Spectator's Journal/Good Riddance?
Kaza, Juris
Good Riddance? by Juris Kaza Paplaka, Latvia T he name of this little village in western Latvia, the site of a Russian helicopter base, is suggestive of the Latvian word for collapse by deflation:...
...Latvian Deputy Defense Minister Valdis Pavlovskis says Russian officers and retired military personnel in Latvia are also engaged in a wide range of activities aimed at subverting Latvia's independence...
...It was hard to see in the stinging rotor wash that kicked up leaves, twigs, and spatters of mud...
...The Russians had simply gone—no one had announced their departure, and no one mourned their passing...
...One of the most spectacular arms deals conducted in violation of Latvian sovereignty—though apparently in accordance with Russian law—was the September 19 delivery of a Kilo-class submarine to Iran...
...Russian forces in the Baltic continue to operate under vague but sinister orders authorizing the use of arms against any threats or "insults" to Russian soldiers, their families, or the "honor" of the Russian military...
...With a government in Moscow claiming to respect democracy and the sovereignty of the Baltics, the Russian colonists are in a position like that of the Baltic Germans in late 1918, and they harbor strikingly similar attitudes...
...It's getting harder and harder to decide whether to laugh or worry about the Russian military Gotterdammerung in the Baltic States...
...Or maybe onions...
...Tales of wholesale vandalism also come from Estonia...
...Although the Freikorps cooperated with Latvian forces in running out the Bolsheviks, it was clear that they intended to return German rule to the Balticsif not with Berlin's support, then in the form of an autonomous German-ruled Baltic state...
...Three amphibious BTR6OBP armored personnel carriers used by the OMON are still reportedly hidden somewhere at his facility...
...Let 'em take what theywant, what the hell," our ever-hospitable Commander remarked, back with us after disappearing for a few additional belts from the cognac bottle...
...Everyone is carrying off whatever they can get their hands on...
...Askeleton crew remained at the base, standing in the mud among fallen-down fences and vandalized shacks that once housed the mighty airmobile unit...
...Pamphlets urging a return of "Soviet power" in Latvia have been printed at Russian army printing facilities...
...We walked unhindered into a facility from which attack helicopters had once thundered over the landscape, frightening cattle, chickens, and children at all hours...
...In places like Paplaka, once-haughty military units appear to have collapsed into barely disciplined bands of uniformed scavengers, vandals, and drunks...
...Once the target of demonstrations by local residents and independence activists, Paplaka was now strangely quiet...
...Even as the choppers revved up, two men ran toward them, carrying heavy loads...
...It will cost Estonia huge sums simply to clean up the Paldiski harbor and to ascertain that no radioactive, toxic, or explosive materials have been dumped there...
...T n many places, there is a spiteful vio- lence to the Russian departure...
...copters...
...For every tipsy, merry Russian, there are others who are ready, willing, and able to shoot to kill to protect what they see as the legacy of their Russian Empire...
...The demolition apparently started just weeks after Russia indicated to Estonia that it wanted to keep Paldiski as a strategic base even after other forces were withdrawn...
...My freelance television crew and I arrived in Paplaka and drove directly to the gray and dismal multi-story military housing that dominates this village of single-family dwellings...
...It is probably not the last such The American Spectator December 1992 49 deal, since a number of Iranians remained on the Russian base in Latvia, waiting for a second, and, possibly, a rumored third submarine...
...In the wake of the German Empire's defeat in World War I, the Baltic German gentry, like today's Russian colonists, were threatened by the aspirations of the indigenous Baltic peoples for independence and democracy...
...In July, a squad of Russian marines in bulletproof vests surrounded the car I was riding in near the Mangalusala naval base outside Riga...
...To my eyes, the bags dramatically shoved aboard through the cockpit windows were bulging with—potatoes...
...All this talk that military property would be sold or leased to create a fund for returning soldiers is just talk," says Auseklis Plavins, a spokesman for Latvia's Defense Ministry...
...Such officers and their subordinates bring to mind the fall of another imperial ruling class in the Baltics—the Germans...
...Was it the last of the base's secret documents...
...Journalists recently visiting the large submarine base at Paldiski reported scuttled warships and bizarre attempts to burn buoys and docks...
...So were many of the others in a ragtag crew loading hampers, bookcases, and office desks onto two attack heliJuris Kaza is an American journalist based in Stockholm...
...I. Berezutsky, the commander of Naval Unit 69422 in Mangalusala, where I was held at gunpoint last July, is said by Defense Ministry officials to have been an ardent supporter of the August 1991 putsch...
...El As we closed this issue, Russia announced that it was suspending withdrawal of the 130,000 troops still in the Baltics...
...Igor Lopatin, a retired Soviet officer and a former leader of the banned hard-line Interfront, has founded a new Communist organization in Latvia, skirting the ban on the former Soviet Communist party imposed in the wake of the August coup...
...50 The American Spectator December 1992...
...A short distance away, the ceramic tiles had been meticulously peeled from the wall for sale, but a stained-glass window depicting the Riga Old Town skyline was smashed...
