaching. This took a long time. There was talk to say that sometimes soldiers were electrocuted when the pig was struck by lightning, but no one knows for sure, because the facility was a secret one. Once the soldiers got the hang of pulling the object down well in advance of a storm, there were no more problems.
The gates to the unit were strictly controlled and guarded. Little of the control area is left – just part of one small building. The largest building back then contained the “communications central.” It survives and is used by a religious congregation called Word of Life. There used to be a secret army cable between the building and Kaliningrad, which allowed the unit to monitor the Baltic Sea all the way to the enclave. During the latter years of the Soviet regime, the unit was there simply for this purpose of ensuring contacts with Kaliningrad and with submarines in the Baltic Sea. In the middle of this communications facility was a big hall panelled like a brass screen.
Next to the base was a construction area where, in the 1980s, trees were cut down in the forest to build seven tower antennae. Three survive. The towers were placed in a star shape. The largest one (approximately 220 metres) was in the middle, and the other six encircled it. The towers were installed with the help of helicopters. There was a plan to install a larger antenna system, but that didn’t happen. It is said that in the 1980s, as perestroika approached, the facility was no longer on the list of places to be improved, and so the antenna system was left unfinished. The last commander of the unit at Upīškalns was Igor Eduardovich Suslyin.
The military left Upīškalns in 1994. The buildings and land (some 170 hectares) were taken over by the Kuldīga District Council at the instruction of the Cabinet of Ministers. From there, they were transferred to the Kurmāle Parish Council. The facility was prepared for privatisation on the basis of an auction. Back then, each building could be bought for a few hundred lats, because there weren’t too many people who wanted them. Most of the buildings and antenna towers are privately owned now. Three of the towers were originally bought by a radio station and an association of radio amateurs. Some of the territory is used by the Defence Ministry for training purposes. There’s a motorcycle track nearby. The parish got a residential building that is still known as Smiltnieki. There are some 80 people who live in Upīškalns now.