Are the Russian armed forces a ghost of the great Soviet military machine, cut to the bone and bled of funds, or an unwieldy and overpowerful monster crammed full of bemedaled generals?


Both these views were given an airing at parliamentary hearings on "reform in the armed forces" held in Moscow on Tuesday.


Anatoly Kvashnin, a senior administrative official at the Defense Ministry, complained that the army's commitment to reform was being hampered by lack of funds.


"We see how it has to be done but the decisive step lies with those who control the finances of the armed forces," Kvashnin told the hearings.


Kvashnin said the military planned to cut its official numbers to 1,917,000 men by the beginning of next year. Actual figures are thought to be considerably below that due to low call-up rates. President Boris Yeltsin has publicly said the armed forces should be cut to 1.5 million.


Rather than relying on massive land forces for a major war as the Soviet army did during the Cold War, Kvashnin said the new-look forces would prepare for the "liquidation of conflicts on Russia's borders at the earliest possible stage."


He said the army had started phasing in more professional soldiers and by the year 2000 it was hoped they would comprise half of the non-commissioned ranks in the army.


But a colleague of Kvashnin's, Valery Ostanin pointed out that the process was very costly because professional soldiers' salaries -- around 2 million rubles ($985) a year -- were around 20 times greater than those of conscripts.


Kvashnin said the draft, which the army relies on for most of its numbers, was in a disastrous state and that this spring only 150,000 young men -- 57 percent of those eligible -- and mainly from the "most deprived sections of society" had joined up.


But several skeptics called into question the army's willingness to reform.


Alexander Vladimirov, a member of Yeltsin's Analytical Center, said there was a worrying vacuum at the top in decision-making about military reform. He chided the Defense Ministry for "incorrect behavior" in trying to take the lead in the matter.


Vladimir Lopatin, a military analyst, said that the 2,070 generals in the Russian army still represented a higher proportion than anywhere else in the world. Four years ago the Soviet army boasted more than 4,000 generals in its ranks.