Ghosts of the Soviet Past
It was a baking hot afternoon at Balatonalmádi, when an offer from one of my wife’s relatives to join her family in visiting an abandoned airport and former Soviet military base, was too good to turn down. It would have been more sensible to stay under the shade of the walnut trees or plunge into the nearby lake Balaton to cool off, but I have been fascinated by the sound of this location, since coming across it by chance on a YouTube video. However, rumours of formidable gates, security guards and even guard dogs running loose haven’t inspired me to visit previously. Eventually, two family cars of intrepid explorers left the leisurely Sunday afternoon picnic and drove up the hill to the area between the beautiful city of Veszprém and the charming village of Szentkirályszabadja, in pursuit of some recent but mostly forgotten history.
The airport was built in 1938 but played little part in World War Two. Russian involvement dates back to the beginning of the Cold War. MiG 15’s and JAK-19’s were based here during the 1950’s- these being the most modern Soviet fighter planes of the period. In 1969, half the airport returned to Hungarian hands with the sixty strong Bakony helicopter regiment moving in. The function of the base was to defend the western edge of the Soviet empire. The Austrian border is in easy reach of jet fighters and fast flying helicopters. There are rumours that nuclear weapons may have moved through the local airspace. A view supported by proximity to the mysterious, long emptied chambers dug into a hillside near Tótvázsony - one of the secret bases where the Soviets allegedly stored nuclear warheads, only ten miles to the south-west in deep forest.
The Soviet military base adjacent to Szentkirályszabadja airport was built in the nineteen sixties and contained a garrison of between six to eight thousand troops. It could be described as a thirty-hectare luxury housing estate. The Soviets attempted to create comfortable conditions, to keep soldiers serving their two-year compulsory foreign assignment, happy. Five medium height, concrete panel blocks were constructed to accommodate single troops and those with families. A kindergarten plus primary and secondary schools served the children. There was a library, hospital, pub, theatre, cinema, chicken and pig farms plus associated meat processing plant, a wine cellar, post office, shops and restaurants. Living conditions were much better than offered to the Hungarian troops at the helicopter barracks or for local people living in the area.
The Russian and Ukrainian forces based there were part of an army of occupation but led a separate existence to the surrounding Hungarian communities. Although Hungarian workers initially built the Soviet encampment only a few remained afterwards in childcare and customer service employment. Visitors were not welcomed nor Soviet troops allowed to leave the camp area. Officers and their families only with special permission. Coming together mostly occurred at boundary points to exchange alcohol, tobacco and other illicit commodities. It is said that some local residents and Hungarian soldiers bought their first colour televisions illegally from Soviet soldiers at the concrete wall.
Between 1988 and 1990 the end of the Cold War saw the Soviets demobilise and leave their lives in Hungary behind, leaving their encampment empty. The airport was taken over by the Hungarian government and became the home of the MKH 87 Bakony Combat Helicopter regiment. When they moved operations elsewhere in 2004, the whole 450-hectare (1112 acre) site was left without a purpose. Transferred for free into the hands of the nearby municipalities, the cost of transforming the site into something modern and useful has proved too expensive for cash strapped local authorities. Attempts to sell the airport into private ownership have proved complicated. There is currently an owner and a tenant company who manage the site but as yet, no transformation to a civilian airport, business park or any of the other uses permitted under local planning agreements. Some concern has been expressed that to create a modern civilian airport, new infrastructure and buildings have to be built that would impinge on the original planning permission and current environmental controls.
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Our little convoy entered the former Soviet encampment from a side road without barriers but eventually encountered a road block of sorts. The khaki-clad youngish people present charged us four thousand forints per person to enter, about £8.50 each. They also seemed to be connected to some paintballing or Airsoft war game going on in a nearby ruined building. Apart from these gatekeepers we were the only visitors that afternoon.
