USSR/X--EL'TSIN CLEANS HOUSE IN THE DEFENSE MINISTRY Munich, August 23, 1991 (RI/Stephen Foye) Summary: Flexing the political muscles that he developed facing down the recently launched military-backed coup, RSFSR President Boris El'tsin on August 23 forced several important personnel changes at the upper reaches of the Defense Ministry. The changes reversed temporary appointments made only the day before by USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev, and were a clear sign of where power now lies in the USSR. The defense personnel changes came during a joint appearance of El'tsin and Gorbachev before the RSFSR parliament in which a form of coalition government between the two was announced. The agreement will apparently give El'tsin considerable say in Soviet security policies. According to U.S. government officials, as reported by C.N.N., El'tsin's choices for Defense Ministry positions reflect the belief that the Army was the most compromised of the Soviet services as a result of the coup attempt. The Navy and the Air Force, on the other hand, have had their status enhanced for what is described as their loyalty to El'tsin. The new Defense Minister reflects this development. He is Colonel General (of Aviation) Evgenii Shaposhnikov, who had been serving as Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Air Force. At the time of his appointment to that slot in July of 1990, the forty-nine year old Shaposhnikov was hailed as one of the youngest generals to assume such responsibilities in Soviet military history. According to an official biography, Shaposhnikov was born in 1942 to a workers' family in a small rural village in Rostov oblast'. In 1963 he graduated from the Kharkov Aviation Institute, from which he emerged as an Air Force pilot. He joined the Communist Party the same year. In 1984 Shaposhnikov graduated from the General Staff Academy, and a year later was appointed Air Force commander in the Odessa Military District. In 1987 he was named to the analogous post in the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, and in 1988 became the First Deputy Commander of the USSR Air Force. He was elected to a seat on the Communist Party Central Committee at the Twenty-Eighth Party Congress. Shaposhnikov's wife is a doctor, and he has three children. Unlike many in the High Command, his son has entered the medical profession rather than following his father into the officer corps. Shaposhnikov's statements over the past year suggest a forward-looking commander more at home among the current political changes than many others in the military leadership. In public statements he has criticized the powerful Soviet defense industries for producing shoddy equipment and, in his words, for dictating to the services what sorts of weapons they will receive. He has also urged increased competition within the Defense industries and, unlike many of his colleagues, has suggested that recent economic reforms will improve the performance of the Defense sector. American officials are reported to be heartened by his appointment. El'tsin's choice for General Staff Chief, Army General Vladimir Lobov, is more ambiguous. The new number two man in the Soviet military served last as Chief of Staff of the Warsaw Pact Military Alliance, a position that was eliminated with the disbanding of the alliance. An ethnic Russian, Lobov was born in 1935, and in a long career has served as First Deputy Commander of the Leningrad Military District (1981-84), as Commander of the Central Asian Military District (1985-87), and from 1987 to 1989 as First Deputy Chief of the General Staff. He is a leading military theorist who has authored works on strategy, doctrine, military reform, and many other topics. Lobov has also long been known in the West as a hard-liner. His "lateral promotion" in 1989--to Warsaw Pact Chief of Staff--was indeed probably a demotion and an effort to get him out of Moscow at a time when military restructuring was about to be launched. Many in the West, in fact, had seen him as the logical heir to Marshal Sergei Akhromeev atop the General Staff. Lobov seemed to moderate his hawkish positions somewhat upon taking up his new duties with the Warsaw Pact, however. An article that he co-authored with the civilian defense specialist Andrei Kokoshin early in 1990 provided some evidence of this tendency, but even more notable was an article calling for accelerated military reform that he published in the Party journal Kommunist later in the year. Nevertheless, early this year Lobov appeared to take a sharp turn back to the right. An analysis of Soviet military doctrine published in the main General Staff journal at that time flatly dismissed Gorbachev's policy of "reasonable sufficiency," and called for the Soviet Union to achieve qualitative military superiority over the West. Lieutenant General Pavel Grachev, appointed Commander-in-Chief of Soviet Ground Forces is, like Shaposhnikov, an overachiever. He will apparently replace Army General Valentin Varennikov, who has been arrested for his role in the coup attempt. Grachev was named Commander of the elite Airborne Forces in December of 1990 at the tender age of forty-two. He distinguished himself in Afghanistan, where he reportedly served twice--for a total of five years. During his last three years there he commanded an Airborne division. Grachev was born in 1948, in a rural village in Tul'sk oblast'. He graduated from the Ryazan Airborne Academy in 1969, from the Frunze Military Academy in 1981, and in June of 1990 completed his studies at the General Staff Academy, after which he was named a Deputy Chief of the Airborne Forces. Grachev is married, with two sons, the oldest of whom is himself a cadet at the Ryazan' Academy. Grachev clearly earned his latest promotion as a result of his unwillingness to take part in the anti-government coup, an act for which he was apparently arrested by his superior officers. It is difficult to say what his broader political orientation is, however. In a May, 1991 interview, he claimed that in principle he opposed the use of the Airborne Forces for domestic policing operations, but qualified that by saying "except when the blood of innocent and defenseless people is being spilled" and the MVD and KGB cannot handle the situation. Hard-liners have made similar statements. Grachev was also appointed to head the Airborne Forces on the eve of the bloody crackdown in Lithuania--an operation in which the Airborne Forces played a major role--and he presumably was trusted to stand behind this action. The decision to deploy Airborne Troops to the Baltic nevertheless appeared to contradict a statement made by Grachev only days earlier, when he said that his men should not be used to control interethnic conflicts. Since he was not relieved of command or punished following the tragedy, it can be assumed that Grachev did not oppose the attack. The big loser as a result of the changes appears to have been Mikhail Moiseev, the General Staff Chief whose temporary appointment as Defense Minister by Gorbachev on August 23 has turned out to be even more temporary than expected. Moiseev, who appears to have been at least sympathetic to the coup attempt, is aparently out both as Defense Minister and as General Staff Chief. The choice of the three new men to head up the Defense Ministry, meanwhile, may represent a policy of rewarding loyalty rather than liberalism. All three are clearly capable, however, and Shaposhnikov and Grachev may represent the best of a younger generation of general officers. Their selection, moreover, is likely to be only the first sweep in a house-cleaning that will remove a number of old faces from the Soviet Defense Ministry.