(Priozersk) On the roof of his abandoned hotel, Aleksey Verechagin is certain: soon, tourists will be sipping cocktails there with a view of Priozersk, a former secret city in Kazakhstan that dreams of becoming a seaside resort, despite its proximity to Russian military sites.
Lacking investors, Mr. Vereshagin rebuilt the windows of the 150 rooms one by one. The sign, “Hotel Russia,” was removed, but the letters that made it up can still be found on the roof, as well as a huge rusty portrait of Lenin.
“I want to have a beautiful hotel in the city centre, like in Soviet times. So I am restoring it, little by little,” explains this former Red Army soldier, showing AFP “the magnificent view of Lake Balkhash”, the largest in this Central Asian country.
Once renovated, ordinary tourists will be able to stay there, which was not always the case: until 2008 Priozersk was a secret city, invisible on maps. The ordinary citizen was supposed to be unaware of its existence.
“Priozersk is the administrative centre of the Sary-Shagan missile test site leased by Russia to Kazakhstan,” Mansour Akhmetov, mayor of this town of 15,000 inhabitants located in a desert area, the “Hunger Steppe”, explained to AFP.
This military zone, in the heart of this former Soviet republic five times the size of France, was created in 1956, in the middle of the Cold War, to protect the USSR from American nuclear ballistic strikes.
References to this era – not so long ago given the current tensions between Washington and Moscow – are everywhere in Priozersk, such as these life-size copies of S-75 radars or surface-to-air missiles, in the centre as well as at the entrance to the town, next to decrepit posters to the “glory of the homeland’s anti-missile shield”.
Ballistic missiles
Some sites have been abandoned, now guarded by Ivan Sabitov. This Kazakh civilian watches over the emptied missile silos, dismantled radars and rocket fairings with his dog in his sidecar.
“These Soviet installations are destroyed, but other bases are still active,” explains the weather-beaten sixty-year-old, pointing to distant silhouettes in the endless arid steppe around Priozersk.
Although the USSR collapsed in 1991 and the barriers at the checkpoint at the entrance to Priozersk now remain open, the military remained.
Kazakh soldiers are stationed there, as well as Russian soldiers from the Strategic Missile Forces, some of whom take advantage of the mild weather of Lake Balkhash in the evening to relax with their families.
Russia claims to have around Priozersk a “developed infrastructure for testing strategic defense equipment,” including intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Despite this unusual environment, Mayor Mansour Akhmetov is convinced that his city will soon become a seaside resort.
The project reflects President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s desire to develop tourism, an embryonic sector that accounts for 3.2% of GDP.
Mr. Akhmetov is ambitious: “We are going to redevelop the entire coastline so that pedestrians can walk along it. We also plan to build hotels and organize actions to clean the beaches.”
Luxurious sanatorium
Priozersk already has several small hotels, welcoming fishermen and tourists in these first days of summer.
“Even though the city seems partly abandoned, Lake Balkhash is magnificent, I enjoy the warm water and the fine sand of the beach,” rejoices Olga Ryapolova, a Russian tourist from Siberia who is “delighted” and who “hopes to return” to Priozersk soon.
The picture postcard image is quickly tarnished, however: in the immediate vicinity of the lake, the eye falls on a destroyed cement factory, where a few anachronistic communist slogans remain, which the town hall wants to raze.
On the only road leading to the end of the peninsula stands the city’s new pride and joy: a four-star sanatorium, “Golden Sands.”
Built in 2016, this sanatorium with white domes reminiscent of the radar stations scattered across the steppe is a welcome source of employment, with its 120 employees.
“In Priozersk, jobs are rare and mostly related to the army. My mother is a soldier, I was a police non-commissioned officer,” says receptionist Aïjan Moussina.
“But my salary (around 250 euros) was not enough, so I came to work at the sanatorium,” continues the young woman, who is paid 370 euros.
Aïjan, born at a time when the city was closed, wants to believe in the tourist opening of Priozersk.
“I hope that our city will gain notoriety and that people will know that we have such a beautiful sanatorium.”