The Departure of the Soviet Army from Czechoslovakia in June of 1991

With the invasion by the armies of five Warsaw Pact countries on 21 August 1968, the so-called Soviet Central Group of Forces settled on Czechoslovak territory.

Their presence was based on a coerced agreement “on the temporary presence of troops” — which was to last for 23 years.

The Soviets occupied entire areas, which units of the Czechoslovak People’s Army hastily had to vacate. Approximately 75,000 soldiers, including heavy equipment and air force units, took up positions at 67 permanent military bases.

In the 1980’s, the Soviets apparently even deployed a missile brigade on Czechoslovak territory stocked with medium-range nuclear missiles OTR-22 Temp-S (better known as SS-12 Scaleboard).

The Soviet-occupied territory was inaccessible to Czechoslovak citizens for 23 years; the occupiers lived there according to their own rules.

Contacts between Czechoslovaks and the occupiers were to be kept to a minimum. In this way, the Soviet command hoped to prevent desertions while also avoiding any political indoctrination of its own men.

Nevertheless, over two decades, a kind of pragmatic, forced symbiosis developed in some places between the locals and their uninvited neighbors, which manifested itself on the surface in limited levels of black-market activities between the two communities.

The whole period was accompanied by manifestations of crime committed by the occupation forces — usually petty thefts and break-ins. However, more serious crimes also emerged in the form of sexually motivated assaults, muggings and even murder.

Soviet troop movements through normal civilian traffic were responsible for the largest number of deaths, injuries and damage to property overall, however.

The damage caused by the Soviet Central Group of Forces was a taboo topic for over twenty years.

Only after the Velvet Revolution did it become clear that a total of 267 Czechoslovaks had died due to the Soviets’ presence between 1969 and 1990 (248 in car accidents, 12 murders, the rest for other reasons).

Taken together with the number of victims from the 1968 invasion itself, it corresponds to the formidable number of 402 dead.

The departure began in February 1990 and ended on 27 June 1991.

The governments appointed authorities, offices and expert commissions to oversee it.

A joint commission of both parliaments of the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic led by Michael Kocáb played a particularly active role in supervising the transfer of Soviet forces.

Symbolically, the commander of the Soviet Central Group of Forces, General Eduard Vorobyov, was the last Soviet soldier to leave Czechoslovakia — on 27 June 1991.

After the occupiers’ departure, costly and long-term work began to recover from their stay.

Considering only the visible remnants of their presence in the locations of former garrisons, it was possible — after huge efforts — to eradicate much of the damage. For example, one can now hike the forests around Ralsko freely without the danger of encountering old munitions.

A unique reservation for wild horses has developed near Milovice. Děčín castle is once again a dignified landmark of the city, etc. However, that is not the case by far for all former garrison localities.

Thirty years later, the damage from the Soviet Army is still evident in many places.

We should pay no less attention to the less visible traces of the Soviet occupation. Experience with it also plays a role, for example, in Czech society finding its relationship with Russia today. That is also why it is necessary to remember the facts and openly reflect on them.

A total of 825 trains using 31,350 railway cars made up the military transports.

Some 27 convoys totaling 1,709 vehicles left by road. Air forces organized some 15 fly-overs.

According to data from the parliamentary commission, 73,500 Soviet soldiers, 16,911 members of their families and another 23,010 civilian employees were stationed on Czechoslovak territory before the transfer began — a total of 113,421 people.

They worked in 67 garrisons in Bohemia and Moravia and 16 in Slovakia. Including outposts, however, the number of locations was actually several times higher.

The high command was located about 50 kilometers north of Prague — at Milovice.

After their departure, it became apparent that the Soviet forces had not followed even the most-basic rules of toxic waste management.

They had also completely ignored valid construction norms during arbitrary building projects.

Some 3,076 edifices — built without any permits or regard for Czechoslovak building regulations — remained in the abandoned military areas.

With the tacit consent of the Communist Czechoslovak authorities, and also without it, the Soviet armed forces expanded the occupied area over the course of twenty years from an original 4,500 hectares (11,120 acres) to 13,000 hectares (32,120 acres) of land. In the Libavá region alone, they caused some 126 million crowns of damage to forests over a 10-year period.

The contamination of the soil, mainly with petroleum products, became so extensive that a mere 9 percent of locations qualified as relatively clean after the departure of the troops.

Commissions of experts to quantify the damage faced a difficult task because no reliable, internationally recognized methodology existed. The first estimates were around 4—5 billion crowns.

Political developments in the countries of the former Soviet Union, its reciprocal claims and insolvency eventually led the governments of both states to adopt the so-called zero option on 1 April 1992, in which both parties waived any mutual claims.