 Okay, so once more, my name is Grzegorz Kiasius and I represent the Department of Archaeology at Stretting University, Poland. Cold War is usually defined by historian as a period between 1947 and 1991. 1947 is the moment when some cold, Truman-Octrino's announced and United States, but also some states from Western Europe started to openly support countries threatened by the expansion of communism or Soviet Union and 1991 is the year when Soviet Union collapsed. During those 44 years, political and military actions influenced life of almost every human being over on the globe and left many material relics. Those relics can be studied today through archaeological methods. And of course Cold War was the coffee that certainly went beyond the borders. Period of map of Europe from the period I'm going briefly to refer to from the late 1960s to the late 1980s. So as you can see Europe at that time was divided between two hostile fractions, Warsaw Pact and NATO. Of course, there were some changes in the alliances, for example, Spain, where we are now joined NATO in 1982. But before I will say anything more, first we should ask the main, the most crucial question. Can our political perspective bring any new quality to the studies of the Cold War? I'll be looking for answer to that question during my today's presentation. And as always, in such situations, I'm here, but often ask another question. Which domain is most suitable for studies of recent past events and modern conflict? Is it history or is it archaeology? For me, this division is completely artificial as I believe that knowledge of historical sources and archival documents is critical for understanding of historical and archaeological record. And therefore, we need to be both archaeologists and historians in the same time. And that's the case study I'm going to refer to. Three former Soviet secret, nuclear warhead storage facility. We got some documents in the Institute of National Remembrance of Poland, which are called Files of the Wisla project, which referred directly to those three storage sites. But there is a large set of documents, but they cannot be considered as complete said, and later on I will try to explain you why I believe so. And we are in this very unique political and historical situation that we can learn what the other side of the conflict knew about those places. We can learn what CIA and NATO knew about those storage facilities. Based on freedom of information, some of the reports, top secret reports, were declassified. They are still sometimes censored. But however, the lecture is fascinating. However, we also sometimes repeat some myths that are waiting to be debunked. And we look very interesting if we confront them actually with places we can find in the forest. So why those facilities were built? The answer for that question we can find in the historical sources. On 26th of February 1965, top secret military training took place at the military training ground close to the Rastopomorskie town. It's located in northwestern part of Poland. Part of this training was designed to examine how long it would take to transport tactical nuclear warheads from western part of Soviet Union to western part of Poland. Then R11M ballistic missile systems, which are better known in the west of the code name SCAT-A, and use them against NATO. And the conclusion was that it would take too long. It would be too dangerous. And therefore, the decision was made that those warheads have to be brought closer to the future war zone, which would be located in East Germany. Warsaw Pact considered that it should answer on time to the threat during the future war in Europe with all its nuclear potential. And therefore, it would be unable to do so. Most possibly, the future war against NATO would be lost. And therefore, those three facilities were built. On 25th of February 1967, the agreement between Polish People's Republic and Soviet Union was signed. And it was decided that three facilities would be built. And at the beginning, only 12 highest ranking Polish officers were informed about purpose of this project. Poland was obliged due to this agreement to build those facilities and cover all costs. Those facilities were to be built based on plans supplied by Soviet Union. And then police government decided that those facilities will be handed over to Soviet Union. And it will have no influence, no control over those over the nuclear warheads that will be stored there. In case of war, some of those warheads were to be shared with Polish rocket units and air forces. But until then, they were under control of Russian troops. There was quite interesting instruction, which was issued regarding the tamus rushing of the site during the construction. And there was also some instruction issued regarding disinformation. So every Polish army unit that was building the site was misinformed that in fact they are building bases for Russian communication units. And those bases will be used in a case of war. Also every single unit had access only to a small part of the complex, never to the whole area. So single soldier could not really realize what is built. Eventually, on 12th of December 1969, those bases were finished and handed over to Russian troops. And from the perspective of historical archives, you may say that this is the end of the history. Why? Because after that time, very few new documents were added to their visual files. New instruction was issued, which was saying that some vital documents have to be destroyed. Maps and plans have to be sent over to back to Moscow. So we will not find any maps or plans in their visual files. And therefore, we will never learn from that set of documents how those bases were specially organized. And if you wish to use some archival aerial photographs from the era, like this vertical photography from 1975, we will quickly learn that they were all sent on. And obviously, those bases were not placed at the topographical maps either. So the architectural perspective may help us to fill in this 22 years gap and I will try to present you how we try to do this. So using some remote techniques, urban laser scanning, aerial photography, the classified satellite imagery, we may try to recreate special plans of those bases, especially that two of them. We have three bases, two of them were badly damaged, almost all buildings were destroyed, and only one is preserved in a good state of preservation. So that's one of the plans from Grzegica Toronia. This is Podborsk, and this is the base, which is actually quite well preserved because there is state detention center there. So it was protected for all the time. There is also right now museum there. And those sites can be visited. And like I said, this is another base in Teplevo, it was badly destroyed, and that's the reconstruction of that base. So I will try briefly to explain how the nuclear base was organized due to the data I collected, and I will do this based on the example of facility from Podborsk, which as I said was the best reserve. So the base consisted of several zones, there was overbuilt zone, and it consisted of houses that were built for NCOs, those