Red Army Real Estate Riot

April 4, 2008: The Russian armed forces is finally coming to grips with the fact that it will never return to the glory days of the Soviet Union (which dissolved in 1991). The military was called "the Red Army" back then. A sign of these changes is a huge property sale now underway. The military is auctioning off some very valuable property. The armed forces had acquired, during the Cold War, some 135,000 square kilometers of land (including 7,640 bases and 175,000 buildings). A lot of it is now prime real estate, much in demand in a booming economy. It's estimated that all this real estate is worth at least $12 billion. So much of it is being sold off to raise money for construction of housing for the million military personnel still in service.