RL 317/91 August 28, 1991 EL'TSIN BEGINS HOUSECLEANING IN THE DEFENSE MINISTRY Stephen Foye Following the collapse of the coup attempted with military backing, Boris El'tsin moved quickly to assert control over Soviet security policy and forced several important personnel changes at the highest levels of the Defense Ministry. If the new defense minister is to be believed, the appointments will be only the first of many. Flexing the political muscle that he demonstrated facing down the recent military-backed coup, Boris El'tsin forced several important personnel changes in the upper reaches of the Defense Ministry on August 23. The changes reversed temporary appointments made only the day before by USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev1 and were a clear indication of where power lay in the Soviet Union in the aftermath of the coup's collapse. The initial appointments were announced during a joint appearance by El'tsin and Gorbachev before a session of the RSFSR parliament in the course of 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 Western sources, El'tsin's choices for Defense Ministry positions reflect the belief that the Ground Forces were the most compromised of the Soviet services by their complicity in the coup attempt. The status of the Air Force and the Navy, on the other hand, has been enhanced because of what is described as their loyalty to El'tsin. New Defense Minister The appointment of a commander in chief of the Air Force-- Marshal of Aviation Evgenii Shaposhnikov2--to the post of defense minister is unprecedented in the history of a military establishment long dominated by the Ground Forces. At the time that he was appointed head of the Air Force in July, 1990, Shaposhnikov, then forty-nine-years old, was hailed as one of the youngest generals ever to assume such responsibilities in Soviet military history. According to an official biography,3 Shaposhnikov was born in 1942 to a worker's family in a small rural village in Rostov Oblast. In 1963, he graduated from the Kharkov Aviation Institute to become an Air Force pilot. He joined the Communist Party in 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 appointed to the analogous post in the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany and in 1988 became the first deputy commander in chief 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 Ossetian by nationality. They have three children. Unlike the sons of many in the High Command, his son has entered the medical profession rather than following his father into the officer corps. Shaposhnikov's actions over the past year mark him as a forward-looking commander more comfortabNEI]%Q! the current H  political changes than many others in the military leadership are. In public statements, he has criticized the powerful defense industries for producing shoddy equipment and, in his words, for dictating to the services the weaponry with which they are armed.4 He has also urged increased competition among the defense industries and, unlike many of his colleagues, has suggested that recent economic reforms will improve the performance of the defense sector. He can be characterized, in fact, as the commander of a high-tech service who realized early that the ability of the Soviet armed forces to modernize depends upon the vitality of the civilian economy. US officials are reported to be heartened by his appointment. In the days following his appointment, Shaposhnikov moved quickly to put his stamp on the Defense Ministry and to assure observers that he represented a real change from the past. He said that 80 percent of the Defense Ministry Collegium5 would be replaced in the near future and that younger men less likely to act against the USSR Constitution would be advanced to leadership positions. On August 25, Shaposhnikov told Izvestia that the armed forces would never again be used against the people. He also resigned from the Communist Party, saying that it had failed to stand behind El'tsin during the attempted coup. In sharp contrast to his predecessor, the now disgraced Dmitrii Yazov, Shaposhnikov immediately confronted the issue of republican independence and began negotiations with Ukraine and Latvia over the stationing of Soviet troops and weaponry there.6 On August 27, he said in the French newspaper Le Figaro that "ground forces [can] be shared and placed under almost exclusive control of the republics' military regions." He also said that an agreement would be signed with Latvia that acknowledged the republic's sovereignty and that limited the Soviet army's role to defending its territory. He stressed, however, that Soviet nuclear forces would remain under central command and would be controlled either by the Defense Ministry or a national security council. Lobov Named Chief of the General Staff El'tsin's choice for the chief of the General Staff, Army General Vladimir Lobov, is more ambiguous. The new number two in the Soviet armed forces served from 1989 until recently as the last chief of staff of the Warsaw Pact military alliance and, after the dissolution of the Pact, was head of the Frunze Military Academy.7 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), commander of the Central Asian Military District (1985-87), and, from 1987 to 1989, first deputy chief of the General Staff.8 He is a leading military theorist who has written numerous works on military strategy, doctrine, and reform. In 1988, he published a book on military strategy entitled Voennaya khitrost' (military deception). In 1989, he was elected to the USSR Congress of People's Deputies to represent a constituency in Kazakhstan, and he also serves on the the USSR Supreme Soviet Committee on International Affairs. He holds a doctorate in military science. Lobov has long been known in the West as a hawk. 