| 06/24/2014 at 15:56
THE WAY OF GENERAL SWAN. HERO OR TRAITOR? Part 1
Almost twelve years ago, General Alexander Ivanovich Lebed made Russia talk about itself for the last time. “A strong figure in a stalemate,” as analysts described his place on the chessboard of Russian politics, has long ceased to bother anyone.
In an ordinary piggy bank of newspaper labels, at the very bottom, there are two worn-out copper coins: the words “bright” and “controversial.” These words are convenient because they can easily be applied to both good and bad characters. As a rule, they are used when something needs to be said about a person, but what to say is unclear. On the one hand, the words are, in general, good - if only because everything bright and contradictory is interesting. On the other hand, these are the very “kind words” that you are not ashamed to say about your worst enemy.
Here is Yeltsin, bright and controversial, you can’t take that away from him. And Berezovsky is also bright, and, damn him, contradictory, it’s true! And Chubais: even though he’s a bastard, it’s hard to accuse him of dullness and mediocrity.
General Lebed was perhaps the brightest and most controversial politician of his time. Both friends and enemies recognized this for him.
CHILDHOOD, ADHOOD, YOUTH
Alexander Ivanovich Lebed was born on April 20, 1952, in the city of Novocherkassk, into a working-class family. It must be said that Novocherkassk was once the capital of the All-Great Don Army. Having experienced dispossession, decossackization, humiliated to the position of a regional center, and considerably impoverished, the city traditionally respected the military, but did not really like the Soviet government. To which he managed to completely offend: in June 1962, strikes and demonstrations of workers began in the city, outraged by the May increase in prices for food and essential goods.
Perhaps, in a different situation, everything would have worked out: the authorities still listened to the discontent of the proletariat. For example, there is a well-known story with Odessa dockers who refused to load food that was not available in Odessa itself onto ships for their Cuban comrades: the “political leadership” backed down, sending the cargo to city stores. But in Novocherkassk the matter took a too massive turn: the townspeople supported the strikers too vigorously. Inappropriately remembering her old sins against the Cossack capital, “Sofya Vlasyevna” was seriously frightened: troops of the North Caucasus Military District were brought into the city, and the matter ended with shooting.
On June 2, 1962, ten-year-old Sasha and his brother Alyosha were sitting, dangling their legs, on an old mulberry tree when the sounds of gunfire and screams were heard from the city square (fortunately, the grandmother drove the boy home). It is now believed that about thirty people died during the dispersal of the demonstration. But then there were rumors about hundreds and thousands of dead - and, most importantly, the very fact that the army could shoot at the people seemed wild and outrageous, a kind of exemplary “crime of the regime.”
In those vegetarian times, no one could have imagined that in a few decades the massacre organized by the democratic authorities in the center of Moscow would not even cause significant surprise... And little Sasha did not even suspect that in not so long a time he himself would have to get into the shoes of the “shooter” into the people” - and that these very people may not be so white and fluffy.
There is also a funny problem with the general’s nationality. His father was Ukrainian, and, it seems, he tried not to forget it. The mother, however, was Russian. As a result, both sons were “registered” as different nations: Alexander was assigned to the Russians, his brother Alexei - to the Ukrainians.
Subsequently, when the national question flared up “to the fullest,” Lebed was reminded of this from time to time. The general answered in his own style: “that means I’ll run for president in Kyiv - the crests will definitely elect me to spite the Muscovites.”
It must also be said that the father was not delighted with the ambitions of his son, who had dreamed of a military career since childhood. Which is not surprising: Ivan Andreevich Lebed, who was imprisoned in '37 for being late for work two times, then rushed from the camp to a penal battalion, stormed the Mannerheim line, and then went through the entire Patriotic War and was demobilized in '47, had no reason to love the army and its main occupation - war.
Subsequently, Alexander Lebed was very proud of the laurels of a peacemaker - even when peacekeeping turned into defeatism.
At first, Alexander’s military career did not work out. Due to a broken nose and substandard growth, he was turned down twice by the medical board of the Kachinsky Flight School and once by the Armavir Aviation School. In the intervals between admission attempts, Lebed worked as a grinder at a factory, then as a loader. Finally, in the summer of 1970, he enrolled in the Ryazan Airborne Command School: apparently, the health requirements for future paratroopers turned out to be not so severe.