My immediate sensation was that nature is in the process of completely taking over. There are many tall trees and thick bushes. It felt more like a wood than a housing estate. Rabbits are present in large numbers and wild boar have moved onto the site. It has become a Black Locust (Acacia) jungle with only badly pot-holed roads suggesting human order. Many of the smaller buildings are invisible until you are right next to them. There are small tracks cut into the undergrowth but otherwise no signs or symbols of what the buildings were once used for. As I pushed my way through a thorny trail, there was a scurrying in the greenery near my feet. I prefer to think it was European ground squirrels (chipmunk type creatures) who are a protected species in the area, rather than their distant cousins with smoother skin and longer tails. Large biting ants dropped onto my calves from the Acacia and left their mark before I brushed them aside. Other creatures slithered precariously close to my ankles. Lizards? Snakes? All it needed was greater humidity in the air and I could have been in Vietnam. After all, Full Metal Jacket directed by Stanley Kubrick was filmed at Beckton Gas Works and along the Medway.
Since 1996, the estate has stood unguarded and the buildings have been completely ransacked of anything and everything. Wood, iron, pipes, wiring- if it can be taken then it has. But only graffiti suggests any form of human involvement in this process. It feels more like the aftermath of a nuclear war or catastrophe than simple looting: providing a dystopian glimpse into something that hasn’t actually happened here—yet! A poignant reminder that there are imperialist boots on the ground in one of Hungary’s eastern neighbours.
Inside a large decaying building I hear echoes of a cold war on a baking July day, then I realise it’s only the excited shouts of young members of our group who have climbed higher up the ravaged staircase. Triffid like vegetation enters through the windows and there is sand underfoot where the foundations are simply crumbling away: entropy of a most visceral kind. Some buildings have already become unsafe and demolished by the mysterious owners.
The trees are growing tall inside and on top of, as well as around the buildings. Some of the latter’s previous uses can be identified such as the concrete panelled tower blocks to house the troops. One building has been constructed from the local red sandstone. The arrangement of the rooms suggests an office block of some description. We never found the cinema, library or hospital and the complete ransacking has helped speed up the loss of identity. The whole place only seems good for paintballing or as a film location for the grimmest of apocalyptical movies to be made. The Hungarian short film ’Parallel’, about travel through alternative universes, was partially filmed here in 2018.
One member of our group was underwhelmed. He had somehow expected more. The Soviet camp is definitely not a tourist attraction and barely a historical monument. Only by filming from a drone could one capture the sheer scale of what was once here. My overriding impression was that of the power of time and nature to erase the past.
We drive through the encampment and arrive at the former entrance to the airport. Fences stand around the gates but it would be easy to bypass them and search for the runway. In 2007, the then owners landed a celebrity loaded Boeing 737 here, to publicise the possibility of reopening the airport. There is already a struggling airport at the other end of Lake Balaton near the spa town of Hévíz, about sixty miles away. Does the region need another airport when most tourists to the Balaton are Hungarian? Planning permission keeps open that possibility but it also allows for a business park, petrol station and other low impact activities. At the exit from the site a bored security guard seems to be protecting the small but highly secure little business park that has emerged across the road, in the middle of nowhere. The Hungarian Post office has a presence here along with the high-tech, Logistics Centre for the Ministry of Defence. They both obviously enjoy a remote location.
A mile or so further along the perimeter fence, the local road merges into the new fast one to Budapest. At the junction, in plain view of all, a plunging military helicopter was erected on sturdy concrete pivots in May of this year, to commemorate the role of the Bakony Combat Helicopter regiment. The craft chosen as the monument is an imported East German ‘lightened machine’; now bearing the registration number of 005- that of the very first Hungarian Mi -24 craft imported from the Soviet Union. The original 005 helicopter was dismantled long ago. The one suspended above the traffic never flew over Hungary. History has been misleadingly visualised for the convenience of an easy installation.
There is no suggestion here that passing motorists should take a diversion and explore the airport and Soviet estate. But if that is an implicit intention, they should do so soon. Thistles, nettles, Black Locust and other vegetation are rapidly burying the past. Unless this huge site finds a new purpose, the ground squirrels, lizards and wild boar will take over completely. Nature’s perseverance will outpace history at Szentkirályszabadja airbase. All that will remain in terms of business potential, is the possibility to make some wonderful honey from the fast-growing Acacia trees.
Sources
magyarnarancs.hu
kormany.hu
index.hu