The Sheltered Strangers

Soviet troops in Poland keep a low profile

If Moscow ever decides to invade Poland, the first soldiers into action would probably come from the Soviet units already stationed inside the country as part of the Warsaw Pact force facing NATO across Central Europe. The Soviet troops, which are estimated to number 40,000, are concentrated in two locations, in the northwest near the rural hamlet of Borne and in the southwest at Legnica, a city of 75,000, where their main headquarters is situated. Each base accommodates a tank division of about 10,000 troops, 350 T-64 and T-72 tanks and more than 2,000 other vehicles. These armored combat forces also include communications and logistical units and are backed up by an air force that has more than 200 MiG-21s, MiG-23s and An8 and An-12 transport planes.

After 26 years, the Soviet soldiers are a fully familiar part of the Polish landscape. The scenes on these pages, photographed by Romano Cagnoni, show how the Soviet presence is seen and felt in many ways, from the headlights of a military convoy cutting through the twilight, to the scowling face of a passing officer, to young troops chatting on a Legnica street along with other window-shoppers.

For all their familiarity, however, the Soviets try to keep an extremely low profile and generally avoid contact with the local population--a policy they also follow in other Eastern European countries.

Says one Western diplomat who has closely watched the military situation: "There's no mixing at all. I doubt if the first-year recruits ever get off the compound." The Soviets, he notes, tend to travel in their own olive-drab military trucks. Officers, at times accompanied by their wives and children, will occasionally enter local shops or offices, but they rarely, if ever, use public transportation or patronize local restaurants. The soldiers and their families generally shop at their own PX.

The men assigned to the headquarters in Legnica are cut off from the town. The officers live in a sprawling, fortress-like compound covering some six square blocks. Sequestered behind high walls lie clusters of small houses, blocks of apartments, a library, a commissary, a club and other facilities needed to support several thousand officers and dependents. An adjoining complex of bar racks for the enlisted men is similarly self-contained.

According to Western observers, there are two apparent reasons for the Soviets' self-imposed isolation. First, to keep impressionable young recruits from fraternizing with the Poles, who were deemed liable to infect their visitors with "subversive" ideas even before the current outbreak of labor unrest. Second, to protect the Soviets from possible abuse at the hands of the Polish people, who have harbored deep-seated anti-Russian feelings ever since Catherine the Great absorbed a large part of their country in the eighteenth century. Acts of violent hostility against the Soviet soldiers are unheard of, but the resentment against them is occasionally expressed with furtive gestures and muttered insults.

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