KGB Building in Riga, Latvia

External photo: Hans Jakobsson @hjakse

The secret Soviet state police, the KGB, moved into this house in 1940 when the Soviet Union occupied Latvia for the first time and again in 1944. They left the building in 1991 after Latvia’s independence.

A prison was established in the basement with 14 cells. The house was located on the corner of Lenin and Friedrich Engels Streets (the Soviet names), hence the name “The Corner House”.

During the period of the Soviet dictator, Stalin, and especially during the years occupation in 1940-41 people were tortured and interrogated on the sixth floor and executed in the basement (the shower room) or the yard. Thousands of people were sent to Gulag hard labor camps for decades, after being interrogated in the house.

Orbita presented a poetry installation in former KGB building, dedicated to unrealized and impossible dreams of escape.