At the military school, he quickly becomes one of the best. In seventy-two, as expected, he joined the CPSU. It is unlikely that he himself attached any significance to this. A more significant circumstance turned out to be an acquaintance with Pavel Grachev, which happened shortly after completing his studies: Lebed was left to serve at the school, and until the eighty-first year Grachev was his immediate superior (Lebed was a senior sergeant under Lieutenant Grachev, and a lieutenant under the senior lieutenant).
After some time, the young talented officer is sent to a real war, to Afghanistan, as part of a “limited contingent”, to command the 1st battalion of the 345th parachute regiment. By that time, his brother Alexei had already commanded the reconnaissance company for two years.
AFGHAN EPISODE
Subsequently, Lebed, recalling the Afghan episode, all the time reproduced the same pattern: abusively cursing the “political madness” of the Kremlin leadership, which sent people to fight in an “incomprehensible war,” at the same time he emphatically paid tribute to his brothers in arms. Journalists attributed to him the phrase - “our heroic soldiers honestly waged a shameful and criminal war with the Afghan people.”
It is unlikely that Lebed actually said anything like that, but the general meaning of his statements on the Afghan topic was exactly that. He really did not see the point in this war - like many of its other participants. However, he was partly grateful to her: it was in Afghanistan that Lebed first showed himself as a commander.
Command is, in a sense, a mystical thing, depending on that difficult-to-define ability called “charisma.” It has nothing to do with the ability to make “correct and fair decisions.” Here is another thing: if the commander is real, from God, then any of his decisions (including erroneous ones, and even impracticable ones) seem correct and fair to his subordinates. And since they are performed with more enthusiasm than the most scientifically calculated moves, they very often turn out to be correct.
Lebed was a "wrong" but popular commander: he had this ability to "ignite people", and an understanding of the importance of a beautiful gesture. According to one of the legends, Lebed, understanding some kind of disgrace, called the culprits to himself and offered them the choice of a criminal case or one blow to the face. Everyone chose a blow to the face, after which it turned out: a blow from the battalion commander’s fist broke his jaw at once... There were many such tales about Lebed.
Lebed also distinguished himself on the battlefield: he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner and the Red Star.
At that time, however, the general viewed Afghanistan primarily as the next stage of his military career. Two years later, he achieved admission to the M.V. Frunze Military Academy, from which he graduated with honors in 1985.
This was followed by rapid career growth: deputy regiment commander in Ryazan, regiment commander in Kostroma, division commander in Pskov, and, finally, commander of the famous Tula Airborne Division. In this capacity, he had to face politics for the first time - in Baku and Tbilisi.
SPRING OF NATIONS
Here he became convinced for the first time that the times of Novocherkassk were irrevocably gone. The country's political leadership was losing ground before our eyes, became cowardly, and shifted responsibility. Alexander Ivanovich was particularly impressed by the events in Tbilisi, when the Georgian party leadership first called in the army and then disowned the consequences of what was happening.
Lebed himself (as, indeed, all the direct participants in those events) always insisted that there was no “Tbilisi nightmare”, especially the famous cutting down of old women with sapper blades. There was a banal attempt to protect administrative buildings and the people in them from pogrom: an open-ended rally was going on in the square for the second day, and the raging Georgian crowd had already brought itself to the required degree of brutality.
The approaches to the square were barricaded with heavy vehicles filled with fist-sized rubble. “Peaceful demonstrators” threw stones at the soldiers, who could not respond with anything other than raising the notorious shoulder blades into the air (they did not have body armor). The attempt to seize the trucks turned into a stampede: the crowd trampled several dozen people - immediately declared heroes killed by Russian soldiers.
General Rodionov, who turned out to be extreme, at that time the commander of the Transcaucasian Military District (and, by the way, objected to the use of troops), was solemnly promoted to the killer of the Georgian people.
The rest is known. The country shook, shocked by the Tbilisi massacre. All of Georgia (and, of course, the entire Russian demtusovka) wept over the victims of Russian imperialism - for example, over an unknown Georgian old woman, whom a Russian paratrooper chased for three kilometers and hacked to death with a shovel (the newspapers wrote about this).
