Here is title:
Hotel Viru, one of landmarks in center of Tallinn, Estonia. It was built by Finnish company and completed in 1972, first high-rise building at that time. Note the big letters Hotell Viru under roof, I come back to it bit later.
Hotel was intended for foreigners to earn some hard currency, it was almost impossible to stay there for ordinary soviet citizen.
Stand with famous people who visited that hotel. Among them was Apollo 15 crew, last shah of Iran with his wife etc. Also Elisabeth Taylor. Story goes that she was in film shooting in Leningrad/St. Petersburg and was fed up with soviet reality and wanted to get better conditions. Thus she was brought into Tallinn and Viru hotel, the modern hotel with old town near it made impression to her that she was out of soviet union. :D
But hotel had dirty secret. The elevator went to 22-nd floor and officially there was 22 floors. But everyone who could count knew that there was 23 floors in building.
Access to 23rd floor was only by stairs, closed with iron gates and only KGB had access to it.
Here is some of radio equipment they left behind when escaping hotel after Estonia gained independence and KGB lost its power. KGB used this high position for communication and spying of radio waves, they could reach to Finland from there.
They also listened hotel visitors, the rooms, restaurants and even sauna were bugged and there were designated hotel rooms where people of interest were accommodated, next room was reserved for KGB agent. Here is old soviet tape recorder, probably used to tape interesting conversations.
Some spying equipment, on top right are microphone cuff-links.
Bed for KGB agent to rest between shifts, they were monitoring 24/7.
On left is "wallet" with paint cans, these were used to find untrustworthy employees, if some worker found it and opened instead of reporting about it, then they were either fired or recruited as KGB collaborators. On right bugged "bread plate", KGB marked table of interest and waitress carried this plate to designated table.
Soviet spy camera.
General view to this radio room
Balcony on 23rd floor. On right you can see these Hotell Viru letters. I guess this balcony was used by KGB also for monitoring and photographying of city center, these letters providing good cover.
If you are interested then I found this article estonianworld.com/life/tapping-and-tracking-soviet-tallinns-tourists/ giving more detailed overview of hotel and KGB.
