Aleksandr Lebed and Russian Foreign Policy

In October 17, 1996, a wan and frail-looking President Yeltsin went on Russia’s ORT television and announced that retired Lt. General Aleksandr Lebed had been removed from his posts of Secretary of the Russian Security Council and aide to the President of the Russian Federation for national security affairs. After briefly noting the reasons for this action, Yeltsin falteringly signed a decree formalizing Lebed’s removal from the top levels of the Russian government. Several days later, it was announced that Lebed had also lost his position as chairman of the commission conducting negotiations with the Chechen secessionist leadership.

Thus ended Lebed’s four-month tenure in the highest echelons of the Russian government. He had been appointed to the two national security posts on June 18, after the first round of the Russian presidential elections in which he had come in third with eleven million votes. Yeltsin and his entourage had then believed that they needed Lebed’s supporters in order to defeat communist Gennadii Zyuganov in the run-off elections on July 3.

In his brief television address, Yeltsin focused on several key irritants for removing Lebed from his powerful posts. The general, he said, was not a team player but instead “at odds with everyone.” Lebed had committed “a number of mistakes which were simply unacceptable for Russia,” behaving as though “some kind of [presidential] election race is under way.” Finally, Lebed had shown the effrontery to travel with Lt. General Aleksandr Korzhakov, Yeltsin’s former head of security, to the city of Tula and to “present him as though he were his successor” to the State Duma seat which Lebed had been required to give up before entering the government. “They are both birds of a feather,” Yeltsin commented bitingly, “Two generals.” ¹

Russian political commentators have identified other reasons for Yeltsin’s firing of Lebed. Interior Minister Anatolii Kulikov, Lebed’s outspoken and envenomed rival, charged him with plotting and organizing a military coup. While this accusation appears overblown, it could be significant that Yeltsin ousted Lebed on the same day that the newspaper Nezavisimaya gazeta published an open letter from a group of Russian military officers who threatened “radical actions” if they were not paid their wages by October 25. ² Lebed was a champion of the interests of Russia’s downtrodden officer corps.

Some Russian and Western journalists also focused on the vicious political struggle between Lebed and presidential chief-of-staff Anatolii Chubais, who seems closely allied with Yeltsin’s daughter, Tatyana Dyachenko. The emerging Lebed-Korzhakov union was said to threaten directly Chubais’ position. Korzhakov reportedly had access to compromising materials allegedly implicating Chubais and his banker friends “in illegal financial machinations during the privatization period.” In a lethal counter-thrust, Chubais was said to have shown Yeltsin an interview with Korzhakov’s former deputy, Colonel Valerii Streletskii, “in which the latter spoke of Yeltsin’s daughter in an offensive tone.” “The president,” journalist Nikolai Troitskii of the weekly Obshchaya gazeta observed, “never forgives insults to his family, and in his own mind, forged the chain Streletskii-Korzhakov-Lebed. Lebed’s fate was decided then and there.” ³

Whatever the reasons behind Yeltsin’s decision, General Lebed finds himself at present down but definitely not out. The Russian Constitution mandates that a new presidential election take place three months after the death of an incumbent. In light of Yeltsin’s poor health, Lebed has already launched a campaign to become Russia’s next head of state. Public opinion surveys show that he is in a strong position to realize that aim. Following Lebed’s removal, a poll taken by the “Public Opinion” Foundation in October 1996 found 48 percent of Russians expressing trust in the general, while 24 percent did not. ⁴ It should be noted that 62 percent of respondents had voiced trust in Lebed in September. Lebed’s alliance with the unpopular Korzhakov may be one reason for the relative decline in support. Likewise, in a September 1996 public opinion survey by the All-Russian Center for Public Opinion Research, 40...