Swan, remembering the old woman, sneered: “What kind of old woman was she who ran three kilometers from the soldier? Question two: what kind of soldier was it that could not catch up with the old woman at three kilometers? And the third question, the most interesting: were they running around the stadium? For three kilometers there wasn’t a single Georgian man to stand in the way of this scoundrel?”
But at that time, asking such questions meant immediately being branded a cannibal. And Lebed understood: the Soviet government was hopeless and it was too late to shoot at its enemies. The time has come to effectively sheath our guns and engage in peacekeeping. The era was approaching when they began to give orders and medals for failure to follow orders, and promotions for betrayal. The crocodile’s “child’s teardrop” burned through any concrete.
In January 1990, Lebed's division was again sent to suppress unrest in Azerbaijan. The general himself recalled it this way: “there was only one task - to separate the fools fighting to the death and prevent mass bloodshed and unrest.” Of course, in the nineties this was already a pure utopia: literally everyone was eager for mass bloodshed.
Lebed, however, understood the situation in time and made the only correct decision: not to be zealous in carrying out orders, take care of his subordinates, be careful with his superiors and try not to be branded as a murderer of any people - Armenian or Azerbaijani. Alexander Ivanovich coped with this task successfully: on February 17, 1990, he was awarded the military rank of “Major General”.
TWILIGHT OF FREEDOM
The official beginning of the general’s political career can be counted from the spring of 1990. “Perestroika” was in its final months, but “glasnost” was still popular. The 51st Tula Parachute Regiment nominated Major General Lebed as a candidate for delegate to the XXVIII Congress of the CPSU. Despite the fact (or perhaps due to the fact that there was an unspoken instruction from the leadership of the Airborne Forces to elect another delegate (Colonel General Polevik), Lebed triumphantly won the elections, and found himself in the ranks of the deputy corps of the last congress of the once powerful Party.
The first political scandal involving the general took place here. Somehow he received the text of Yakovlev’s backstage conversation with delegates from the “Democratic Platform in the CPSU,” where the official ideologist of the party spoke as a frostbitten dissident. Lebed never trusted Yakovlev, but the fact that the “brain of the Party” openly admitted on the sidelines that he was working for the enemies of his country still impressed him.
“What Alexander Nikolaevich said to everyone was significantly different from what he said to a narrow circle of select people,” Lebed later said. And he added: “This was the first tangible blow and a demonstration of double morality. Later, I got used to it and treated such manifestations quite calmly, but then it was a blow.”
The general covered the text of Yakovlev’s speech with his comments. He voiced one of them. This was the famous question: “How many faces do you have, Alexander Nikolaevich?”
At the same time, the general had a short political affair with the Anpilovites - they nominated him as a member of the Central Committee of the “Polozkov” Communist Party of the RSFSR. However, after attending a couple of plenums, he realized that dealing with these comrades was pointless... From now on, the general is a consistent (although not violent) anti-communist.
As for the general’s participation in the so-called “defense of the White House,” this is how things stood. On August 17, 1991, while already on vacation, General Lebed received an order from the new Airborne Forces commander Pavel Grachev to bring the Tula division to combat readiness. On the morning of the 18th, the task was clarified: “to organize the security and defense of the Supreme Council building using the forces of the parachute battalion.”
Having made a forced march to Moscow and arriving at the White House on the morning of the 19th, Lebed saw a familiar sight: a crowd and barricades. The same people it’s more expensive to shoot at.
Alexander Korzhakov led Lebed into the parliament building and handed him over to Skokov. He took the general to Yeltsin, who asked him the question, from whom is he actually going to “guard and defend” the White House building? Since, as Lebed recalls, “this question was not clear to him,” he, in his words, “explained evasively: “Who is the guard guarding the post from? From any person or group of persons who has violated or violated the integrity of the post and the identity of the sentry.”
Yeltsin put an end to the general’s hesitation in the simplest way: he brought him out to the people and presented him as a battalion commander who had gone over to the side of the rebellious people. The swan remained silent. Somewhat later, he was summoned by Marshal Dmitry Yazov, to whom Lebed declared that any forceful actions near the White House “would lead to enormous bloodshed.” This was enough for the putschists, already frightened, to be completely demoralized, and never dared to give the order for the assault.
Lebed’s correct behavior was appreciated: on August 21, Russian President Boris Yeltsin in his speech expressed “heartfelt gratitude to Major General Lebed, who, together with his subordinates, prevented the putschists from seizing the political center of the new Russia.”
