`Soviets' Leave, But Scars Stay -- Few Cheers Over Germany Pullout

BERLIN - Russia brought another chapter of the Cold War to a close today, formally ending almost 50 years of Russian and Soviet military presence on German soil.

"I report to you that the international agreement on the temporary stay and the complete withdrawal of the Soviet Army in Germany has been fulfilled," Russian General Matvei Burlakov told President Boris Yeltsin and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl at a ceremony outside Berlin's concert house. The event coincided with the departure today of Russia's last troops in Latvia and Estonia.

Burlakov supervised the four-year withdrawal of 546,000 soldiers, relatives and staff from bases that covered 927 square miles - an area 11 times larger than Seattle. It was one of history's biggest peacetime troop movements.

But the close of one Cold War chapter also marks the start of new ones, chief among them:

"Ecological nightmare" in Germany

As part of the accords that led to German unification in 1990, Kohl's government agreed to pay Moscow $8.3 billion for the pullout.

Facing an uncertain future in their impoverished homeland, the former Soviets are taking home anything that might prove useful - from airstrips to door frames and even kitchen sinks.

But they have left behind unquantifiable amounts of motor oil, metal waste, chemicals and acids as well as explosives and munitions.

Fritz Heinrichsdorf is a director at IABG, a Munich-based environmental consulting firm Bonn hired to inspect the 1,135 Russian military bases and sites throughout what was East Germany. He describes what he found as "an ecological nightmare."

"The Russians paid very little attention to the environment," he added. "It looks quite bad. Environmental protection appears to have been a foreign concept for the Russians."

Some examples of the mess:

-- Cleanup cost: $6 to $14 billion. One initial estimate put the cost of the cleanup at about $6 billion, according to the Environment Ministry in Bonn. Some say the costs could reach as much as $14 billion or more.

-- 27,000 contaminated areas. Heinrich von Lersner, head of the Federal Agency for the Environment, said last week his office had examined 925 of the Russian properties and found 27,000 contaminated areas. He said more than 3,000 sites were so badly contaminated that people or water supplies were endangered and immediate measures were necessary.

-- German states refuse land. Pollution was so bad that two of the five eastern German states have firmly declined Bonn's offer to take over at the property. Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern said they were not interested in the land even if it was free of charge.

-- Literal cover-up. When German officials began complaining shortly after unification about the environmental damage at the once top-secret bases, the Russians attempted to cover up the mess - literally.

Inspectors found soil contaminated with kerosene and jet fuel buried 7 yards beneath the surface on an air base near Juterbog south of Berlin.

Ex-Soviet soldiers with little future

The once-proud Red Army here has been reduced to just a few hundred apprehensive young men. Typical is Nikolai Balditsch, a 30-year-old sergeant, young in years but resigned and defeatist like an elderly man. Balditsch was about to embark on an 800-mile drive in an army truck back to Kiev, having little clue what awaits him when he arrives.

"Who knows what I'll do next - become a bandit?" said Balditsch. "I suppose I should start a business, but you need money for that, and about all I have is the trousers I'm wearing."

Though Balditsch may have been kidding, the prospect of soldiers becoming gangsters is real - German police say a ring of car thieves in and around Russian bases is responsible for the theft of 5,000 cars so far this year. And earlier this month, the mass-circulation Bild newspaper featured a photo of Russian soldiers loading luxury cars into a military transport plane at their base in Sperenberg. "Russians Disappear With Our Cars!" said the headline.

To some extent, the fears of former Soviet soldiers mimic those of the U.S. troops who also are coming home from Germany this summer. Defense-spending cuts, coinciding with the end of the Cold War, threaten the military cultures of both countries.

But the returning former Soviets face an especially bad case of culture shock because they've been insulated from the momentous changes back home.

And unlike the returning U.S. troops, the former Soviets face severe reductions in their living standard back home. In Germany, they had earned the equivalent of $400 monthly, about four times the average salary in Russia.

One incentive for the withdrawal was the promise of new housing in the former Soviet states. Half of the $8.3 billion covered by Germany is to be used to build apartments for troops returning to a homeland whose ills also include scarce housing. But just 18,700 of the 46,050 apartments needed for officers returning to the former Soviet states are ready.

Some former Soviets voice their frustrations as resentment against the West. For some it's that they were excluded from gala activities on Sept. 8 set to mark the withdrawal of Allied troops from Berlin. Yeltsin said the snub indicated that Germany did not understand the difference between the old Soviet Union and the new Russia.

For others, it's the little things that count. "I don't think that the Americans and British had to leave so quickly as we did," complained Ivan Sivkov, a spokesman for the old Soviet headquarters camp in Wunsdorf, 25 miles southeast of Berlin. "I visited an American base, and the soldiers there were bowling." Compiled from Reuters, Dallas Morning News and Knight-Ridder Newspapers.