Plokštinė missile base

One of the first tourist sights I visited, and a important reason why I decided to go to Lithuania in the first place was the Plokštinė missile base. Home of the nuclear missiles pointed at Norway during the Cuban missile crisis. The base was at red alert during that conflict, allegedly with silo doors open, operators with their fingers on red buttons, and missiles pointed at Scandinavian cities.

 

Looks like a hole in the ground? Well, that is in fact what it is.

Having grown up in the west during the cold war, I of course learned from TV that there were millions of crazy people out there called communists. They had the most horrible weapons imaginable, and for some evil reason they were aiming them at us. They were so dangerous that even the grownups were afraid of them. So afraid in fact, that every time the communist head of state would die from some age related illness, the Norwegian National Broadcasting Association would play mourning music to show respect. Usually accompanied by footage of a burning candle and some flower arrangement. Their funerals were usually held on a Saturday. Growing up, I spent Saturdays with my grandparents and in the mornings I always watched TV. We only had one channel at the time, and it always showed cartoons in the morning. Except for whenever there was some dead soviet premier about to be buried. On such occasions they for some reason replaced the cartoons of Donald Duck with endless hours of parading soldiers, tanks and mobile nuclear missiles. By the time I was 9 years old I had already seen three such parades, and I hated the nuclear missiles. They robbed me of Donald Duck. It should not come as a surprise to anyone that I later in life jumped at the opportunity to visit the home of these mortal enemies of mine

 

Bunker interior

When I visited  Plokštinė in 2007 it was still in its original state, abandoned since the collapse of the soviet union. A bit of effort had been done to turn it into a site worth showing to tourists, but to the average tourist the sites novelty at the time lay purely in its authenticity. I remember the tour guide was speaking of some EU grant that the museum was hoping to get that would enable it to refurbish the entire base. The sums she spoke of were enormous by Lithuanian standards. I wished them the best of luck, but strongly doubted that they would ever be granted such amounts. Which I thought was a pity, since Plokštinė in my mind was quite a historical gem. An authentic historical place well suited to remember a part of our near history that already sees distant to younger generations. I later learned that they actually were granted the money, and that the base is said to be fully refurbished. This of course means that I have to go back, if nothing else then at least to say that “I liked it better the way it was”.

 

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Plokštinė, like most secret missile bases, never launched a single missile. After all, it does not make much sense to fire practice missiles from a secret base. Even the crazy communists knew that. And as a tourist site and memorial over the cold war it is important. There are numerous memorial over the world wars that actually took place, but we also need memorials over those we managed to avoid. At least humanity can take some pride in those.

 

Rating: Must see