GARMISCH, Germany -- A shiny samovar in the common room serves strong hot tea, and a badly dubbed French sitcom that nobody is watching blares out on one of the Russian television channels beamed in by satellite.


These are not leftovers of the days when the cluster of United States Army barracks at the foot of Germany's highest mountain was a secretive center for in-depth study of the Soviet enemy.


At a cost of $19 million to the American and German taxpayer, the buildings have all been refurbished and re-equipped as a school in which the military elite of the former Warsaw Pact countries and Soviet republics are taught defense planning and the role of the army in a democracy.


The inaugural class of 50 officers and 25 civilian officials from the foreign and defense ministries of 23 countries completed the course on Dec. 14 after five months in the Bavarian Alps.


Named after the secretary of state from the Truman era whose plan helped rebuild Western Europe after World War II, the Marshall Center for Strategic Studies is intended as a major contribution to the stabilization of the young democracies by helping the military to adapt to civilian control.


"What Eastern Europe needs now, and what the West can provide now, is intellectual capital," said Alvin Bernstein, the center's director and formerly head of a Washington think tank on strategic studies. "With all the best will in the world they are not going to succeed unless they have the know-how."


It is being sold to the former communist world as a new Marshall Plan and as the main element of NATO's Partnership for Peace, which most countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia have now joined.


The U.S. and Germany are footing the bill for the $15 million-a-year course, including the costs of travel and housing in rooms with microwave, fridge, TV, video-recorder and room service. Two groups of up to 80 people will study at the center each year.


Victor Kremenyuk, of the Russian Academy of Sciences and a teacher at the center until January, said he came as a skeptic but is now convinced the center will be a "great leap forward" in East-West relations, especially for tackling common challenges.


The students "will bring a new understanding which in my country is something that the military establishment badly needs," he said.


Most of the students at the center are "rising stars," officers at lieutenant-colonel or colonel level, who are expected to progress to positions of senior leadership in their countries. They also include a Czech general, an aide to the Lithuanian president and a Romanian senator. The five months at the center are also intended to create informal networks of potential decision-makers.


"What you actually learn here is only a small element. What is interesting is the exchange of ideas. I have never experienced a situation like this before, where everybody gives their personal opinion rather than that of their government," said Lieutenant-Colonel Wojciech Stepek, chief of division of the Polish general staff.


"It is a very good initiative," said Grigory Zaitsev of the Russian Foreign Ministry, the designated spokesman for the six Russian students at the center. "The course is very one-sided, but it is interesting and important for me to hear the opinions of others, particularly from CIS countries."


Living on the allowance of $100 a week in Germany's best-known skiing resort has not been easy. Chess matches or evenings nursing a single drink at the local pub are the height of social life.


Russian is still the lingua franca among the officers, most of whom were trained in Moscow under the old regime. Relations with the former patrons, however, are tense. A presentation by the Moldovans of their national day offended the Russians so much they lodged a complaint. One officer from Estonia refused to speak to the Russians as long as Russian troops remained in his country.


Stepek said the biggest problem he had with the Russians and others from the former Soviet republics was their mentality. "For them, it is all NATO, the U.S. and the West on one side, and Russia and the East on the other. It is still the old way of thinking."