Russia Experts See Chubais Behind Lebed’s Swan Dive

The man who many believe really rules Russia--and to whom the country’s popular but now sacked strongman Alexander I. Lebed ascribed his downfall--celebrated a behind-the-scenes victory in typical style Friday: out of the public gaze.

While the rest of the Russian elite speculated noisily about the consequences of Lebed’s dramatic dismissal Thursday as security chief after four months of infighting with rivals for Boris N. Yeltsin’s ear, only Anatoly B. Chubais--the president’s chief of staff--remained aloof.

But analysts agreed with Lebed that Chubais, a young liberal whose powerful job gives him control over who gets to meet the ailing president and what documents land on his desk, had been the chief engineer of Lebed’s removal with the help of his temporary ally, Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin.

“The sacking was expected. One group on top [Chubais and Chernomyrdin] has eaten up another big but less experienced group led by Lebed,” said Alexei G. Arbatov, deputy head of the Russian parliament’s defense committee.

With Yeltsin in a sanatorium awaiting heart bypass surgery and unable to handle the day-to-day running of Russia, fierce feuding among the three powerful aides--who each want to inherit the leadership mantle--has raged unchecked all summer.

Lebed was the outsider, an outspoken soldier who has gruffly urged Yeltsin to relinquish power if he was too ill to rule, analysts said.

He made no secret of his own ambition to be Russia’s next president. He threatened the status quo and the suave but less charismatic Kremlin courtiers. He was the challenger who could not be domesticated by his new post at court.

Explaining his swift Kremlin ouster, Lebed, speaking with reporters, laid most of the blame in one spot: “I was in the way of Mr. Chubais’ efforts to build up a system of regency. He wants to become president. He is saving up money for that.”

The burly former general--whose dismissal from his final Kremlin post as presidential envoy to separatist Chechnya was later clarified by Yeltsin’s press office--repeated on Friday: “Chubais is Yeltsin’s regent.”

The pretext for the dismissal of Lebed as secretary of Russia’s Security Council was a melodramatic accusation by another of his enemies, hawkish Interior Minister Anatoly S. Kulikov.

Kulikov asserted that Lebed was plotting a military coup, though no proof of these allegations, uttered Wednesday, has been made public. And Yeltsin took no notice of the allegations of a possible military action when telling Russians in a televised broadcast why he was getting rid of Lebed, saying instead that he was fed up with the onetime paratroop general’s endless quarrels with other members of his Cabinet.

Lebed riposted that he had little access to Yeltsin to tell his side of the story or to explain his conduct as security chief--including his deal ending Russia’s 20 months of fighting with separatists in the southern region of Chechnya. Again, he blamed “the regency institute” for shutting him out.

Chubais, 41, has both professional and personal links with Yeltsin and has proved a wily and subtle politician. He was the most tenacious of Yeltsin’s early, radical economic reformers, clinging to a ministerial post until January even as his colleagues were gradually removed.

He later worked on Yeltsin’s July reelection campaign, laboring shoulder to shoulder for months on the stump with Tatiana Dyachenko, the president’s daughter, who, as the Kommersant Daily newspaper put it, “had the opportunity to appreciate his managerial efficiency.”

Unpopular with voters since he ran Russia’s vast but controversial privatization and vouchers program, in which many ordinary Russians believe they were cheated, Chubais played safe until the elections were over. He insisted that he had no plans to return to politics.

But within days of Yeltsin’s victory, Chubais accepted the post of chief of staff--an appointment analysts saw as a counterbalance to Lebed’s simultaneous promotion.

And while he may have maneuvered out a Kremlin rival this week, whether Chubais will ultimately profit from Lebed’s current misfortune is not yet clear.

*

In a country weary of intrigue at the top, Chubais is closely identified with widespread, popular cynicism about Kremlin skulduggery.

“Lebed is the only one in the government who doesn’t lie, who can keep his promises,” said Vera A. Proskurina, 42, a textile worker. “And that is why they hate him so much. He is an alien to them with their intrigues. If there are elections tomorrow or in the near future, Lebed will be our president.”

Parliamentarian Arbatov said it was “far from clear that peace would now descend on the Kremlin.”

While the prime minister has had less blame heaped upon him for the ouster of Lebed and has won some short-term political gain with Lebed gone, his rivalry with Chubais will lead to more infighting “unless the activities of Lebed as an outsider make Chubais and Chernomyrdin stay united for a while,” Arbatov said.

In contrast, newspapers and analysts said Friday, Lebed’s dismissal will probably enhance, rather than tarnish, his popular appeal. His reputation for honesty and straightforward conduct won him 11 million votes as a law-and-order candidate in presidential elections this summer.

Despite some disappointment on the street that he “bought into” Yeltsin’s administration as security chief after the first round of presidential voting, helping elect a rival whose mistakes he had once criticized, a poll this month rated Lebed as Russia’s most trusted politician.

Commentators were divided about how his dismissal is playing.

Rossiyskie Vesti, the Kremlin paper, greeted his sacking with a gleeful pun on his name, which means swan: “The swan has flown away,” the paper announced. But Komsomolskaya Pravda, another daily, said disconsolately in seeming reply: “The swan flew away yesterday. Where will Russia fly tomorrow?”

Clearly, analysts said, with or without him as part of this nation’s political life, Russia still faces a morass of major problems, including huge delays in the payment of all manner of worker salaries, a shaky peace in Chechnya and rumbling discontent in the armed forces.

And on these and other topics, Arbatov said, “It is quite clear that Lebed has not said his last word. Lebed is the strongest opposition leader now on the Russian scene. In the eyes of the public, he is now both a hero and a martyr, quite a winning combination in modern Russian political history.”

Also Friday, Chernomyrdin said Lebed’s replacement as Security Council chief will likely be named next week.

And a reshuffling in the armed forces continued with Friday’s announcement of the removal of army Gen. Mikhail P. Kolesnikov, chief of the general staff and a career officer with no known links to Lebed. He was replaced with no explanation by Gen. Viktor Samsonov.

Lebed--whose first move after his dismissal was to calm fears he would call out supporters in the armed forces as Kulikov had suggested--made clear Friday that he planned to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

He told Russian television that he was going to the theater to see Alexei K. Tolstoy’s play “The Death of Ivan the Terrible”--commemorating the czar whose reign was one of the bloodiest in Russian history--”to learn how to run a state properly.”