The Imperial Leader Cleans House

There are several lessons of importance to the United States to be learned from the sudden appointment of a relatively obscure general, Dmitri T. Yazov, as the new Soviet minister of defense.

First, Mikhail S. Gorbachev enjoys considerably greater authority than many in the Western world used to give him credit for. In fact, never before in Soviet history--not even during the Stalin era--has the military hierarchy been so contemptuously ignored in the selection of a defense minister.

That Gorbachev fired Defense Minister Sergei L. Sokolov, 75, is not surprising. The ailing, low-key marshal was given his post by Konstantin U. Chernenko, and from the very beginning was perceived as no more than a caretaker. The 19-year-old West German Mathias Rust, landing his plane in Red Square, simply expedited Sokolov’s inevitable replacement.

But choosing Yazov as his successor is a manifestation of Gorbachev’s personal power. The new minister has no particular claim to prominence, except being Gorbachev’s protege. As a mere candidate (non-voting) member of the Communist Party Central Committee, he was outranked by 23 military leaders who were elected as full members at the 27th party congress in March, 1986. For years Yazov’s career seemed to have been going nowhere, with the general posted to one military district or another without getting a promotion.

This all changed last summer when Yazov, then the Far Eastern district commander, managed to impress the visiting Mikhail Gorbachev. In a matter of months the general was brought to Moscow to be put in charge of the defense ministry’s personnel. Yazov has quickly proved to be Gorbachev’s loyalist, eager to purge aging military brass on the general secretary’s orders.

Making Yazov the defense minister consolidates Gorbachev’s control over the Soviet national-security establishment. Gorbachev’s earlier handing of the foreign ministry to the inexperienced but devoted Eduard Shevardnadze signified the Soviet leader’s intent to act as his own secretary of state. Now, by picking a political light-weight to run the military bureaucracy, Gorbachev has manifested his ambition to perform as secretary of defense as well. That the Politburo has allowed him a de-facto takeover of the defense ministry should put to rest rumors of the Soviet leader’s inability to have his own way in the Kremlin.

Second, the military is currently not in a position to challenge the political leadership. Nothing could be more offensive to marshals and admirals than being bypassed in favor of a junior colleague of no special distinction.

If Gorbachev can get away with this humiliation of the military, surely he can safely ignore its grumbling about his arms-control proposals. If the West does not like Soviet disarmament initiatives or worries about continuing global assertiveness, it should put the blame right at Gorbachev’s door. Using the Soviet military as a scapegoat for less agreeable aspects of Soviet conduct will no longer do.

Third, Gorbachev and his Politburo colleagues have amply shown that while the professional military does not dominate Soviet politics, military considerations occupy a central place. The extreme seriousness with which the Soviet leadership has treated Rust’s penetration of Soviet air defenses hardly suggests the relaxed attitude toward military matters that Gorbachev likes to project in public.

When in September, 1983, the Soviets shot down a South Korean airliner, the air defense chief, Marshal Alexander I. Koldunov, did not get as much as a slap on the wrist. But when a little innocent Cessna landed next to the Kremlin he was unceremoniously dismissed before any meaningful investigation could be performed. The message: It is safer for Soviet commanders to shoot down a civilian plane than to let it pass.

Finally, there is a lesson for Soviet subjects and Americans as well. The time of good old Leonid I. Brezhnev, with his live-and-let-live attitude, is over in the Soviet Union. Gorbachev does not tolerate mistakes. And he has little patience for those who fail to shape up according to his famous “newthinking.”

At home it is the inept bureaucracy that is the target of Gorbachev’s ruthless determination. Abroad he has made abundantly clear that it is U.S. “neo-globalism” that constitutes the greatest obstacle to his designs.

For Americans to celebrate the new Russian imperial leader’s progress would be similar to Romans being jubilant over Hannibal coming to power in Carthage. Excessive generosity in assessing the intentions of a mighty adversary is no virtue.