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. His reassignment was in all likelihood also related to the fact that he had spoken against unilateral reductions in the months preceding Gorbachev's announcement at the UN in December of 1988 that the USSR would cut its forces by half a million men. Many in the West, in fact, had seen him as the logical heir to the late Marshal Sergei Akhromeev atop the General Staff. Akhromeev himself quit his post on the day that Gorbachev made the announcement. Lobov seemed to moderate his hawkish position somewhat upon taking up his new duties with the Warsaw Pact. An article that he wrote jointly with the civilian defense specialist Andrei Kokoshin early in 1990 provided some evidence of this tendency,9 but even more notable was a piece by him calling for accelerated military reform that was published in the Party theoretical journal Kommunist later in the year.10 Nevertheless, early in 1991 Lobov appeared to take a sharp turn back to the right. He wrote an analysis of Soviet military doctrine published in what was then the main journal of the General Staff in which he flatly dismissed Gorbachev's policy of "reasonable sufficiency" and called for the Soviet Union to achieve qualitative military superiority over the West.11 Lobov's name was not mentioned in connection with the coup. He offered his first public remarks as chief of the General Staff on August 27, when he told TASS that he supported far-reaching military reform. He also claimed now to be a proponent of "sufficiency" in defense and said that he would implement personnel changes in the General Staff in the near future. Given his past statements, some of these remarks are a bit suspect. On August 26, moreover, the acting chairman of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet, Ruslan Khasbulatov, called for sharp reductions in Defense Ministry personnel and weaponry during a speech to the USSR Supreme Soviet.12 His comments were only one more indication that the Soviet armed forces face substantial reductions--a task that will likely be entrusted to the General Staff. At the same time, Lobov will probably oversee negotiations concerning military deployments in the non-Russian republics. His role will therefore be a key one, and it will be interesting to observe the degree of enthusiasm that he brings to it. Other Changes Pavel Grachev is another senior officer whose star has risen as a result of his opposition to the coup attempt. Grachev was promoted to the rank of colonel general by Gorbachev and El'tsin and was also appointed deputy defense minister and chairman of the RSFSR State Committee for Defense and Security. Grachev, like Shaposhnikov, is an over-achiever. He was appointed commander of the elite Airborne Forces in December, 1990, at the tender age of forty-two. He first distinguished himself in Afghanistan, where he reportedly served two tours, equal to a total of five years, and where he was decorated "Hero of the Soviet Union" for his achievements.13 During his last three years there, he commanded an Airborne division. Grachev was born in 1948 in a rural village in Tula Oblast. He graduated from the Ryazan Airborne Academy in 1969 and from the Frunze Military Academy in 1981. In June, 1990, Grachev completed his studies at the General Staff Academy, after which he was named a deputy chief of the Airborne Forces. He is married, with two sons, the elder of whom is himself a cadet at the Ryazan Academy. Grachev clearly earned his latest promotion because of his unwillingness to take part in the antigovernment coup--an act for which he was apparently arrested at the time by his superior officers. It is difficult, however, to say what his broader political views are. In an interview in May, 1991, he claimed that in principle he opposed the use of the Airborne Forces for domestic policing operations "except when the blood of innocent and defenseless people is being spilled" and the MVD and KGB cannot handle the situation.14 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 enough to support this action. The decision to deploy Airborne Troops in the Baltic republics 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.15 He was apparently not punished following the attack, and it remains unclear what role he played in the tragedy. While these have been the major personnel appointments made in the Ministry of Defense at the time of writing, further changes have also been reported or are in the offing. Immediately upon Gorbachev's return to Moscow following his release from captivity, for example, it was announced that he had fired the deputy defense minister with responsibility for civil defense, Army General Vladimir Govorov.16 In his stead, he appointed Colonel General Boris P'yankov, aged fifty-six, who had hitherto served as commander of the Siberian Military District since the spring of 1989. P'yankov, who is also a USSR People's Deputy for Novosibirsk, is a former first deputy commander of the Odessa Military District, and subsequently served in Afghanistan. Govorov has not been connected with the conspirators, however, and the appointment of P'yankov was actually the result of a