In a quick political makeover last week, Yeltsin acquired a strong new ally: Aleksandr Lebed, 46, a tough retired general with a granite face, a drill sergeant’s bark and a squeaky-clean image. Lebed finished a surprisingly strong third in the election, behind Yeltsin and the communist candidate, Gennady Zyuganov. The moment Lebed cemented his alliance with Yeltsin, Korzhakov and other Kremlin hard-liners became expendable. After a night of confusion and intrigue, in which the hard-liners apparently tried to subvert next Wednesday’s runoff, Yeltsin and his new best friend slapped them down. Growled Lebed the Terminator: ““Any attempt at a mutiny will be crushed, and crushed mercilessly.''
Lebed’s appointment as Yeltsin’s top national-security adviser and heir-almost-apparent sharply altered the balance of Russian politics. Although Yeltsin won the first round by only three points – with 35 percent of the vote to 32 percent for Zyuganov – he appeared to have a lock on the runoff. Zyuganov tried to portray Yeltsin’s shake-up as an act of desperation and a sign of instability. But Anatoly Chubais, the president’s reform-minded campaign manager, boasted of an ““inevitable Yeltsin victory.''
The president’s comeback was no accident. Sources in Moscow told NEWSWEEK the Lebed deal was cut weeks before the election, after Kremlin hard-liners and reformers put aside their differences to negotiate it. Once agreement was reached, Lebed got more air time on pro-Yeltsin television, and new money flowed into his campaign. That helped him win 14.5 percent of the vote and finish far ahead of reformer Grigory Yavlinsky (7.3 percent) and ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky (5.7 percent). ““Millions have shown faith in me,’’ bragged Lebed. He predicted that ““at least 80 percent of my voters’’ would support Yeltsin in the runoff.
Yeltsin’s friends overseas were relieved by the election result. Bill Clinton called to congratulate him on holding a free election (diplomatically avoiding any praise of the outcome). The alliance with Lebed also went down well in Washington, despite the general’s nationalistic and authoritarian leanings. U.S. officials assumed there would be a further shake-up in the Kremlin, but they were surprised by the speed with which it occurred. So were Chubais and his reformers; they had to put down Korzhakov’s last-gasp challenge with some crucial help from Yeltsin’s 37-year-old daughter Tatyana.
When Yeltsin appointed Lebed, he fired his new ally’s nemesis, Defense Minister Pavel Grachev, the architect of the disastrous war in Chechnya. That left the Kremlin with three key rivals to Lebed: Korzhakov, First Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Soskovets and Mikhail Barsukov, head of the Federal Security Service. The day after Lebed’s elevation, two of Chubais’s campaign workers were detained as they left the Kremlin. Word was leaked to Interfax, a Russian news agency, that they were carrying $500,000 in U.S. currency. The two men later denied that report. ““The goal was to shut us down,’’ Chubais told reporters. He claimed that Korzhakov and the other hard-liners wanted to stage a ““crazy provocation’’ as a pretext to call off the election.
Chubais tried to complain to Yeltsin but found that Korzhakov had blocked his access to the president. So Chubais recruited Tatyana Yeltsin, who had been working in the campaign, to relay a message to her father. Both sides were playing to a gallery that now included Lebed; sources said each faction tried to convince him the other was corrupt. In fact, the popular perception is that both reformers and hard-liners have been involved in high-stakes corruption, making personal fortunes while working at government jobs. But Yeltsin and Lebed sided with the reformers. After a night of infighting, the two campaign workers were released, and by noon, Korzhakov and his allies had been fired. ““They were taking out too much and giving back too little,’’ said Yeltsin.
Yeltsin hires, fires and rehires all the time. Soskovets was in charge of the campaign until the hard-liners’ electoral strategy – disavow many of the most unpopular economic reforms and escalate the war in Chechnya – proved to be a failure. Then Soskovets was replaced by Chubais, who previously had been fired from his post as deputy prime minister overseeing the controversial privatization program. ““I am not leaving the Yeltsin team,’’ Korzhakov insisted after his own dismissal. He has been intensely loyal to Yeltsin, and with another swing of the political pendulum, he could find himself back in power.
Now, however, it is Lebed’s moment. He was courted by both Yeltsin and Zyuganov. ““I was facing two ideas – an old one that has shed lots of blood and a new one that is being implemented very badly at the moment but has a future,’’ he said. ““I have chosen the new idea.’’ For now, at least, Yeltsin is content to portray Lebed as the stout young heart that can take over if his own shaky health gives out. Asked by a reporter if Lebed could be a future successor, Yeltsin grinned and replied: ““You’re on the right track.’’ Yeltsin’s aides insist the general is in no hurry. ““Lebed understood he’s not ready to be president,’’ said adviser Sergei Karaganov. ““He’s a loyal soldier.''
But a soldier’s loyalty, as Lebed himself pointed out last week, goes first to ““my fatherland,’’ not to its president. ““Both Yeltsin and Lebed have strong, dominant personalities,’’ says Kremlinologist Peter Reddaway of George Washington University. ““They seem bound to clash.’’ Lebed will not be Yeltsin’s Dan Quayle. Asked last week if he would campaign for his new mentor, Lebed sniffed: ““Do I resemble, even remotely, an entertainer?’’ He has ambitious goals – to cure both ““the stagnation of socialism and the degradation of capitalism,’’ he said during the election campaign – but if he has a plan to achieve them, he hasn’t revealed it. Already, some of Yeltsin’s aides worry that the new strongman may turn out to be a loose cannon. Lebed brushes aside such concerns with typically sardonic humor. ““I have no intention of grabbing all power in the country,’’ he told a radio interviewer. ““God forbid, I might overstrain myself.’’ So far, Lebed is showing no strain at all, and Boris Yeltsin is breathing easier.
The defense minister was held responsible for the military’s failure to quickly subdue rebels in Chechnya and was dogged by rumors of corruption.
Yeltsin’s chief of security was a supporter of the war in Chechnya, and made it clear he did not believe Russia was ready for elections. He was allegedly involved in a plot to cancel the elections.
The first deputy prime minister was an ally of Korzhakov’s, and headed Yeltsin’s campaign early on, but was later fired from that post. He was also allegedly part of the anti-election plot.
The head of the Federal Security Service (successor to the KGB) faced criticsm from his own soldiers when a siege of Chechen rebels he was overseeing ended with most of the rebels escaping. Barsukov was said to be in the trio of anti-election plotters.
