Milovice - former Red Army garrison town enjoying new lease of life
In August 1968, just over 36 years ago, the small Czech town of Milovice was taken over by the Red Army as Moscow moved to crush the Prague Spring. At its height Milovice was home to almost 100,000 Russian military personnel and tens of thousands of Russian civilians. In 1991, the Red Army went home, leaving Milovice to an uncertain fate. But today, over a decade later, Milovice is enjoying something of a renaissance.
Milovice's town hall was buzzing with activity on the day I visited, reflecting the new energy and optimism in this small town of 6,000 people. It's a far cry of course from the days when Milovice was a huge military base for the Red Army, and when the population exceeded 150,000 - mostly Soviet soldiers and their families. But in 1991, two years after the Velvet Revolution, the Russians started going home. One man who remembers that time clearly is mayor Milan Kraus.
"Gradually the Russians started leaving, and then one day the last soldier had gone. It was very strange - all of a sudden there was this incredible silence. No sound of tanks being loaded up at the railway station. No sound of aircraft roaring overhead. And for about a year, you walked around the town with this feeling that something was missing! Which is not to say that people miss the Russians of course. I don't think people miss them at all."
Milovice is still picking up the pieces from the Russian occupation. Grass grows on the runway of the huge military airfield, and scattered around the town are a number of derelict apartment blocks, which once housed Soviet military personnel. Mayor Milan Kraus showed me around one of them.
...so we're walking into one of the old, dilapidated buildings now, and it's actually quite a sight. Broken glass on the floor, the paint is peeling. Quite an unpleasant smell as well...here we can see the wallpaper is rotten and ripped and torn...broken glass everywhere. It's an extremely grim and depressing sight...
But directly opposite is a row of newly repaired buildings - the walls are freshly painted in bright yellow and orange, and the balconies are overflowing with geraniums. Marcela, a young mother from Prague, told me why she and her family had moved to Milovice.
"The countryside around Milovice is lovely, but the real reason we decided to move here from Prague is because our son was suffering from asthma. He was always sick, so for us this was the ideal solution - close enough to commute to Prague, yet great countryside and good housing. It's great for kids - lots of fields and woods to play in. It's just a great place to live."
An old-fashioned diesel train pulls out of Milovice's tiny station, a crucial service for the people of the town. When the Red Army was here the trains ran daily to Moscow. But today they're going west, not east, - taking commuters to work in Prague. And therein lies an unresolved problem for mayor Milan Kraus and the people of Milovice. While the population is growing once again - from under two thousand after the Russians left to 6,000 today - there are no jobs. Milovice's an attractive place to live, but there'll be nothing to keep today's primary school kids once they grow up and start looking for work.
