About Kolka border guards

Foto: Dainis Karkluvaldis

Baiba Šuvcāne, a resident of Kolka, tells about the times in Kolka when there were border guards.

I was a child at the time and went to visit my grandfather in the summer. I enjoyed it the most, as we were not allowed to swim. We could go to the seashore near the house of "Christ" near us, but I had a misunderstanding as a child, so then the sea is here, but you can't go to the seashore and it's always a plowed beach. One such vivid memory of childhood, when such a flock of children splashed in the water, and we did not even notice that we had moved on the water outside the allowed swimming area. Suddenly we see that a horse, with a border guard on his back, is fucking along the sea, riding towards us by the sea and in huge gulls. How it ended there, I no longer remember, probably driven out. I was 10 years old. It seemed so strange that he didn't really see that the children were playing with binoculars. I remembered this event very vividly, it was the end of the 1950s.
The second thing that remained in my memory was that as an immigrant, my grandfather and grandmother sent me certificates to enter Riga, the village confirmed that there were no objections and then it was possible to enter. But everything has already gone with those permits, suddenly you need to drive, but the permit is not and risks. Because to pass the permit had to wait at least 10 days. He took a risk and drove because he knew where the border guards were on duty, then before that place he got off the bus in the field, and either someone from Kolka rode towards him on horseback or the rest of the road walked along the forest paths. In the 1980s, it was already much easier, because the permit was already given to relatives for a year. But in the 1960s-70s gave only for three months.
If someone was caught without a permit, then while the person's identity was ascertained, the potatoes were peeled at the stall (item). In the same way, if the children went to Kolkasrags in the course and caught them, they had to peel the potatoes. It is already the case that every forbidden thing is interesting, especially for young people.
I remember that I first went to the Kolka Cape lighthouse in the mid-1950s, because my grandfather was a fisherman and rode his own motorboats at the Fisherman's Day. Entry to Kolka at the Fishermen's Day was allowed for everyone from the 1970s, of course you had to have a passport. Today, however, the Fishermen's Day is no longer half of what it used to be, because then everything that was produced in Kolka was shown, as well as various competitions related to making fishermen: mending nets, competitions for fish packers and fish watchers. Border guards and sailors also came to the Fishermen's Day. There was a fight with what you would do, a vodka in his head and a change of words stood out. But it was also the case that the locals themselves started fighting and the border guards went to divorce, so everything went. The border guards rarely started fights themselves, because after that they were not sent to the village for a long time, not even to the shop, because the discipline was strict.
The school had a very close cooperation with the border guards. The school had a group of young border guards. Border guards organized all kinds of games and trainings for students.
I have never understood why Lielirbe, Lūžņa are the places where those big army bases are inside. It was my ignorance, because these are the places where they put on their puff cannons, they shoot with them towards Saaremaa and from there the Cape of Serves again, so that the strait is completely controlled and no one gets through.

From my childhood (mid-fifties) I remember an incident when we as children swam on the beach in Kolka. At that time, there were only certain places in Kolka where this could be done. We, like children, have probably not noticed that we have deviated from the "official" bathing place. Suddenly we saw a rider - a border guard on a horse - jumping on the water to drive us out of the sea. We were all very scared then. At that time there were very strange feelings - as if we lived on the very shore of the sea, but to go to the beach, we had to go to certain places further away. You were not allowed to cross the dunes. Even within the village, a horse was jumped on a horse to see the traces of "violators". Most recently, I found a photo of my mother from 1952. It was only with today's view that I saw the plowed beach behind my mother, but on the sea horizon - a warship. It was customary to do such things at that time. We all had permits. They were inspected in Mērsrags (rarely), before Roja and Kolka, where border guards' huts were built. There was less control in the 1980s. There was a border guard post (zastava) in Kolka. We got along well with the border guards. Soldiers serving in it were often released for film screenings. There was one fight at a time of the ball, but soldiers from the Navy who had served in Kolkasrags took part in it.
Border guards left their posts very solid, without destroying anything, without conflicts, culturally, waste was collected.But after that the local…

 
Storyteller: Baiba Šuvcāne; Wrote down this story: I.Roze