Subsequently, Lebed really did not like to remember this episode. “I repeat for the tenth time, I report for the seventeenth time: I did not go over to anyone’s side. I am a soldier and followed orders,” he said nervously. At a meeting of one of the parliamentary commissions, when asked whether he would take the White House if the State Emergency Committee decided to do so, the general firmly answered: “I would.”
And again, let's not lie. At that wonderful time, no other options for meaningful behavior were visible: no one wanted to defend the “historically doomed” Soviet power. Including the people. We must not forget that at the end of the Gorbachev era, when in empty stores there were rows of bags of pepper and bay leaves, it seemed to everyone that nothing could get worse.
What awaited Russia in the next ten years did not occur to anyone then, except those directly interested - and they preferred to remain silent. At that time, the general was not allowed to go to any of the tables at which “all business is done.” However, after a short time he tried to correct this omission. But before that there was the Transnistrian epic, which brought the general his first laurels.
COLONEL GUSEV
Everything started out as usual. In Moldova, as elsewhere in the territory of the former Union, a typical “national revival” was taking place. Russians began to be fired from money jobs, robbed and beaten - as, indeed, everywhere. National cadres destroyed several editorial offices of Russian newspapers, set some on fire, and simply killed others. In the center of Chisinau, Dima Matyushin was beaten to death, unable to answer a question asked in Romanian.
In the summer of 1992, in Moldova, which had recently become an independent country, events took place that even today, more than two decades later, people prefer not to remember. Apart from the residents of Transnistria, only the residents of Odessa, who saw the consequences of the massacre both on local television channels (this footage was not repeated anywhere), and with their own eyes, observing refugees from Tiraspol and Bendery who came en masse to suddenly became a border town. As in the war, they traveled in freight cars.
Soon the name of the hero who decisively ended this massacre became known. According to eyewitnesses, General Lebed covered the Moldovan troops, who were preparing to cross the Dniester, with artillery fire, and then threatened to enter Chisinau with his paratroopers and restore order there.
Paratroopers rarely occupy high positions in the army. They are not taught strategy; the destiny of the “winged infantry” is to solve tactical problems. At the turn of the last decades of the existence of the USSR, airborne troops began to be used to resolve General Lebed commanded the dispersal of the Tbilisi rally in April 1989, then 18 of its participants were killed. After he ridiculed the attempt to pass off these acts of protest as exclusively peaceful, asking simple questions about the sports training of an old woman whom the paratrooper could not catch up with, they started talking about him.
A veteran of Afghanistan, a holder of four orders, he really stood out among the “parquet generals.” The courageous appearance was combined with an aphoristic manner of polemics and a gloomy but subtle sense of humor, which someone mistakenly considered to be rude like a soldier. The ability to express the essence of the situation figuratively and clearly, disregarding the norms of political correctness, became the feature that distinguished the general
At the same time, behind the outward directness there was hidden reasonable caution, shown in 1991 during the events and two years later, when tanks shot at the building of the Supreme Council. Then it was easy to find yourself among the “stranglers of freedom”, “satraps” and put an end to your career. No, General Lebed did not refuse to carry out the order, but he did not show any special initiative, so characteristic of his character.
But in 1996, when the entire Kremlin leadership withdrew from solving the Chechen problem, he signed an agreement with the militant leaders, which at first many understood as a betrayal. In fact, as a true military man, General Lebed understood that victory was impossible to achieve using the methods by which the war was fought; a respite was required to make the right decisions.
Of course, such a colorful figure could not remain unnoticed by the political strategists of that time. Hoping to tame the charismatic military man, popular among the troops and among the people, the then arbiters of the country's destinies made him a tempting offer, the essence of which was to divert votes from some candidates for the presidency. General Lebed agreed.
His political career brought him to the governor’s chair in And in this process, Boris Berezovsky’s desire to preserve his interests was visible, financing the campaign with “black cash”. However, expectations were not entirely realized.
Lebed turned out to be not a very successful leader. Managing the edge turned out to be more difficult than controlling an airborne regiment. The fight against the criminal authority Bykov ended in a tactical victory, but in general the economic successes of the region left much to be desired.
The death of General Lebed in a plane crash caused a wide majority of Russian citizens to refuse to believe that it was an accident. It seemed to many that a very real contender for the presidency, who would have brought real order to the country in a military manner, had been eliminated.
