In 1948, a group of Soviet military officers and East German engineers visited Albania’s Sazan (then known as Saseno) Island, a 2.2-square-mile lump of granite strategically positioned between a Soviet Navy base on Albania’s mainland and the heel of the Italian boot. According to declassified C.I.A. reports, the Russians and their Cold War allies spent the next decade digging a complex series of underground bunkers and tunnels capable of withstanding nuclear attack, building fortified submarine pens to protect at least a dozen warships, and covering the jagged, rocky terrain with anti-aircraft guns, long-range-missile batteries, minefields, and trenches.
It was a perfect spot to blockade the Adriatic Sea in case of World War III, and, as the C.I.A. noted, with more than 90 percent of the island’s coast consisting of sheer rock walls reaching nearly 1,100 feet high, Sazan was virtually impervious to attack.
