"Lost" ordnance and weapons after Soviet Union breakup

[Falcon]

I work with a chap from Poland. He was telling me that at the very end of the existence of the Soviet Union, a lot of trading went on between the Soviet troops and the locals for weapons and equipment.

He is too young to personally remember it, but says he has heard stories about it from relatives.

Apparently even today in parts of Poland there are a lot of illegal firearms in circulation from this time.

Is this true, or is it urban legend?

 

[pzgr40]

I cannot prove it, but I am absolutely convinced that it is true. We had cargo ships from the Russian state shipping company in our docks just after the wall fell, and litterally everything could be arranged for, as long as you filled the decks with second hand cars and carparts, to my surprise preferably Opel and Volkswagen.

 

[Slick]

Back when the Wall fell, I was dealing with some folks that made numerous trips to Russia. They returned with assorted and varied goodies, some of which were of a "sketchy" origin and legality. Not sure how they got it all back into the U.S. Upside, I ended up with a couple of watches and a policeman's hat, for helping them in their travels. Hat got ruined. Mice ate and shat upon it, so it was thrown away. But here are the watches:


I like that they still had a fan base for Yuri Gagarin. At least with the watchband makers.
Now, if I could just get a certified chunk of the wall, my collection would be complete.

 

[Alpini]

they also had cheap fuel At a russian "good bye" air-show in east Germany around 1990 a russian soldier came to the window of a friend's Lada car and asked him if he would like to exchange the Lada against his Makarov pistol. It was a little bit strange situation when the russian soldier offered his pistol through the window (it was inside some clothing) but my friend told him that he is not interested because he had a better need for the car I still have a russian trench scope which is also from such an exchange.

At this time the russian soldiers where earning very little money and knew they soon must return to Russia so they tried to take as much material home as possible. Near Berlin there was a russian airfield where many stolen cars were disappearing in some AN-22's in the early 1990's...

 

[jonnyc]

Poles have been stashing modern military weapons since WWI. I've seen some pictures of "collections" that made me drool for days. Between WWI, the "Soviet" wars of the 1920s, and WWII, I'd be surprised if you could walk 10 meters in Poland with a metal-detector and not hit an MG or two.

 

[Falcon]

Thanks for the replies.

According to stories I have heard, at the very end, the Russian soldiers hadn't been paid by the government in months. It is also said that deliveries of food had stopped. They resorted to selling anything they could to the locals. My work colleague said he has heard stories of ammunition leaving the Russian bases by the bucket load.

 

[BMG50]

A while back just after the wall collapsed and a lot of Soviet states couldn't pay the military wages properly, there was a TV documentary about Russian Admirals and high ranking staff doing part time work like working in restaurants etc to make the wages up. Makes me wonder what was sold to unscrupulous organizations and dealers. There was one tv program documentary at the time talking about mobile nuclear missile launchers, each vehicle carried a small metal case that contained a quarter megaton device that was used to destroy the installation in case it fell into enemy's hands. When these vehicles were decommissioned they could only account for about twho thirds of the cases (they did state the correct total but can't remember off hand) so there's a number of these devices still out there, who knows who has them.

 

[Fred]

A Polish colleague of mine remembers the end of the Soviet era and has told me similar stories. He said that the underpaid soldiers would sell or trade almost anything, including weapons. Young lads would buy grenades and set them off in the forests for fun. He remembers that there was a big fuss when at least one nuclear device went astray, (probably one mentioned in BMG50s post above), goodness knows where it is now.

Fred