...I visited a barracks in Riga that was vandalized with an intensity that Russians almost never put into constructive work...
...Within weeks of the Armistice, and using the Bolshevik Revolution as a (possibly legitimate)excuse, German officers and the local aristocracy ignored the end of hostilities in Europe to start a Freikorps—a military force no longer under the control of the German state...
...A hundred yards away, in a steel-matted helicopter parking area now littered with smashed vehicles and the remains of a radar station, a Latvian farmer and his son calmly picked through the wreckage...
...But that is only half the picture...
...They had driven in with a tractor and a small crane...
...The Russian officer was, as my Latvian girlfriend whispered, "s---faced...
...For the next hour, as we filmed, the Commander rambled amiably on and on about how "Latvians, Russians, Uzbeks, Gypsies, and everybody else are people who want to be happy, if only we all understood how we are all just people and part of the human race...
...These days, when the Western powers inform the Baltic countries that they have no alternative but to learn to live with their former colonizers, incredulous locals can only wonder: On whose terms...
...The sub sailed from the Bolderaja naval base at the mouth of Riga harbor with a crew consisting largely of Russians paid up to $40 a day for their services in delivering the vessel to the Gulf...
...Paplaka" suggests partial deflation or sagging, like that of a mushroom past its prime...
...The shrill senior citizens bellowed that Latvia was "Russian soil" and that Latvians were "fascists" who should be shot or deported...
...The gates to the base were open, and a plaque proclaiming the glory of Soviet aviators decorated an empty plinth...
...The Russians locked and loaded their Kalashnikov assault rifles...
...There are regular meetings of Russian veterans and paramilitary organizations and clubs that suggest a whole infrastructure of "civilian" support for the neo-Freikorps is being organized among the Russian population...
...Most of the military apartments appeared empty, their windows broken or the panes covered with Russian newspapers...
...For instance, Russian demands for "human rights" in the form of automatic Baltic citizenship and Russian as a second official language echo demands made in 1919 that the German language be given official status in Latvia, that the privileges of the landed aristocracy be preserved, and that ethnic German units be formed in the Latvian military...
...f the Russian soldiers were looting simply for cash to buy homes when they returned to Russia, most Latvians would say, "Good riddance...
...We punish those we catch...
...Near the gates, a hatless man in a leather jacket and camouflage pants came up and introduced himself as "the unit commander...
...Their commander, Captain Third Rank Aleksandr Zhebrik, demanded to know where our video camera and cassette were...
...Another white-haired officer shrugged and said, "Both our people and your people [local Latvians] are looting...
...An officer with a mustache like that of a czarist dragoon climbed aboard one of them, waving a fencing sword...
...We were intruders on Russian soil, he declared, and after a check of ID papers, the Russian officer announced that my Latvian cameraman and assistant could be summarily shot, while I, a "foreigner," could be thrown into the kartser, the solitary detention cell used in Gulag camps...
...Nearby, two trucks were loaded with pipes, radiators, and cement panels ripped from structures on the base...
...But their spite and chauvinism lend credence to suspicions that many of them are building up "war chests" to underwrite renewed Russian domination of the Baltic nations...
...One such manifestation was the loud, bizarre demonstration in front of Latvia's parliament by aging Russian hags and bemedalled geezers on behalf of Igor Parfyanov, a leader of the dread OMON paramilitary police, who was put on trial in September...
...t is no surprise, then, that at some Russian bases the reception extended to unannounced visitors is less than cordial...
...Captain Zhebrik's marines, who chatted with my crew when the initial tension passed, freely admitted they had been smuggled in from Kaliningrad in violation of Moscow's promises not to reinforce its troops in the Baltic states...
...by Juris Kaza Paplaka, Latvia T he name of this little village in western Latvia, the site of a Russian helicopter base, is suggestive of the Latvian word for collapse by deflation: saplaksana...
...The entire library of the barracks—a training center for construction troops—was tossed in a heap on the floor, the bookshelves smashed to splinters...
...Sometimes the vandalism is passive—in Liepaja, a port and naval base in western Latvia, the Russians appear to be abandoning a huge munitions dump containing tens of thousands of tons of obsolescent arms...
...How the local authorities will prevent thieves and scavengers from entering the dump, and how the potentially unstable ordnance will be dis48 The American Spectator December 1992 armed, isn't Russia's problem anymore...
...Perhaps they were headed for the huge scrap-metal foundry in nearby Liepaja, where we had just seen workers cannibalizing several armored personnel carriers...
...We're talking about deals amounting to billions that are totally out of control...
...Besides strictly military activities, the Freikorps also raised funds to support itself and purported to offer the reward of colonial homesteads on Baltic soil to its recruits...
...Giant kettles in the mess hall appeared to have been pounded loose from their moorings in the concrete floor with some huge, blunt object...
...I let them in for a bottle of vodka...
...The incident was a sobering example of what some of the Russian military thought of Latvian sovereignty nearly a year after the nation regained its independence in the wake of the August coup...
Vol. 25 • December 1992 • No. 12