The facts, rather, refute this opinion.
...He could have died in the mountains from a dushman’s bullet or been blown up by a landmine while leading a column to Barikot. But instead, he slyly evaded the routes assigned to him, sat out in garrisons, and was sent ahead of schedule, out of sight, to the academy.
He could have been torn to pieces by a drunken crowd of “democrats” at the “White House” in August 1991; he could have become the savior of the USSR if he had carried out the order to disperse this crowd. But he again slyly evaded the assigned task, betrayed his oath and received a medal for defending the “White House” from the putschists.
He could have lost everything and died if in October 1993 he had responded to the call for help from his friend and patron Rutskoi and came out in support of the Constitution and the Supreme Council, but he betrayed Rutskoi, clicked his heels in front of Yeltsin and once again survived.
...Then General Lebed made betrayal a universal tool of his career.
He betrayed Skokov, who pulled the retired general out of political oblivion. He betrayed the communist Ryzhkov, who gave him shelter in his faction. He betrayed his own army, which gave him everything, by signing peace with Basayev and Maskhadov behind its back, throwing the army out of Chechnya, leaving hundreds of prisoners and thousands of Russians there.
Already casually, he playfully betrayed his friend and patron Grachev, accusing him of preparing a coup d’etat, which turned out to be an ordinary officer’s party.
He betrayed Yeltsin, who dragged him to the Kremlin Olympus. As soon as he suffered another heart attack, Lebed immediately growled that he was ready to replace the old man...
He also betrayed Berezovsky, who took pity on the general thrown out of the Kremlin and took upon himself the costs of pushing the ex-Security Council member into Krasnoyarsk governors.
And now death has overtaken the ex-general, ex-Kremlin official, ex-leader and ex-presidential candidate. Overtook in the most evil and incomprehensible way. His helicopter crashed, caught on high-voltage wires in the foothills of Abakan.
Fate, as if smiling at the former airborne general, gave him a death worthy of a soldier. And it would be worthy if it were not for the purpose of this flight - the opening of another ski resort.
After all, Lebed himself was never famous for his love of skiing, but the new owner of the Kremlin loves to pose against the backdrop of mountain peaks and ski lifts. And having visited Krasnoyarsk, he defiantly went skiing, leaving the puffing governor, in an absurd leather jacket, powerless to watch the pirouettes of the light-footed president. That’s why the governor went to personally open the new route, demonstrate to Putin the similarity of tastes, and prove loyalty. An ambitious general, destroyer of thrones and “father”, he came to terms with his own defeat for the first time. He humiliatedly asked the quiet, bureaucratic Lieutenant Colonel Putin for money to pay salaries to state employees, whom he turned into beggars with his “reforms.” As a politician, he was predeceased.
Who was Swan for us? What remains in your memory?
The commanding roar, the brutal face of the ushkuynik, as if carved out of a piece of concrete, the cunning of a gypsy, the ambitions of a dictator and the posturing of a county actor. He was a typical hero of his time - a cocktail of betrayal, promises, poses and unfulfilled hopes. Troubled times always give birth to such heroes.
He went ahead, destroyed, broke careers and ridges. He lived with a sense of his exclusivity, his special role in the fate of Russia. And it seemed that this was really the case. How many times during this decade did fate take him to the very top, to the very edge of Russian life. And always, in the most incomprehensible way, he lost, missed the goal. It seemed that he was always missing just one step, just one day. But people endowed with heavenly vision said that Fate was testing this man and that he could not stand these tests.
He could have become the savior of Russia, but he became one of its destroyers. He was born for the feat, but never accomplished it. He was talented, but he turned his talent only to personal ambitions. And without fulfilling what was destined, he evaded, went to the side, and exhausted himself. Fate always severely punishes those who do not fulfill what they were born for.
With what do we accompany him into that darkness from which no one has returned?
With a feeling of bitterness that there is less of one more bright person in Russia, and a sad feeling of the meaninglessness of the life he lived.
It is unlikely that we will be able to understand him, but we will at least try to forgive him. Now he needs it more...
Answer from Ruler Sorcerer[guru]
"patriot" - fellow countryman (English) Not my countryman for sure
Answer from Igor Morozov[guru]
Khasavyurtovsky is a betrayal of how many people were later put to death.
