Three months ago Bonn and Moscow agreed the Soviet Army could have four years to pack up and clear out of a reunited Germany. Now that doesn’t seem nearly soon enough. “When an Army starts selling off its equipment,” says Brig. Gen. Manfred Opel, a German parliamentarian, “it has real problems.” Surrounded suddenly by the wealth of the West, and stationed in what overnight has become NATO territory, Soviet forces–380,000 uniformed troops and another 120,000 civilians–are prey to new temptations and dangers. Discipline is breaking down, morale is sagging and loyalty is eroding. Worse yet, once fraternal relations between the Soviets and their German hosts are fraying. Soviet soldiers have been beaten up and, occasionally, shot by resentful Germans. GERMANY FOR GERMANS–RUSSIANS out! reads the graffiti scrawled in Wunsdorf. This is only the beginning, says one concerned official in Bonn. “We expect very serious trouble.”
To see how low the Soviet Army has sunk, you need only visit the city dump at Dallgow, just outside Berlin. Amid stinking heaps of garbage and debris, a Soviet conscript is scrounging for furnishings for his barrack quarters. So far he’s found a torn bit of carpeting and a soiled corduroy pillow. They’ll fit right in at the Dallgow barracks, built to house athletes during the 1936 Olympics, and not touched since. Broken windows and leaky roofs have been patched with scraps of cardboard. Sometimes there’s heat in the winter, sometimes not. Still, it’s heaven compared to what waits at home. Not long ago, at a Soviet garrison in Burg, military wives staged an extraordinary two-day demonstration to protest their impending transfer back to the Soviet Union, where they were to be housed in tents. “Nobody wants to go back,” exclaims 32-year-old Yelena, wife of a Soviet major in Wunsdorf.
As a result, Soviets will go to almost any length to prolong their stay in “chocolate land,” as they call Germany. Ursel Friedrich, proprietress of a Wunsdorf newsstand, has a favorite customer–a Soviet major who comes by once a week to announce, in broken German: “I want to marry German girl.” For the privilege, he’s willing to pay a prospective bride the going rate of 20,000 marks–nearly two years’ salary. Penniless draftees are simply running away, despite harsh penalties. American authorities in Berlin report that 10 Soviet soldiers a day ask about asylum. A Moscow human-rights lawyer, Oleg Lyamin, told Bunte, a German magazine, that more than 700 Soviet soldiers stationed in Germany have deserted in the last year.
“Protection money’: That sounds exaggerated, but Lyamin is in a unique position to know. Earlier this month he defended a deserter before a Soviet military tribunal in Weimar. The case shocked the court–and touched off a scandal in Germany. The young recruit pleaded that he had to leave his unit out of “extreme necessity.” He told how Soviet officers confiscated his 25-mark monthly salary, how his superiors ordered him to cough up 250 marks a month in “protection money” by stealing from Germans, and how he was beaten when he refused. “He fled in fear of his life,” Lyamin told the court. The judges let his client off on probation; if convicted, he could have faced death. Says Lyamin: “The verdict is an admission of the catastrophic conditions under which our soldiers live.”
Such abuses could become commonplace. “For most Soviets, a tour of duty in Germany is a once-in-a-lifetime chance at wealth,” says a specialist in Soviet military affairs in Bonn. “If that means turning to crime or extortion, many will do so.” According to some reports, Mafia-style gangs have formed, led by senior officers. “Soldiers are being blackmailed, tormented, driven to suicide and even murdered,” says Lyamin. Last year, he told Bunte, 800 young Soviet soldiers died in East Germany. Most were suicides, but some appear to have been killed. Lyamin is currently investigating the case of a recruit who was run over by a train in Potsdam. His death was officially ruled a suicide, but an autopsy revealed a bullet in his chest. Another was mysteriously found hanged after writing his mother that “our base is like a concentration camp.”
German and Soviet officials fear that the breakdown of order will spread. Moscow fears wholesale chaos within the military, including a surge of desertions. Bonn simply wants the Soviets to leave as smoothly and efficiently as possible; it has pledged $8 billion to help resettle the departing troops. Negotiators are already exploring ways to speed up the process; an aide to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl predicts most of the Soviets could be gone by the end of 1992–two years early. For Germany, that is none too soon.
