Riga, Aug 13 (DPA) The Amber Coast sanatorium, located in the Latvian seaside resort of Jurmala, features a dacha where Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev would greet his guests. A clock with a hammer-and-sickle pendulum ticks in the corner, just as it did during the Breznhev era; a portrait of Lenin stares down from the wall.

Now, nearly 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, parties of a different kind make use of this residence in the former Soviet republic. The dacha attracts patrons interested in re-experiencing the atmosphere of the Soviet era, tapping into a burgeoning nostalgia for what some, in these hard economic times, regard as a more stable and secure bygone age.

In the dacha's basement is a private cinema, sauna and swimming pool, while the first floor contains bedrooms and a full office -- complete with 'nuclear emergency' telephones. The ground floor has a large dining hall, a library stocked with Marx and Lenin and a lecture room with a podium -- ideal for speeches to the Communist Party congress.

Anyone with the necessary cash can follow in the footsteps of Politburo members and enjoy authentic Soviet cuisine and entertainment. Guests can even have 1970s news bulletins shown on the period television sets.

'We get visitors from Germany, Finland and the United Kingdom as well as locals, including private parties and companies,' says Victoria Tjamolova, who works in the main sanatorium building, a minute's walk away. Some stay in the dacha for a single night, while others emulate Brezhnev and his friends, who would stay for weeks at a time.

In a curious hangover of the Soviet period that ended nearly 20 years ago, the sanatorium, known in Russian as Yantarny Bereg, retains a direct business link to the Kremlin.

'This sanatorium was built for the people who worked in the Soviet president's office, and we still belong to the Russian president's office,' says director Oleg Baransky, whose business card bears the double-headed eagle of the Russian Federation.

But if nostalgia is one of the attractions of the Amber Coast today, it was the Baltic republics' status as the most western part of the Soviet Union that was its claim to fame during Communist rule. The third-largest resort in the Soviet Union after Yalta and Sochi, Jurmala was regarded as especially chic.

'In Soviet times Jurmala was very special. People from Russia came here as if they were really going abroad,' says Gunta Uspele, director of Jurmala's tourist information department.

'Latvia seemed more like a part of Europe, and people in the USSR thought of coming to Latvia like coming to France or Italy. The architecture, the food, the fashions were all much more modern.