Alexander Lebed

Infobox Officeholder
name = Alexander Lebed


imagesize = 200px
caption = Alexander Lebed at a 1996 news conference in Moscow. Photo by Mikhail Evstafiev
order = National Security Advisor to the President of Russia
term_start =
term_end =
predecessor =
successor =
order2 = Secretary of the Security Council
term_start2 = 1996
term_end2 = 1996
predecessor2 = Oleg Lobov
successor2 = Ivan Rybkin
order3 = Governor of Krasnoyarsk Krai
term_start3 = 1998
term_end3 = 2002
predecessor3 = Valery Zubov
successor3 = Alexander Khloponin
birth_date = birth date|1950|04|20
birth_place = Novocherkassk, Soviet Union
death_date = death date|2002|04|28
death_place = Sayan Mountains, Russia
constituency =
party = Congress of Russian Communities
spouse = Inna Lebed
profession = Military
religion =
awards =


footnotes = Infobox Military Person
name=Alexander Lebed
lived=1950-2002


caption=
nickname=
placeofbirth=
placeofdeath=
branch=VDV
serviceyears=1970-1995
rank=Lieutenant General
unit=
commands=106th Guards Tula Airborne Division
14th Guards Army
battles=Soviet war in Afghanistan
Conflict in Transnistria and Gagauzia
awards=
relations=
laterwork=

Alexander Ivanovich Lebed ( _ru. Алекса́ндр Ива́нович Ле́бедь) (April 20, 1950, Novocherkassk – April 28, 2002) was a Russian Lieutenant General and politician. He placed third in the 1996 Russian presidential election, with 14.5% of the vote nationwide. He later served as Russia's Secretary of the Security Council and as governor of Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia's second largest region. He served four years in the latter position, until his death in a Mi-8 helicopter crash.

Life and career

Military

Alexander Lebed joined the Soviet Army in 1970. As an airborne officer, first in the rank of battalion commander, he served with distinction during the Soviet war in Afghanistan in 1981-82, as well as during the Soviet internal crises in Azerbaijan in 1988 and 1990, and in Georgia in 1989.

Lebed became the commander of the 106th Airborne Division from 1990 to 1991. He had come to national attention after the Soviet Coup of 1991, in which a conspiracy of old-guard Communist hard-liners sought to overthrow Mikhail Gorbachev's government and reverse his reforms. At the height of the crisis, the Army had been ordered by Communist hard-liners to surround the White House, the seat of the Russian parliament. General Lebed was given orders to send tanks but never took any action against the parliamentarians and Boris Yeltsin, the president of Russian SFSR.

Lebed was promoted and became deputy to the Commander of Russia's Airborne Troops, general Pavel Grachev. After seeing action violently quelling dissent in the Caucasus during the 1980s, including brutally dispersing a pro-independence rally in front of the government building in Tbilisi Georgia that left twenty dead, Alexander Lebed was from June 1992 the commander of the 14th Guards Army, based in Moldova, playing a major role in the Conflict in Transnistria and Gagauzia crisis.

Entry into politics

On May 30, 1995, Lebed resigned his commission to enter the political arena of post-Soviet Russia. In the elections to the State Duma in December 1995, Lebed headed the list of a moderately nationalist party Congress of Russian Communities. The party did not manage to pass the 5% barrier to get seats in the parliament, but Lebed himself was elected in a single constituency.

Presidential election and Security Council

Lebed ran as a candidate in the 1996 Russian presidential election and finished third with 14.5% of vote in the first round of voting, behind incumbent president Boris Yeltsin and Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov. Two days after the first round, Yeltsin appointed Lebed to the post of the Secretary of Security Council of the Russian Federation and the President's National Security Advisor. Lebed in turn endorsed Yeltsin in the runoff election two weeks later and Yeltsin won the runoff.

Lebed's politics were distinctly military. He endorsed Augusto Pinochet's success in Chile, saying in an article "preserving the army is the basis for preserving the government." As a skillful politician, Lebed, who was an author of several poems, on advice of his political technologists began to growl and expressly use profanity during his public appearances, representing an "awful Russian nationalist".