decree signed by Gorbachev on August 17, before the coup but not published until August 23.17 The removal of Colonel General Fedor Kuz'min as commander of the Baltic Military District, which was reported by Baltfax on August 26, is clearly related to the attempted coup. Kuz'min took orders from the Emergency Committee in the early stages of the coup attempt, and his dismissal reportedly came after a meeting held in Moscow on August 25.18 The meeting was attended by Latvian President Anatolijs Gorbunovs, as well as by Shaposhnikov, KGB Chairman Vadim Bakatin, and Interior Minister Viktor Barannikov. Kuz'min's replacement is Lieutenant General Valerii Mironov, who, prior to this appointment, served as first deputy commander of the Leningrad Military District. Meanwhile, on August 25, the USSR Prosecutor's Office announced that the army's chief prosecutor, General Aleksandr Katusev, had also been dismissed as a result of his implication in the coup attempt.19 Katusev had long been under fire from various civilian groups for his alleged failure to prosecute misdeeds in the army. He was especially criticized for a report that exonerated Soviet troops for the killings in Vilnius in January of this year and for whitewashing the Soviet military authorities for their complicity in violence against young servicemen and for noncombat deaths in the army. No replacement for him has been named. Defense Minister Dmitrii Yazov was arrested, not surprisingly, and Chief of the General Staff Mikhail Moiseev was relieved of all command reponsibilities in the wake of the coup's collapse. Other military leaders who have been directly implicated in the attempt to topple the government and who are likely to lose their jobs, if not their freedom, include Commander in Chief of the Ground Forces Valentin Varennikov, Deputy Defense Minister for emergency situations Vladislav Achalov, and Commander of the Moscow Military District Colonel General Nikolai Kalinin. Varennikov has already been arrested, and Kalinin is being investigated for his role in the coup. TASS has already referred to him as a "former" commander.20 Finally, Marshal Sergei Akhromeev, once an adviser to President Gorbachev, committed suicide on August 24. The former chief of the General Staff, who was sixty-eight when he died, had spoken out increasingly against political liberalization and left a suicide note saying that everything he had devoted his life to was being destroyed. Conclusion The appointment of Shaposhnikov, Lobov, and Grachev to key positions!n the Defense Ministry appears to represent a policy of rewarding loyalty and competence rather than insisting on political liberalism. All three men are clearly capable, however, and Shaposhnikov and Grachev may represent the best of a younger generation of general officers. Grachev's appointment to positins within both the USSR and RSFSR governments may also represent a new policy of overlapping responsibility between the two structures. In any event, these three will lead the armed forces into the postputsch, post-Communist--and possibly post-Soviet--period, a time of transition that is sure to be demanding and that will confront the officer corps with unprecedented problems. Not the least of these tasks will be to negotiate security relations among republics in an empire that appears to be rapidly disintegrating, even as the officer corps itself faces significant reductions. For more than five years, Western analysts have catalogued the difficulties faced by the armed forces under perestroika, yet in many important ways real and painful military reform may only just now be starting in what was the Red Army. FOOTNOTES: 1 For background and analysis of these temporary appointments, see Stephen Foye and Alexander Rahr, "Gorbachev Appoints Temporary Army, KGB, and MVD Chiefs," Report on the USSR, No. 35, 1991, pp. 13-14. 2 Shaposhnikov was a colonel general at the time of his appointment but on August 26 was promoted to marshal. See TASS, August 26, 1991. 3 For biographies of Shaposhnikov, see Kommunist vooruzhennykh sil, No. 16, 1990, p. 35; Krasnaya zvezda, July 28, 1991, p. 1. 4 Izvestia, August 10, 1990, p. 7; Komsomol'skaya pravda, August 26, 1991. 5 Shaposhnikov originally seemed to imply that 80 percent of the High Command as a whole would be replaced (Central Television, August 25, 1991), but he later said that the figure of 80 percent applied only to the Defense Ministry Collegium (Krasnaya zvezda, August 27, 1991, p. 1). 6 AP, August 27, 1991. 7 TASS on August 27, 1991, identified Lobov as head of the Frunze Military Academy. 8 For biographies of Lobov, see Kommunist vooruzhennykh sil, No. 10, 1989, p. 14; Alexander Rahr, A Biographical Directory of 100 Leading Soviet Officials, RFE/RL Research Institute/Westview Press, 1991. 9 A.A. Kokoshin and V.N. Lobov, "Predvidenie," Znamya, No. 2, 1990, pp. 170-82. 10 V.N. Lobov, "Voennaya reforma: tseli, printsipy, soderzhanie," Kommunist, No. 13, 1990, pp. 14-22. 11 V.N. Lobov, Voennaya mysl', No. 2, 1991, p. 16. 12 TASS, August 26, 1991. 13 For biographical information on Grachev, see Krasnaya zvezda, January 4, 1991, p. 1. 14 Kommunist vooruzhennykh sil, No. ?, 1991, pp.??. 15 TASS, January 4, 1991. 16 AP, August 22, 1991. 17 For Gorbachev's decree appointing P'yankov, see Krasnaya zvezda, August 23, 1991, p. 3. For a short biography, see Kommunist vooruzhennykh sil, No. 12, 1989, p. 3. 18 AFP, August 25, 1991; Baltfax, August 26, 1991. 19 AFP, August 26, 1991. 20 TASS, August 27, 1991.