It was an interesting stop for a few hours on the journey through the Baltic states, it was good to learn of its past history and status during Soviet times.
It seems I was not the first Wrexhamian to visit, welcome to the circus AKA the rob and ryan vanity project.
I digress......
With a sixteen mile long beach, Jūrmala is the largest resort on the shores of the Baltic Sea, just 15 miles from the capital Riga, it has been in existence since the 19th century a time when sea bathing became popular and seen as a health benefit.
Just watch out for the floating turds
During Soviet times, Jūrmala became a premier and exclusive resort for the USSR's high-ranking Communist Party officials a favourite of both Khrushchev and Brezhnev. The area housed many sanatorium and spas.
During Soviet times the resort, which is actually a chain of small townships prospered, with the building of many sanatoriums offering a wide and varied selection of treatments from mud baths to being thrashed with birch twigs seeming to cater for all and sundry it became the third biggest resort in the entire Soviet Union, after Yalta and Sochi.
The resort is an eclectic mix of art deco wooden villas, (most of which were "nationalised" by the communist regime), and Soviet-era concrete hotels,
The Baltic Beach Hotel, a typical Soviet modernist structure designed to replicate a cruise ship,built at the end of the 1970's as as the Sanatorium Rīgas, designed to host high-ranking officials and Soviet citizens seeking seaside relaxation, privately owned since 2004, renovated and now a luxury spa resort.
In 1922 the Soviet Labour Code decreed in law that all Soviet working people must have access to rest and treatment facilities, annually, usually for a two-week period. This opened up a system of worker rewards for such things as exceeding production targets (though figures were open to corruption) or party loyalty (informants). Putevka, a voucher system for worker rewards saw many people flock to the resort during the summer months.
Pre soviet times of gaiety and decadence and elitist atmosphere disappeared, to be replaced by a more austere socialist vibe. The city was host to "Jūrmala Contest for Young Soviet Popular Music Performers,"
The Dzintari Concert Hall, is in an the area of Jūrmala now known as Dzintari that was renamed Edinburgh, to "honour" Russian tsar Alexander II’s daughter’s marriage to the Duke of Edinburgh, blood relatives, inbreeding; and what happens with inbreeding? the UK ends up with a bunch of assorted parasites, made of up sexual deviants (hi Eddie),kiddie fiddlers and paedophiles (Hello mountbatten windsor) and murderers,(liz and phil and no doubt charlie boy). One thing the Soviets got right in Yekaterinburg in 1918.
I digress....
Come independence Jūrmala soon became known as a playground for Russian oligarchs, politicians, celebrities , and even organized crimelords, it attracted significant Russian investment in lavish real estate. Probably now circumventing the toothless sanctions imposed by the west
There is a large Russian-speaking community in Latvia, some 37% use it as a first language really means Russian is prevalent in businesses and daily life, with many wealthy Russians and business figures connected to state-controlled companies still holding significant assets and properties in Jūrmala, as I say so much for the toothless sanctions imposed by the west
The Orthodox Church of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God, A recent new build, Russian money, an Orthodox church of the Moscow Patriarchate. Whose head is a bloke called Krill, big buddies with putin, tentacles everywhere.
The original church was built in 1896, demolished in 1962 by the soviets.
The current building began in 2017 and was completed in 2019.
The End.
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