houses were quite low standard buildings. Just beside them there was area for officers with their quarters, and within this area there was also large gathering hall, where there was laundry, and where there was bathhouse with swimming pool. And beside that area was Barak area, where soldiers had their compulsory training, because there were also soldiers of compulsory training, and it consisted of warehouse, where there was a lot of boiler house, there was headquarters, and dining room, and cinema for 120 persons, there was hospital, and there was also infantry barracks. In the case of war, the unit that was stationed within the base was expected to deliver tactical nuclear warheads to the places of dislocation of rocket units and air forces, and therefore large number of cars and trucks had to be kept within the base, and therefore the garage area was large. And just beside the overbuilt zone there was restricted zone with a limited access that was used for storage purposes only, and in every three bases the restricted zone consisted of two buildings monolithic type, those were two storage concrete warehouses specially designed for keeping tactical nuclear warheads that were to be used in a future war in Europe, and that's one of the main rooms with efficient cooling system based on helium, and that's one of the rooms of four rooms in every each of such buildings, that was used for storage of tactical nuclear warheads. Unfortunately at two other bases those sites were badly damaged and the equipment was removed from there. Also the restricted zone consisted of building which was a granite type building, it was built at the end of 1970s due to the advances of technology, nuclear warheads did not have to be stored anymore in the restricting controlled conditions, and it was built of the prefabricates that were transported there. Unfortunately at two other bases those buildings were damaged here at Brezhnica Colonia, the gates were removed, but thanks to that we can see how it is built and you can see prefabricates, there was a crane hung at the ceiling as well used for transportation and unloading the warheads. And of course the restricted zone was surrounded by sophisticated system of trenches, different trenches, one of title trenches which is called title SOSNA was used especially for the signalization, it was connected to the signalization system, so if it was bridged then the quiet alarm was triggered and so just knew exactly the place where this fence was bridged. And every base outside the restricted zone had its own shooting range and those are relics of shooting range. At some stage someone decided that this is unsafe to keep all the cars within the parking area for all the time, so car shelters were built and new roads leading to those shelters and this is how the shelter looked like when it was used and those are relics of such sheltered contemporary photography. Every road within the base was built of concrete plates like that, they have two advantages. First one is that they can withstand heavy vehicle movement, the other one is that they are grazed, perforated and believe me it is very difficult to identify them at the area of photographs, so it is very difficult to say that actually we dealing with concrete roads not ordinary vehicles. And whole base was surrounded by system of shooting trenches and bunkers for protection. So probably you asked yourself now did the enemy know, did NATO or CIA learn about the purpose of those facilities? But before I will ask that question first let's have a look at the imagery that was declassified, imagery from corona mission that was collected on July 1969. So that's basically Borzko and its image at corona mission in majority that's Grecinca Kolonia and again with higher quality image of Grecinca Kolonia and that's Templevo and its image. So we have to remember that only because something was properly photographed at the high quality image it does not necessarily mean that CIA or NATO interpreters knew what it was and could identify it because it looks like they did not have a clue. Several months after the mission was finished at the end of 1969 there are still reports which say we cannot tell for sure whether any nuclear weapons at all are stored in Eastern Europe and in the following years the same sentence repeats in another military report. Eventually in 1979 Warsaw forces opposite NATO report was produced and those three bases identified there and there are those three triangles here at the map and even the number of warheads that was stored there is properly described. So in the end I would like to refer to the main topic of this session until now I said quite a lot about how the base was organized and how I used remote sensing techniques to recreate this base to reconstruct it but there is one element that is lacking from this equation and those are soldiers who served them and lived them. There are many material traces around the base like countless patrol paths they walk through patrolling the south and one time when I was at the port I found this rubbish there and as it can be expected we can find some pieces of uniform but between them there's a child shoe and there's a piece of toys and it repeats again and again many such pieces and I did not know how to explain that and then I met a person who helped me to do that, Mitzvah Ruh. His ex-military retired Polish commander of the tank when he got retired he came back to his family village he started to be interested in local history and especially history at Podborsko of Podborsko base and he was Russian so here I listed that two Russian social media that are controlled by the Russian government Podnoklassiki and Kondakie start searching for soldiers who lived at those bases and he found them and they started to send in him some photographs from that base of course we never speak about restricted zone we never refer to nuclear warhead for anything else he was asking between those photographs it was that one so it looks like those little fellas have brilliant childhood living in the middle of the forest with their families and behind them warehouses of NCOs that they presented you as aerial photographs and that photo completely changed the way I perceive the nuclear base because usually according to the popular culture we imagine those places as inhabited by almost cyborg like soldiers who just dream to go about going to war and finishing the world in a spectacular nuclear fire but this is not the case here because what I saw surprised me I saw people who loved to celebrate and then I saw whole happy families certainly the dream of those people was not to go to war they wanted to live in peace it was just they were I saw young soldiers who had their compulsory training there and that really reveals the true nature of the country because we can imagine that if we were born in different political and historical circumstances we could grow up together play football, drink beer, watch some good movie but that's not what happened so I believe this is also this should be also one of the main purposes of config.coology to review the nature of country thank you very much for your attention