Call for Uprising Spotlights Russian Hero

With his call for a Feb. 23 uprising against “the hated regime” of President Boris N. Yeltsin, Gen. Lev Rokhlin has suddenly burst onto the ever-unstable Russian political landscape with the menacing roar of a T-90 tank.

A decorated hero of the Afghan War and one of the few Russian officers to leave the killing fields of the breakaway republic of Chechnya with a modicum of honor, Rokhlin is now under investigation by federal authorities for an appeal that many interpret as a threat to overthrow the government.

Russians made clear with their indifference toward the recent anniversary of the October 1993 firefight at the Russian White House that they are in no mood for another disastrous coup attempt by disgruntled political forces, no matter how many might share their fears that the country is running to ruin.

The ignoble fate of the last military-political shooting star, retired army general and ousted Security Council chief Alexander I. Lebed, would also suggest this country’s rumored longing for martial law and order is mostly a figment of imagination.

But analysts aware of the widespread hunger and disillusionment gripping the armed forces warn that the Kremlin will ignore Rokhlin’s allusions to an impending mutiny at its own peril.

“Right now, he has no possibility of inspiring an armed uprising, but no one can talk about what the situation will be like by springtime,” says Pavel Felgengauer, military analyst for the respected daily Sevodnya, who predicts a steady erosion of military morale and combat-readiness through the winter.

As the cash-strapped government continues to hold back wages and already meager food and fuel rations go undelivered, “a lot of things he says will ring the right bells with the uniformed military,” Felgengauer says of the rough Rokhlin, who lacks charisma.

Rokhlin--an inactive-duty officer who chairs the important Defense Committee of the Duma, the lower house of parliament--bolted in July from the pro-government Our Home Is Russia political party that won him a seat in the Duma two years ago.

In the intervening three months, he has launched his All-Russian Social Movement in Support of the Army, Defense Industries and Military Science and established cells in dozens of military strongholds throughout the country--an organizational feat that Lebed has been unable to manage after more than two years.

His lambasting of the government for gutting military spending has struck a chord with embittered officers, and his predictions of unrest in the ranks ring true even for those in power.

But little heed was paid to the crusading 50-year-old Rokhlin until his stunning Oct. 19 appeal to supporters at his political headquarters in the nearby city of Solnechnogorsk.

“We must unite!” the Interfax news agency quoted him as saying at the founding assembly of his movement, as he called for a march on Moscow by soldiers and other supporters Feb. 23, the Soviet-era Day of the Defenders of the Motherland holiday, in “a rehearsal, the aim of which is to see whether enough force has been accumulated to throw the regime out by the scruff of the neck.”

Fellow Duma members deemed Rokhlin’s fiery oratory an invitation to treason. Alexander Shokhin of Our Home Is Russia, the leader of Rokhlin’s former political faction, denounced him as “dangerous” and “increasingly extremist.”

The federal prosecutor’s office ordered military counterparts to investigate, but Rokhlin has remained unapologetic and defiant.

In an interview at his Duma office, festooned with military flags and portraits of Soviet war heroes, he disputed the Interfax quotes but then as much as repeated them.

“We must act within the framework of the constitution and laws of the country,” he said. “But we put it bluntly: If the leadership of our country, especially the president, dares even once more to violate the constitution and set any kind of power structures against the people, then we will have to violate the constitution in the same way.”

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Former political colleagues who gained respect for Rokhlin during his unflinching assault against secessionist rebels in Chechnya describe him as well-meaning but nonetheless dangerous for the disruptions he could inspire in the armed forces.

“If he made such statements [about an uprising], he should be stripped of his officer’s rank,” says Sergei Belyayev, another Duma deputy who has defected from Our Home Is Russia. He blames Rokhlin’s drift toward extremism on the authoritarian Communist company he has begun to keep.

On Thursday, Rokhlin joined with Communist Duma Deputy Igor Bratishchev, who is notoriously nostalgic for the Soviet-era economic order, to issue a manifesto accusing the Yeltsin leadership of “ruining our government and continuing to kill people, military servicemen first among them.”

Rokhlin has claimed that an average of 10 army recruits die each day from noncombat causes, including suicide, starvation and hazing.

The manifesto unfavorably compared the damage done to the economy since the collapse of Communist rule--a 70% to 90% drop in industrial production, by its calculations--with the losses suffered in the World War II struggle with Nazi Germany on Soviet soil, when output dropped 25%. The movement leaders also blamed Yeltsin for recent demographic setbacks they claim amount to “genocide of the entire people.”

The manifesto echoes the Communist Party’s long-standing accusations about the costs of Russia’s transition to a market economy, which has transformed big cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg into prosperous, if often corrupt, centers of commerce but left many pensioners and government workers without the basics to survive.

Similar denunciations were uttered last year by Lebed, another outspoken general with a more impressive military than political record. He was fired as national Security Council chief after only three months when he began openly coveting the presidential seat.

Analysts note that the best protection against any successful call to arms by either Rokhlin or Lebed is their dislike for each other, which sends a confusing signal to the fractured military forces.

“An alliance aimed at gaining political power is a possibility and would make sense from their perspectives,” says Belyayev, noting Lebed’s presidential ambitions and Rokhlin’s ability to unite and control the army. “Lebed’s popularity is waning while Rokhlin’s is on the rise, so Lebed might be interested if he could lure Rokhlin away from the left. An alliance is theoretically possible, but I don’t expect it.”

Rokhlin describes Lebed as like-thinking in his concerns for the army but too absorbed with his own political agenda. “It’s not my fault that Alexander Ivanovich Lebed is thrashing around like a caged bird, frightening off everyone who should be our ally,” says Rokhlin, who this month soared to No. 17 in the Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper’s monthly rankings of the country’s 100 most influential figures. Last month he was No. 35, and a year ago he didn’t make the list.

Lebed, who a year ago ranked No. 3 behind Yeltsin and Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, has steadily dropped since his October 1996 sacking, and ranks 46th now.

Meanwhile, morale in the army is likewise in a downward spiral. “The situation in the army will continue to deteriorate, and by spring . . . the time might be ripe for a kind of mutiny in the armed forces,” Felgengauer says.