Analysis : Ousters Over Flight Seen Reflecting Soviet Tension

The dramatic firing of the Soviet defense minister and chief air defense marshal in the wake of a daring young West German’s flight to Red Square was only the latest, although the most spectacular, humbling setback for the Soviet military in recent years.

And the blistering Politburo criticism of the Defense Ministry for “a major dereliction of duty” raises the specter of “a real housecleaning” to come, a senior U.S. official said Monday.

Some U.S. analysts had believed that the recent downgrading of the Soviet military was caused only by policy differences. But humiliating the military on this scale, coupled with the threat of a broader purge, indicates a deeper and longstanding tension--even hostility--between Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev and his generals, as several U.S. officials acknowledged after the weekend’s events.

No Kremlinologist expects the Soviet military to move against Gorbachev. “But, if the military were ever going to mobilize (against him), they’ve got reason to now,” Stanford Prof. Condoleezza Rice, an expert on Soviet military affairs, said.

The reasons for deeper tensions, if present, remain unknown. But many possible causes have been suggested.

Afghanistan ‘Bleeding Wound’

Gorbachev may believe that the military has blundered once too often, as in its conduct of the seven-year war in Afghanistan, which he has described as a “bleeding wound.” Perhaps he objects to wasteful military programs, such as developing and deploying intermediate-range SS-20 missiles in Europe that may soon be destroyed under an arms control agreement. Perhaps the military tried to play politics during leadership changes of recent years.

Whatever the rationale, and whatever the degree of antipathy, the strains between Gorbachev and the military were apparent to those in the West from the start of his regime.

“Soviet military officers face a watershed with the Gorbachev regime,” Dale Herspring, a State Department politico-military officer, told a meeting of the American Academy of Political Science in New York recently. “The Gorbachev approach to the military is radically different from the pre-Gorbachev approach” on matters of symbols, budget, arms control and personalities.

No longer does Soviet television glorify feats of the military in World War II, which the Soviets call the Great Patriotic War. Former Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev made himself a marshal, bedecked with medals and a fanciful account of his wartime exploits. Gorbachev has never served in the army and is almost dismissive of military pomp.

Never a Full Member

More significantly, as Herspring and others have pointed out, former Defense Minister Sergei L. Sokolov was never accorded full membership in the Politburo. All of his predecessors had been full members of that supreme Kremlin group since 1974, when the heads of the three key Soviet institutions--the KGB secret police, the Foreign Ministry and the Defense Ministry--were all elevated to that level. The KGB chief and foreign minister continue to be full members of the Politburo, but not the defense minister.

The plunge in status of the military was most striking on the reviewing platform of the Lenin Mausoleum. Initially in 1985, Sokolov was on the right of Gorbachev, in the defense minister’s traditional position. But a month ago, at the May 9 Victory Day parade, Sokolov and the other service chiefs stood below the most junior political secretary of the Kremlin.

Some U.S. officials have sought to explain Gorbachev’s relations with the Soviet military as part of a broad strategy to win Western support for his “peace” overtures.

Gorbachev has embarked on “a demilitarizing of Soviet foreign policy,” as one senior official put it. A division has been withdrawn from Mongolia, on the Chinese border, and radical arms reduction has been offered to Washington. And he may believe that forcing a lower profile on the Soviet military will improve the West’s receptivity to these proposals, which would provide a breathing space during which the Soviet economy might rebound.

Displeasure at Moratorium

As it has been subjected to this reduced status, the military leadership has shown signs of displeasure with Gorbachev’s 18-month unilateral moratorium on nuclear weapons tests as well as with some of his arms control proposals to President Reagan at the Reykjavik summit last October, including his acceptance of on-site inspection, several Soviet experts said.

The military may also object to the risks inherent in Gorbachev’s glasnost , or openness, policy in Eastern Europe, according to Harriet and William Scott, two veteran observers of the Soviet military. “If there is new unrest in the Soviet Bloc, a new ‘Prague Spring’ due to this liberalization, Gorbachev will call on the Soviet military to put it down,” Harriet Scott said. “But here he is talking about troop reductions and other constraints on them.”

But it may be that the military’s relationship with Gorbachev is rooted in September, 1984, before he was elected Communist Party leader, when the chief of staff at the time, Marshal Nikolai V. Ogarkov, was summarily fired. His departure marked the beginning of the Soviet military’s decline in public status.

No single theory is endorsed by a majority of Kremlinologists. Many believe that Ogarkov was simply too forceful in pushing for more money and too impatient with politicians who did not share his concern about new U.S. guided missiles and other high-technology weaponry.

One popular scenario, which Herspring and others have put forward, is that the Politburo decided to prevent Ogarkov from having any role in succession politics by dismissing him. Gorbachev then was reportedly elected by a one-vote margin, 5 to 4, with opposition from those who were allied with the military. Gorbachev may have decided from that time not to allow the military to come close to such power again.