Army's Sway Yet to Be Seen

Duma elections have proved, once again, that Russia's armed forces today play a rather marginal political role.


A few months ago many analysts observed with some apprehension that almost all the political blocs necessarily included some famous general. Clearly they were worried that after Sunday's elections the influence of the military would sharply increase and the foreign policy of Russia would become more aggressive and revisionist.


Some 1.7 million men serve in the military forces. A little more than 600,000 soldiers and officers serve in the internal forces of the Interior Ministry, in the border guards and other paramilitary forces. Including their families, they number more than 5 million voters.


Russian soldiers are disciplined and all turn out to vote. Sunday, as in good old Soviet times, practically 100 percent of the military came to polling stations in formations. If the civilian electorate really was as uninterested, passive and bored with politics as many thought and the turnout had been just over 30 percent, the military vote could have been crucial. But with almost 70 million Russians voting, the disciplined military was swamped by civilians.


Obviously the babushka vote was much more important this time. For the most part, the parties that used generals in uniform as election tokens lost. The most spectacular was the Congress of Russian Communities, which used General Alexander Lebed as its trump card.


Several military officials, including Lebed and other generals such as Boris Gromov, were elected to the Duma individually as single-mandate candidates in the okrugi, or administrative regions. But they hardly will make up a strong and influential military faction in the Duma, since these generals hold different political views or dislike each other.


Russian public opinion again proved to be mostly non-belligerent and even non-militaristic. This was obvious by the way most parties paid only lip service to the problem of military reform in their campaigning. Only Vladimir Zhirinovsky specifically promised to sharply increase military expenditures and the size of the army to 4 million troops serving under 1 million officers.


However, several weeks before the elections, the Zhirinovsky faction as well as the communists voted for the demobilization of soldiers and sergeants who had been called up a year and a half ago. If President Yeltsin had signed this law, and the draftees began to be mustered out en masse, the professional officers would have been extremely angry, since they badly need the conscripts to carry out logistical work on military bases. Apparently, just weeks before election day even the radical nationalists understood the military vote was not important.


Although the Russian army is currently living through a crisis, it has remained a disciplined force, loyal to its commanders. The uniformed military voter turnout was 100 percent but these voters are also reported to have mostly voted for the government party of Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, Our Home Is Russia. Not long before the elections, the defense minister, General Pavel Grachev, called on the military to vote for Our Home and it seems his orders were followed. As during the heaviest fighting in Chechnya, the dissatisfied army grumbles and curses its political masters, it but still obeys orders.


The Russian generals who will be freshmen in the Duma do have political ambitions, but as yet, the bulk of the Russian army does not. General Lev Rochlin, who got most of the credit within the military for the army's victory in the battle of Grozny in January, has been elected to the Duma as a top member of Chernomyrdin's party. However he has already hinted that he will most likely resign from parliament, since he does not want to leave his present command -- the 8th Volgograd Army Corps.


However, the elections proved that Russian society is not only divided into unreconcilable political groups, but the country is also very diverse regionally, with Moscow won by Our Home and St. Petersburg by Yavlinsky, whereas the Communist Party and Zhirinovsky's party won in most provinces.


These fractions can co-exist in the Duma under Yeltsin, but the coming presidential election will, no doubt, produce a final result that will be totally unacceptable to large portions of the population in strategically important regions, regardless of who is elected. With parties, social groups and regions locked in bitter conflict, the army will be the only nationwide broker of power left and then the true story of the Russian army's political leadership may begin.





Pavel Felgenhauer is defense and security editor for Segodnya.