As chairman of the Security Council, Lebed led negotiations with Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov and signed agreements in the Dagestan town of Khasavyurt which ended the First Chechen War in August 1996. He was fired from the Security Council by President Yeltsin in October 1996, following Lebed's major conflict with the influential Interior Minister Anatoly Kulikov.

On September 7, 1997, Lebed alleged during an interview that a hundred of Soviet-made suitcase-sized nuclear weapons designed for sabotage "are not under the control of the armed forces of Russia". The government of the Russian Federation rejected Lebed's claims and stated that such weapons had never been created. [http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/week/020923.htm "Suitcase Nukes": A Reassessment] , 2002 article by the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies ] However, GRU defector Stanislav Lunev confirmed that such nuclear devices existed and speculated that they possibly have been already deployed. Stanislav Lunev. Through the Eyes of the Enemy: The Autobiography of Stanislav Lunev, Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1998. ISBN 0-89526-390-4 ]

Krasnoyarsk

On May 17, 1998, Lebed won the election for the governor of Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia's second largest region.

He served as the governor of Krasnoyarsk until his death in a controversial helicopter crash on April 28, 2002, popular with the military to the last. The official cause of the crash was the collision of the helicopter with electric lines during foggy weather in the Sayan Mountains. His death is surrounded by several conspiracy theories.

He is survived by his wife Inna, two sons and daughter, and brother Aleksey.

Quotes

* (On the Soviet-Afghan War) "We began the war with lofty aims but ended up with a war against the people."
* (On the War of Transnistria): "I am proud that we helped and armed Transnistrian [separatist] guards against Moldovan fascists" [ro iconAnatolie Muntean, Nicolae Ciubotaru - "Războiul de pe Nistru" (The war on Dniestr), Ager-Economistul Publishing House, Bucharest 2004, page 451 (with a photo of Lebed inspecting Transnistrian guards)] .
* (On the War of Transnistria): "I told the hooligans [separatists] in Tiraspol and the fascists [government] in Chisinau -- either you stop killing each other, or else I'll shoot the whole lot of you with my tanks." [ [http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fv20011008a2.html| Transnistria: relic of a bygone era] , The Japan Times, Richard Humphries, Oct. 8, 2001. Retrieved April 1, 2008]
* (On the Chechen War) "Unprepared, untrained boys have been thrown to face bullets. It is a criminal power that sends hundreds of its citizens to certain death."
* (On Chechen capital Grozny) "Here we have a Russian city, bombed to bits by Russian planes paid for by Russian taxpayers who are now going to have to pay a second time to rebuild it."
* (On the Russian government) "Those who profit are the ones at the top. They keep the doughnut for themselves and give the hole to the people."
* (On the Russian Minister of Defence Pavel Grachev) "I don't like prostitutes, whether they are wearing a skirt or trousers."
* (On the ultranationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky) "The Lord God's monkey." [ [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/667745.stm Zhirinovsky: Russia's political eccentric] BBC News, March 10, 2000]
* (On the Western democracies): "They support Yeltsin who helped start the war in Moldova. I stopped it. He started the war in Chechnya. I stopped it. Who is the greater democrat then, he or I? Is democracy war or peace? I think it is the latter."
* (On the Russians) "Most Russians don't care whether they are ruled by fascists or communists or even Martians as long as they can buy six kinds of sausage in the store and lots of cheap vodka."
* (On himself) "I am not without sins. There cannot be an airborne assault general who has no sins. I spit on popularity ratings. I live and serve as I see fit."

References

External links

* [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/04/29/db2901.xml Alexander Lebed] "The Telegraph", 28/04/2002
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1955980.stm Alexander Lebed: All action hero] BBC News, 28 April, 2002
* [http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,3604,706822,00.html General Alexander Lebed: Russian general who applied military toughness to politics] "The Guardian", April 29, 2002