Russians Drawn to Both Sides of Maverick Lebed

He has stopped the hated war in Chechnya, calmed the hysteria over eastward NATO expansion, bucked up troops on the verge of mutiny and given disillusioned Russians a leader they can believe in.

Then there is the other Alexander I. Lebed.

That one has slandered missionaries and minorities, muddied the diplomatic waters from Ukraine to Argentina, flirted with nationalists, Communists and shady security figures as allies and openly coveted the job of the president who appointed him.

In the four months since Lebed joined the Kremlin team behind Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin, the mercurial Security Council chief has sparked as many political fires as he has put out.

But as the brash and ambitious Lebed ramrods his way toward his goal of becoming this country’s next leader, the Russian people are increasingly drawn to both sides of his split political personality, as impressed with the maverick as with the miracle worker.

The prospect that this 46-year-old retired army general could soon rule Russia has also forced the West to deal with an unwelcome reality, as was clear during Lebed’s high-profile visit to North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters in Belgium last week and his inclusion in a flurry of upcoming diplomatic activities.

Before meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary William J. Perry and a Council of Europe delegation later this week, Lebed faces a major hurdle Tuesday, when he will answer a summons from the unruly Duma, the lower house of parliament, to defend his peace plan for Chechnya that legislators have denounced as treason.

But with the masses now squarely behind him, Lebed can be expected to emerge unscathed and probably emboldened from this latest showdown with other contenders in the battle to succeed the ailing and absent Yeltsin.

Opinion polls have been plotting Lebed’s meteoric rise in the esteem of his fellow Russians, uniformly casting the gruff political neophyte as the man to beat in the succession battle.

Approval ratings issued last week by the respected All-Russian Center for Public Opinion Research indicated that Lebed is the most trusted politician in the country. Forty percent of the nearly 2,500 people polled named Lebed the leader they most approve of, far ahead of the second-place figure, Communist Party leader Gennady A. Zyuganov, chosen by 16%. Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, Lebed’s main challenger for succession, placed third with 14%, and Yeltsin finished fifth with only 11%.

“Lebed is a very complicated figure. He’s unpredictable and doesn’t always listen to advice. He’s not as experienced in politics as those who oppose him, but being an outsider is the key to his strength,” said Dmitri O. Rogozin, leader of the Congress of Russian Communities, a patriotic-nationalist movement that is already at work planning Lebed’s presidential bid.

“Lebed’s visit to NATO demonstrated that he is approachable in the West, and the positive reaction shows that Western leaders now accept that Lebed may very well be the next leader of Russia,” Rogozin said. “But he has to be careful to prevent an impression from forming here that the West supports him. That could backfire and give rise to anti-Western reactions.”

Lebed’s incorruptible image is the backbone of his popular success. Many Russians have become disillusioned with Yeltsin and Chernomyrdin because of a broadly held view that they have lost touch with the common people and sold out Russia’s riches to Western buyers and their own cronies.

Lebed, by contrast, frequently points out that his own share of the wealth from privatization was 15,000 rubles in stock vouchers, worth less than $3.

A history of hard knocks and a reputation for brooking no nonsense have given the gravel-voiced, chain-smoking Afghan War hero an underdog image Russians can relate to.

Lebed’s father spent two years in dictator Josef Stalin’s labor camps for being late to work one day, and Lebed’s own career is a chronicle of unrewarded sacrifice and betrayal by those he has served.

After fighting in Afghanistan and helping defend the Russian White House, which houses parliament, during the 1991 Communist coup attempt, Lebed burst into the limelight with his defense of Russians in the breakaway Trans-Dniester region of the former Soviet republic of Moldova in 1992, only to be forced into retirement three years later by then-Defense Minister Pavel S. Grachev. Henceforth a civilian, Lebed cloaked himself in the mantle of martyrdom and turned to politics to pursue his goal: rescuing the country.

Yeltsin named him national security chief after Lebed finished a strong third in the first round of this summer’s presidential election--but then charged him with settling the raging war in separatist Chechnya. Observers say it was a mission in which the general was expected to fail.

But Lebed, the first Kremlin emissary to meet with Chechen rebels on their own turf, had a cease-fire within hours of his first visit and a settlement plan two weeks later that continues to hold.

“We are very grateful to Lebed for what he did in Chechnya. He is the only politician now in Russia who actually delivered on his main campaign promise,” said Valentina D. Melnikova, head of the Soldiers’ Mothers Committee that emerged to oppose the staggering losses of the fighting in the southern republic that began in December 1994.

Although she and other political activists said they retain reservations about Lebed’s suitability for the presidency, she praised him as an honest man and a “quick learner.”

“Lebed is absolutely the most popular figure in Russia now,” said writer Viktoria Tokareva, whose literary works reflect a sensitive finger on the pulse of a perplexing society. “He has that undefinable quality of being nash”--ours--a man of the people who knows their hardships.

