| Submit your comments on this article |
| International |
| Alexander Lebed, RIP |
| 2002-04-28 |
| Alexander Lebed, the tough-talking former general who emerged as a strong challenger to former Russian President Boris Yeltsin and was credited with ending Moscow's 1994-96 war in Chechnya, was killed Sunday in a helicopter crash. Lebed, 52, was governor of the Krasnoyarsk region. Lebed was one of the good guys. He distinguished himself as a battalion commander in 1981-82 during the Soviet war in Afghanistan. In 1988, he was put in command of the elite Tula paratroop division, and in 1990 he reached the rank of major-general. During the August 1991 hardline coup against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, coup leaders ordered Lebed's troops to surround Yeltsin's Moscow stronghold. But Lebed refused to send in his forces. Praised by reformers when the coup collapsed, Lebed quickly disappointed his admirers, saying he "could not care less for democracy," but also could not bring himself to kill Russians. I respect him more for that single statement than for anything else he did. In 1992, Lebed was sent to command Russian troops in Moldova's breakaway region of Trans-Dniester, the scene of ethnic conflict between the Moldovan government and mainly Slav separatists. He was widely praised for ending the bloodshed. This was a hideously political position, with yammerheads on both sides. Lebed managed to keep 14th Army, which he commanded, from being used as a tool by either side. My impression was that he regarded the Slav side as being chock full of loonytoonz with a side order of crooks, and the Moldovan side as being mostly made up of crooks with a side order of loonytoonz. In 1995, after a dispute with the defense minister, Lebed was forced to retire from the military after 25 years of service. He turned to politics full-time, being elected a member of the lower house of parliament, the State Duma, in December 1995. I imagine the dispute was a by-product of his inability to suffer fools gladly. Lebed came in third in the 1996 presidential elections, pulling in 15 percent of the vote. Communist Party head Gennady Zyuganov came in second, and Yeltsin, though ailing [AP really means "though soused most of the time"], won the election. Yeltsin made Lebed head of his presidential security council, and during his four-month term there before the president sacked him, Lebed brokered an end to Russia's war with separatist Chechnya. He didn't like lushes, either. Yeltsin's margin was so thin — and inflated by ballot-stuffing at that — that he took up with Lebed hoping the scent of the man's honesty would rub off on him. The "marriage" wasn't made in heaven... In May 1998, Lebed won election as governor of Siberia's Krasnoyarsk region, a region four times the size of France. Many saw the post as a possible springboard for the 2000 presidential campaign, but Lebed declined to run. "If nominated, I will not run. If elected, I will not serve." Good man. The only reason Russia is pulling out of its nosedive is the handful like him. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |