Russian Troops Bid Farewell to Germany, Baltics

They came as conquering heroes 49 years ago but left Wednesday ideologically vanquished, economically broken and even pitied by the people they had once defeated: In a day of brass bands, goose-stepping and speeches, the occupying Red Army received its farewell salute from Germany and prepared to board the last trains home for Moscow.

Russia also withdrew virtually all of its troops from Latvia and Estonia on Wednesday, formally ending its massive, 50-year occupation of the Baltic states. It completed its withdrawal from Lithuania exactly one year ago.

In Berlin, fewer than 3,000 Russian troops were on hand for the departure ceremonies out of the more than 330,000 that occupied East Germany at the Cold War’s height.

The soldiers who remained marched in well-rehearsed drills and sang songs composed especially for the occasion, while Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin laid a wreath atop an imposing Berlin monument to the Soviet victory over German fascism.

“Historical truth demands . . . that we remember that for hundreds of millions of people, all over the world, the hope of victory was linked to the Soviet army,” said Yeltsin, who chose to concentrate on the Russian role in defeating Adolf Hitler’s Germany rather than dwelling on Josef Stalin’s 1948-49 Berlin blockade or any other Cold War unpleasantness.

Yeltsin asserted that the Red Army’s presence in Europe from the end of World War II until now had helped to keep the peace, although he acknowledged that “after today’s final reconciliation, our relations can take on a new quality. . . . We are in a position to make our neighborly relations warmer and more human.”

German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who participated in the ceremonies with Yeltsin, spoke out against the Soviet blockade of Berlin but was otherwise cordial. He noted that much could be learned from both countries’ previous bad behavior and thanked the then-Soviet troops for letting the East German Communist regime collapse peacefully in 1989.

“When the (Berlin) Wall fell on Nov. 9, 1989, the Soviet leadership decided not to offer resistance,” said Kohl. “German unification would not have taken place without Soviet cooperation. . . . We Germans will always remember this with gratitude.”

Small but surprisingly appreciative crowds of eastern and western Germans gathered as Yeltsin moved through the streets of central Berlin on Wednesday, laying wreaths on a number of World War II-era Soviet monuments, hearing concerts and making speeches.

Some Berliners waved red hammer-and-sickle flags as his entourage rolled by. One woman tossed him a bouquet of flowers, while other people cheered, “Boris! Boris!” Still other Yeltsin-seekers pleaded with police to get a better look at him, complaining, “He’ll never be back again!”

“I think the Russians might have stayed” in Germany, suggested Arnold Hackel, 54, a teacher from what used to be East Berlin. “They never did us any harm.”

Asked about the Soviets’ use of tanks to put down an uprising in East Berlin in 1953, and again to support the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, Hackel said, “Oh, one is always wiser afterward. It was not their fault. Hitler started the war. That’s why they came here. And I say this even though my family suffered.”

His friend Joachim Benedix, 34, also a teacher, added: “I saw the Soviets, always, more or less as soldiers doing their service, and I felt sorry for them. They were locked up and disciplined all the time. I remember that once I went to (their headquarters) with a class. They served us pea soup, and we, as guests, got the biggest pieces of meat. And we knew that they didn’t get meat very often. I didn’t consider them an occupying force.”

But the sympathy and even tolerance on the part of ordinary Germans for their impoverished Russian “friends” did not reflect official German attitudes.

German officials had argued earlier this summer that the Red Army was an unwanted occupier of East Germany, in contrast with the three Western Allies, whom they called a positive force in the former West. On that basis, Germany rejected Russian requests that the four World War II Allies hold their departure festivities together.

The Germans even went so far as to propose that the Russians hold their departure parades in Weimar, a small city that the Red Army did not even capture in 1945. Although the Russians were successful in blocking that idea, they were not allowed to join the Western Allied farewell ceremonies, set for next week in Berlin.

Even less festive was Wednesday’s departure of the Red Army from the Baltic states.

The Soviet army occupied Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in 1940 under a then-secret 1939 pact with Nazi Germany. Hitler invaded the three Baltic states in 1941, ending the pact. With the German retreat in 1944, the Soviet army returned; thousands in the Baltics were packed off to camps in Russia--mostly Siberia--as they had been during the first Soviet takeover.

Because the Baltic people never saw Russians as liberators and because negotiations for the Red Army withdrawals were long and acrimonious, no ceremonies were held in Estonia or Latvia. The Baltic talks were complicated by differences over the rights of thousands of Russians, particularly retired military officers, who have settled there. Both countries eventually agreed to let them stay.

Estonia’s government first planned a reception to mark the Russian withdrawal but canceled it. Officials in Riga, the Latvian capital, vetoed plans for a garden party downtown. Nationalists in both countries have argued that, with small numbers of Russians staying on, the occupation is not really over.

“Fifty years ago, it was Hitler and Stalin. Now, it is the West and Boris Yeltsin who are cutting deals over other people’s destinies,” warned an editorial in The Baltic Independent newspaper.

In the end, churches in the Baltic countries tolled their bells in memory of those who suffered and died under Soviet occupation and the presidents issued a statement calling it “a momentous day for our three countries.”

“With the final withdrawal of Russian forces . . . our peoples have again become genuine masters of their own fate,” they said. “Russia now moves closer to the accepted norms of international behavior.”

Estonian President Lennart Meri, who vowed three years ago not to consume champagne as long as Russian troops occupied his nation’s soil, drank a farewell glass at a reception Wednesday, just after speaking at a solemn observance at a World War II memorial in Tallinn.

“Today signifies the end of the saddest chapter in our history,” he said. “But it is also true that today a new chapter is opened for an Estonia liberated from foreign troops, which we must all write together.”

In Latvia, meanwhile, the last few Russian soldiers left Riga Wednesday morning in two passenger cars of a freight train laden with jeeps, trucks, armored personnel carriers, civilian cars and whatever they could strip from their base. Some brought wives, children, dogs and cats. Others had bid long, tearful goodbys to girlfriends in the shadows of boxcars the night before.

Andrei Y. Nekrasov, 31, a contract private, left alone. He said his German wife, whom he had met in Latvia, left him three months ago, taking their 18-month-old son to Germany. There was no place for his family to live in Russia, he explained, and he would never have found work in Germany.

“Our army is marching out of Germany with honor. Here, they are kicking us out,” he said bitterly, standing on a flatcar. “The Russians got along well with people here. It was the politicians, the people at the top, who decided our fate.”

After the train left, the last Russian officers departed on three military planes from Riga. On the way to the airport, the two top Russian commanders called on Latvian President Guntis Ulmanis to inform him that the occupation was over.

“These people are leaving without hate,” Ulmanis told reporters later. He added with a wry smile: “If they return, they will be welcomed as visitors and as tourists.”

Walsh reported from Berlin and Boudreaux from Riga. Petra Falkenberg and Andreas Scharpf of The Times’ Berlin Bureau and Times special correspondent Matt Bivens in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed to this report.