GalleryHighlights
The picture album and captions speak for themselves: meeting my relatives for the first time, visiting cultural icons such as the Freedom Monument1 and Brethren Cemetery, my mother returning to the family homestead in nearly half a century—while I visit for the first time. I wish I had taken a picture of the mailbox—had to be 16 or 20 mail slots—we ripped off the mill house, a vestige of kolhoz days and the mill house being chopped up into "apartments" hardly large enough for a cot. Not only had the kolhoz razed the mill (as backward water power) but also my grandparents' newly built retirement house—dismantled down to the foundation, its boards used to build pig pens. My mother dreamt of rebuilding on the foundation for her own retirement and planting a new apple orchard. Eventually we paid to fix the roof, reglaze windows, and more just to keep the mill house from deteriorating further. The attic floor (downstairs ceiling) was so soft and rotted in places I was afraid of falling through. "Soviet system" = half a century of abuse and neglect.
On the list of bizarre and unexpected encounters was Stalin's (purportedly) only fully original preserved armored limousine, to be found at Riga's Motor Museum. Our translation of the Latvian placard (there was another in Russian but none in English):
The 1949 ZIS-115 S2
Protecting the life of the General Secretary became one of the most important state functions, for, truly, "The well-being of the leader means the well-being of the people".
30 such automobiles were manufactured, those could in no way differ from the series ZIS-110 cars. All exterior measurements and parameters matched the [regular] series automobiles to the millimeter. The bodywork was fitted with armor plate. The window thickness - 8cm, weight 100kg, raised and lowered with the assistance of a hydraulic jack. Double-layered floor, roof, and a specially reinforced rear wall. The total weight of this armored wonder - 7.3 T.
Stalin sat in this automobile in a reclining seat, secured behind the chauffer's seat. Two bodyguards were stationed [further] back of Stalin, on the rear seat. The route taken was changed every time. Special permanent bodyguard watches were organized along the streets.
20 automobiles were to be found in Moscow, 2 - Leningrad, the rest - in the Crimea, Sochi, and the Caucasus.
Of all these automobiles, miraculously, only one has been preserved completely original...
More than two decades after Peters' trip, we updated this page to add pictures and Stalin's limousine. The somewhat comical poorly executed mannequin of Stalin has grown less amusing as Stalnist propaganda continues to live on and to be proselytized by a Latvia-bashing authoritarian-leaning Russia. Out of all proportion to any actual threat, Latvia ranked as Russia's #1 enemy (2005, 2006) until the war with Georgia and U.S. support for Georgia (Latvia "falling" to #2, 2007; #3, 2009; #2, 2010, 2011; #3 2012, 2013).3
| 1 | When you visit the Wikipedia® article, look for the design section schematic. Click on the numbers to view the design elements—nearly all those pictures are our contributions to the article. We've also added those photos to our site as part of Peters' 2007 trip album. |
| 2 | The ZIS-115 was an armored version of the ZIS-110 was a limousine from ZIL introduced in 1946. The 110 was developed from the reverse engineering of a 1942 Packard Super Eight during 1944. |
| 3 | Внешнеполитические враги и друзья России, The Foreign Enemies and Friends of Russia, retrieved July 16, 2013 |
- Reflections on my first ever trip to Latvia
- Highlights and album
