Swetlogorsk (the former German Rauschen) offers not only a nice view of the baltic sea, but quite a few villas and upper class hotels for Russias rich.
It is situated in the Kaliningrad region.

The gigantic rostrum columns in - well at the time the city was called Leningrad -, but now it’s again St. Petersburg.
The photo was taken in 1980.

back in 1980, the Soviet Union was still intact. Who would have imagined that this empire was about to break only a few years after?
Here you see a church converted into a museum of the communist revolution.

Forever Young…

Only two years before his death, Leonid Brezhnev is presented as a young man.

… and even Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (name of war: “Lenin” - a reference to the Siberian river Lena…) looks like a young man.
Just to recall: 1980 was the year of the Olympics in Moscow that were boycotted by many Western states.
It also was the year that Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov was banished.
Sakharov was one of the most renowned scientists the Soviet Union ever produced, contributed a lot to cosmology and was responsible for much of the Soviet Unions nuclear programme (actually, he also was known as the “father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb”).
He won the the 1975 Nobel Peace Price for his fight for human rights.
Almost as well known as Sakharov himself was his wife Yelena Bonner, who was also banished at the same time.

I was often approached by Russians who wanted to discuss modern literature, be it Russian, American or German - intellectual curiosity was much stronger than the fear of an autocratic regime.

interesting reads: BOOK REVIEW: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE SOVIET EMPIRE
How A U.S. Soldier Ended Up in Soviet Army In World War II
Elena Bonner has a tough critique of Putin’s Russia
In Russia, an alarming retreat from democracy

Unfortunately, my slides from 1980 are already starting to fade, reason enough to scan the most important ones!
This is a picture I took in Kizhi Pogost (Karelia, Russia) back in 1980.
Kizhi Pogost is a museum village displaying the art of Russian wood archtiecture and was recognised as a “Unesco’s World Heritage Site” in 1990.

All the building, including this 22-towered church, were constructed without the use of a single nail!
The surrounding landscape very much enhances the atmosphere of tranquility.