Answer from Dmitry Kudinov[guru]
Not a clear personality...
Answer from Dmitry Pushkarev[guru]
The martinet is not the smartest careerist
Answer from Liliya Sultanova[guru]
rather a victim of betrayal.
Answer from Borisych[guru]
Regarding Chechnya, a traitor, but also a patriot to some extent
Answer from Yotary serpent[guru]
For young, illiterate bastards, he is a traitor. For normal people - a patriot.
Answer from Ace Pokryshkin[guru]
Everything that is aimed at destroying the empire is great!
Answer from Green Crocodile[guru]
good question. In Transnistria - a patriot and a warrior. There is a traitor in Khasavyurt. And then decide for yourself...
Answer from Alyona[guru]
everything is too ambiguous.... besides, I think that all the facts have not yet been announced....
Answer from KATAFRACTOY[guru]
In Transnistria, his chief of staff did everything, and Lebed collected the “cream” as commander. (And then everything is clear.
Answer from Kind atheist[guru]
He understood the country - Lebed: “In Russia, the dinosaur syndrome has been going on for centuries: by the time the signal from a small and often brainless head reaches the tail along winding paths, it has already been bitten off and eaten. But the head still continues to turn, since there is no signal in the opposite direction at all "Over the last decade, the people of our country have had so much bullshit put on their ears that it no longer fits there - it's slipping off."
Answer from Cars, bikes, photos, rowing and hunting[newbie]
he's dead
Answer from Lerich[guru]
Let's remember where good intentions lead... It's hard to say in Khasavyurt... But some conclusions already suggest themselves... The Chechens were given the opportunity to enjoy COMPLETE independence... There was just enough time for Kadyrov the elder to have time to reflect, to see where this next independence leads... And the path led from the Russian Federation to Al-Qaeda along the highway... Perhaps this period, given by the Khasavyurt compromises , and brought the result that was obtained after the second Chechen approach... Actually, this is my opinion... it’s not a fact that it’s correct, but History will judge more accurately...
Answer from Alexander Guzhvenko[guru]
A figurehead in the 1996 presidential elections. After losing in the first round, he turned to voters to vote in favor of B. N. Yeltsin. He didn’t have any program! Slogans, crazy slogans! I don’t know how to calculate it, but the fact that voters need to think and move their horns when going to the polls is certain.
Answer from a lion[guru]
a puppet, and all the generals and warriors who betrayed their oath and the USSR for a glass from a drunk were betrayed!
Answer from Damask steel Rare[guru]
Lerich says what it is, after several years of “independence” the Chechens themselves realized how disgusting the content of this wickedness looked, which, under the banner of purity and justice, did evil, and therefore in 2000 the people took neutrality and did not support any of the groups that committed murder. and Lebed was a hero, a patriot and the only worthy alternative to Yeltsin
Answer from Valentina[guru]
Lebed is a man from the galaxy of Russian patriotic officers, for whom HONOR is the main component in their service to the Motherland. Only he could and knew how to stop the war in Transnistria and Chechnya. Even during his lifetime, crooks in power tried to find incriminating evidence on him: cars, dachas, bank accounts... They were all afraid of getting to know him more closely, but they found nothing... car, apartment, salary, everything - official, government. I don’t even want to name here names from the highest ranks, for whom the war was their mother, (so as not to desecrate the bright memory of Alexander Lebed), whose henchmen are currently trying to denigrate his name.
Answer from Hedgehog Liberal[guru]
Lebed, of course, was not any traitor. He was an ordinary Soviet general, with strong elbows and teeth. The regime did not give birth to others in the post-war USSR. Every Soviet general possessed these qualities, to one degree or another. There is no other way to go from colonel to general. His rudeness and tyranny were known to everyone whose eyes were not closed. And he arranged the end of his career and life precisely in his repertoire. And thank God that the pilots of the unfortunate helicopter were not finally condemned for the thoughtless and criminal orders of the Chief Person. And the dish-lickers had such a desire. If you try to disobey the order to fly, you will be thrown out of service. A smart boss should have understood the objections of the professionals, but the fool, who had the reins under his tail, didn’t want to give a damn about any “excuses” of the “cab drivers”. And with this tyranny, Lebed killed a dozen or half a dozen other people.