After Lebed called on Yeltsin to step down during his illness for the good of the country, the news weekly Itogi predicted a backlash against him, but the latest polls suggest he touched only sympathetic nerves with the people.

“There is a president, then there isn’t a president,” Lebed complained to journalists on the self-proclaimed occasion of his 100th day in office last month. He warned that the country was sliding into an economic abyss as the president allowed aides to run the Kremlin and the underfed and underpaid army was being pushed to revolt. He has spent much of his free time since then visiting military bases to boost morale.

“We do not have a tradition of military coups in this country. Thank God, we’re not Argentina,” Lebed said in prefacing his warnings that the troops are hungry and disgruntled.

Like so many of his offhand comments, the crack provoked an angry reaction. Argentina’s Foreign Ministry summoned the acting Russian charge d’affaires in Buenos Aires for an explanation.

More worrisome, at least for Russia’s neighbors, have been Lebed’s deliberate moves in the foreign arena. He sent shock waves throughout Ukraine after claiming in an open letter published in the Black Sea Fleet newspaper Thursday that the Ukrainian port city of Sevastopol belongs to Russia. He also threatened to retaliate against German business interests here if NATO expanded to Russia’s borders.

Lebed’s ventures into domestic matters beyond his job description have also stirred controversy, from hints that he would renationalize property privatized “unfairly” to warnings that thieves and bribe-takers should be subjected to summary justice.

But Lebed’s smooth diplomacy in Brussels last week was regarded by many as a window into a personality capable of compromise.

“He came across as very reasonable and open to negotiation,” said one NATO official, expressing surprise and relief.

Russians in attendance saw the exchange as a watershed event, the moment when Western officials stopped holding Lebed at arm’s length and switched to the red-carpet treatment.

“I think everyone came away with a different and much more positive impression of him, myself included,” said Dmitri Pogorzhelsky, a correspondent for the daily Sevodnya. “[NATO officials] said they had been expecting a surly bear and instead met a flexible politician.”

The animal noises were reserved for Lebed’s return to Moscow, where howls from the Duma, the Interior Ministry and the mayor of Moscow savaged his Chechnya plan as capitulation and his talks with NATO as a security sellout.

Lebed shrugged off the accusations with one of his signature folksy witticisms: “The dog barks, but the caravan passes.”

So too is he likely to brush off future complaints if he fails to live up to all that he is now proposing as he travels what amounts to a campaign trail.

“He has real savvy in knowing what will move the narod [the Russian people],” said one Western diplomat here. “I think we’ve been paying too much attention to what he says and not enough to why he says it. He’s a politician and he wants to get elected.”

That penchant for pragmatism has some observers worried, however, as Lebed looks for guidance in negotiating the treacherous internal workings of the Kremlin.

On Sunday, Lebed traveled to Tula, about 100 miles south of Moscow, to urge supporters to back ousted Kremlin security chief Alexander V. Korzhakov in an election to fill the Duma seat that Lebed vacated after his government appointment.

The shadowy Korzhakov is reputed to control much of Russia’s arms trade and warned at a news conference Friday that he knows where the bodies are buried in the Kremlin.

All the more reason to have him as an ally, argued Rogozin, one of Lebed’s closest advisors. “He can be very useful. The Kremlin is a big political swamp, and Korzhakov knows all the hidden footholds.” But some observers think that such an alliance is an error in judgment on Lebed’s part because Korzhakov is widely considered to be corrupt.

Whether Lebed will succeed in establishing himself as heir apparent depends heavily on the timing of any leadership transition, because political fashion can change quickly and Kremlin death watches can go on for years.

Yeltsin has announced plans to undergo heart bypass surgery in late November or December, but the absence of a firm date has fueled speculation that the sitting president is buying time for his preferred successor--Chernomyrdin.

As prime minister, Chernomyrdin would assume the presidency after the death or incapacitation of Yeltsin, but he is widely judged as too lacking in support and charisma to win an election that would have to take place within three months.

On the other hand, analysts note, time is not on Lebed’s side.

“In the end, Lebed’s a loose cannon,” the diplomat said. “And the longer he’s rolling around the deck, the more the chance of an explosion.”

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Alexander Ivanovich Lebed

* BORN: 20 April 1950, in Novocherkassk, in southern Russia

* PROFESSION: Retired army general, current Security Council chief

* PERSONAL: Married, two sons, one daughter

* EDUCATION: 1973 graduate of Ryazan Higher School of Airborne Forces, 1985 graduate of Frunze Military Academy in Moscow

* CAREER: Began in 1973 as a platoon commander at the Ryazan airborne forces school; served in Afghanistan; headed defense of the parliament building during the abortive coup by Communist hard-liners in August 1991; forced to retire from army in 1995; later won a seat in the Duma, the lower house of parliament; appointed Security Council chief in June.

* QUOTE: Renowned in equal measure for quips and bloopers, he warned of impending economic disaster this way: “One finds free cheese only in a mousetrap.”