Copyright 1998 ABC-CLIO, Inc.  
Kaleidoscope

COUNTRY: Russia

PERSON: Aleksandr Lebed

HEADLINE: Biographies

 


Aleksandr Lebed is one of the most popular men in Russia. He was appointed in June 1996 to head Russia's Security Council, responsible for the military, police, and secret services, before his dismissal four months later for insubordination. He is the former commander of Russia's 14th Army in the Trans-Dnestr region of Moldova. As an outspoken nationalist with political ambitions, the charismatic former general placed third in the first round of Russian presidential elections in June 1996.  


Born in 1950 in the southern Russian town of Novocherkassk, Lebed entered the army as a cadet at the Ryazan parachute command college and was decorated for bravery in the Afghanistan war during 1981-82. He helped quell civilian protests in Azerbaijan and Georgia during the waning years of the Soviet Union. In August 1991 he sided with Boris Yeltsin during the attempted communist coup in Moscow as the commander of a tank battalion, an act that won him the early favor of liberal reformist politicians. In 1990, Lebed's troops entered Moldova as a "protection" force to end fighting between Moldovan nationalists and the secessionist Russian-speaking minority concentrated in the northeastern periphery of Moldova, or Transdnestria. Lebed resisted attempts to downgrade and withdraw the 8,000-member 14th Army during his command of it and at one point appealed directly to President Yeltsin not to be reassigned to a border post in Tajikistan. After repeatedly threatening to resign his command outright, Lebed's bluff was called in June 1995 when then-Defense Minister Pavel Grachev accepted his resignation. Yeltsin also approved the resignation after consultations with his Security Council on the tactical consequences of cutting the populist general loose to pursue his own political devices.  


A former boxer, Lebed is a stocky and trim disciplinarian who was favored by at least two-thirds of the army corps for his blunt attacks on corruption and incompetence in the army. A critic of the unpopular Grachev, he has been compared to Napoleon and Chilean ex- dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet. In the late spring of 1995 Lebed joined the ruling board of a moderate nationalist party, the Congress of Russian Communities, founded by Yuri Shokov, a former Yeltsin ally who had since broken ranks with the president. Lebed subsequently campaigned independently for president in the summer of 1996, managing to maintain a somewhat ambiguous ideological position between the political far right and the left. While in the Kremlin, Lebed, long a shrewd opponent of Russia's invasion of separatist Chechnya, forged a controversial peace agreement with rebels there that calls for a delayed referendum on the independence status of the Caucasian republic.  


[Source: The New York Times]

LOAD-DATE: February 18, 1998
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