During the 20th century, large agricultural areas in Eastern Europe became forested after their abandonment. To explore the value of these new forests for biota, we assessed volumes of coarse woody debris (CWD) on random transects in mid-aged (4075 years old) stands. In mixed and deciduous forests that were not forested in the 1930s, downed tree (log) volumes were about two times lower than in cutover sites. The effect on snag volume depended on site type and was generally nonsignificant. Large-diameter CWD showed similar proportions in the long-term and new forest areas, but large, well-decayed trunks tended to be less frequent in the latter. No reduction of dead wood volume was found in new pine stands, 98% of which had previously been classified as mires (bogs). Hence the origin of mid-aged successional forests had affected their CWD supply (particularly logs) to some extent, but the general scarcity of CWD all over the forest land indicated much larger (at least five-fold) losses due to timber harvesting. We conclude that naturally reforested areas should not be automatically excluded from reserve establishment or other CWD-related conservation programmes.