E. German Ire Perils Future of Soviet Army

Political graffiti of any kind are a rarity in newly democratic East Germany, but the words on a crumbling stucco wall in this Soviet garrison town are in a class all their own.

“Russians Out!” someone has scrawled in red, and added a swastika for good measure.

The swastika, according to townspeople, is most likely the work of skinheads who tumble out of the town’s single discotheque at closing time and, in recent weeks, have been harassing solitary Soviet soldiers.

But the message seems to capture a quieter, broader kind of anger that has spread across much of East Germany, carrying with it the elements of a political time bomb.

Exhausted by the relentless late-night comings and goings of jet fighters at the air base just west of town, annoyed by the roar of Red Army truck convoys moving through town, and unsettled by stories of ground-water pollution, the people of Jueterbog have become increasingly open in their hostility toward the Soviet military presence.

“It’s not hate, but it can come to that,” Juergen Tolksdorf, the town’s chief administrative officer, told a recent visitor. “It was always a forced friendship.”

Rainer Eppelmann, the East German minister for disarmament and defense, referred to this growing tension the other day in Parliament. He said there is “a very large problem with major political ramifications.”

Any significant anti-Soviet unrest here would likely weaken Moscow’s attempt to keep a military foothold in East Germany for a prolonged period after unification with West Germany. And it would just as likely add to the resentment of Soviet military leaders who already feel betrayed by the loss of Eastern Europe and provide a potentially dangerous dimension to the difficult German-Soviet relationship.

Eppelmann called for speedy agreement on a timetable for the withdrawal of Soviet forces, but many political and military analysts estimate that even if there is early agreement, it will be three to five years, at least, before all the Soviets are gone.

The revolutions that swept Eastern Europe last fall have brought down abuse on Soviet forces throughout the region, but the scale of the problem in East Germany is of a higher order.

About 360,000 troops--three-fourths of the Soviet force in Eastern Europe--are crowded into East Germany. The task of transporting them home, coupled with the need to provide jobs and housing for them, would make for slow going even if Moscow agreed to an early withdrawal.

In Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland, the presence of Soviet troops is hotly discussed but felt only occasionally at the personal level. In East Germany, Soviet military vehicles fill the streets, Soviet officers’ wives compete with other homemakers for bread and meat, and shoddy Soviet military bases mar the landscape. According to one Western estimate, Soviet training areas take up 20% of East Germany’s land.

The area around Jueterbog, a 12th-Century town of about 15,000 people engaged in food canning, light manufacturing and other pursuits, has long been used for military training. But the Soviets have made it something different. People say the noise of aircraft, which often goes on until 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning, is ruining their lives.

Andreas Tessmer, a teacher whose school is near the end of the air base’s main runway, recently complained to the local newspaper about his students’ nervous reaction. Others are more specific.

“You go to a funeral, where people are already upset, and you can’t hear a thing that’s said,” lamented Inge Fuhr, who administers the office of county government leader Siegfried Jausch.

An active local ecology movement, spawned by last November’s revolution, has raised questions about the indiscriminate dumping of aviation fuel and the resultant ground-water pollution.

Jausch said in an interview that he has appealed to senior Soviet officers to restrict training flights to daylight hours and to route military traffic around the town, but that so far they have taken no action.

The level of public anger is a measure of how dramatically expectations in East Germany have changed since the peaceful revolution there last year.

Only a year ago, the people of Jueterbog were resigned to accepting as inevitable the things they are now fighting so strenuously. In 1987, when a Soviet trainee left his tank across the tracks on the main rail line north of town and caused a crash that left several people dead, there was resentment but no protest. To protest was unthinkable.

But democracy, and the new view of the Soviets as neither needed nor wanted, has changed all that.

So far, the tension has led to no more than minor incidents--peaceful protests, a petition, some fistfights around a local disco and a simmering sense of ill will. German women are increasingly resentful of Soviet officers’ wives. Since July 1, when the East German currency was replaced by the West German mark, the Soviet women have cleared the shelves of Western products and sent them all home.

On May 22, a 17-year-old Soviet soldier waiting for a train was attacked by East German youths and beaten so severely that he was hospitalized. Soviet officers say harassment of their troops is increasing.

“Things have gotten worse,” Slava Smolen, a young first lieutenant who came to Jueterbog four years ago, told a reporter. “Neo-fascist groups turn up (at his quarters) and shout every Friday and Saturday night. Once, they even smashed some windows.”

Jausch, the county official, said he is concerned that the mood could deteriorate, and quickly.

“Our requests, which have now become the demands of the public, can’t be ignored further without political consequences that are in nobody’s interests,” he warned in a recent letter to Defense Minister Eppelmann. “ . . . The bottled-up anger of the people can only get worse and lead even to violence.”

Elsewhere, it is worse already. The commander at a Soviet air base near Cottbus avoided a potentially serious incident recently by disarming his troops when angry East German demonstrators protesting against noise and pollution hurled rocks and bottles over the base fence.

There was a similar protest at a base near Neuruppin, 50 miles north of Berlin.

Western observers who monitor the situation are pessimistic.

“It’s a dangerous game that’s out of the politicians’ hands,” said Jochen Thies of the German Foreign Policy Assn. in Bonn. “My forecast is that there will be trouble later this year.”

Nearly half a century of ignoring public concern has put the Soviet military at a distinct disadvantage in any attempt to win the people’s support. The officers discourage contact with the people, and when men are found to have made friendships, they are soon transferred.

People in Jueterbog say Soviet pilots take few pains to avoid flying low over residential areas, rattling windows and awakening sleepers.

Training mistakes also cause problems. The protest at Neuruppin occurred four days after a Soviet pilot inadvertently dropped three bombs on a neighboring village. The bombs were not armed, and no one was hurt, but many people were unnerved.

Tempers were not cooled by charges, as yet unconfirmed, that the Soviets have stored as much as 30,000 tons of material for chemical weapons in poorly maintained East German storage tanks.

There are emerging signs that the Soviet military may be preparing to act. According to Jausch, at a recent meeting, the deputy commander of the forces in and around Jueterbog indicated for the first time that he is willing to discuss the problem.

And Maj. Vassily Nisulov, a spokesman for Soviet military headquarters in East Germany, at Weunsdorf, south of Berlin, indicated that local commanders have been given permission to change training procedures to placate public protest.

“There can’t be a general order from here,” he said in a telephone interview, “because our combat readiness must be maintained. Action must be taken in each specific case. We know about the problem, from local governments and from telephone calls from individuals throughout the country.”

For one thing, Nisulov said, commanders will be punished if they are found to be polluting the ground water.

It is not at all clear that this will be enough. But Col. Uwe Hempel, an East German army spokesman, observed, “They (the Soviets) must react positively if these problems are going to be cleared up in a positive way.”

Times staff writer Tyler Marshall, based in West Berlin, was recently on assignment in Jueterbog.