After 47 years, the elite Russian First Armored Guard has returned home. In 1945, it took part in the capturing of Berlin, and later helped crush the anticommunist opposition in former East Germany and Czechoslovakia. About 45,000 soldiers left the Saxonian capital of Dresden for Smolensk. In Saxony, only one division and several smaller detachments remain, whose job is to hand over former bases and firing ranges to the German authorities.