Alexander Lebed

Alexander Ivanovich Lebed (Russian: Алекса́ндр Ива́нович Ле́бедь; April 20, 1950 – April 28, 2002) was a Russian military officer 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, following a Mi-8 helicopter crash.

Military

Lebed joined the Soviet Army's VDV airborne troops in 1969. He spent eight years as company leader at the VDV officer school in Ryazan, then served as battalion commander with distinction in the War in Afghanistan from 1981 to 1982 before becoming a regimental commander.

In 1982-1985 he studied in Frunze Military Academy, Moscow. Among his duties was being a member of the Funeral Department during the period of many deaths among the Soviet gerontocracy, including three Soviet rulers.

At the rank of colonel, Lebed led airborne troops during the Soviet internal crises in Azerbaijan in 1988 and 1990 (Black January), and in Georgia in 1989. The latter included the brutal dispersing of a pro-independence rally at a government building in Tbilisi, leaving twenty people dead.

Lebed commanded the 106th Airborne Division from 1988 to 1991. He received national attention after the Soviet Coup of 1991, in which a conspiracy of government members opposing the perestroika had sought the overthrow of Mikhail Gorbachev's government and the reversal of some of his liberalizing political reforms. At the height of the crisis, the Army had been ordered by the coup participants 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 to become deputy to the commander of Russian Airborne Troops, general Pavel Grachev. From June 1992 he was commander of the Moldova-based 14th Guards Army, which became known for its major involvement in the Transnistria and Gagauzia conflict.

Entry into politics

Describing President Boris Yeltsin's performance as a "minus" overall, Lebed gained fame by suggesting that the country could use a military dictator like Augusto Pinochet. 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 the moderate-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 both the incumbent president, Boris Yeltsin, and the leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, 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, which Yeltsin won.

As a military man in the political arena, Lebed argued for "preserving the army is the basis for preserving the government" while describing Pinochet as having managed to revive Chile by "putting the army in first place."

As chairman of the Security Council, Lebed led negotiations with the Chechen President, Aslan Maskhadov, and signed agreements in the town of Khasavyurt in Dagestan 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 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. However, a GRU defector, Stanislav Lunev, confirmed that such nuclear devices existed and speculated that they possibly have been already deployed.

Krasnoyarsk

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

He held this position until his death in a Mil Mi-8 helicopter crash on April 28, 2002, after it collided with electric lines during foggy weather in the Sayan Mountains.

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

• (On the War of Transnistria): "I am proud that we helped and armed Transnistrian guards against Moldovan fascists".
• (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."
• (On the ultranationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky) "The Lord God's monkey."

Lebed did not consider Ukraine and Belarus to be separate countries from Russia, nor did he consider the Ukrainian and Belarusian separate from Russian. In 1995 he believed both countries would become part of a new state, on a confederal basis with the Russian Federation, at the end of the 20th century.