Light on Soviet Armed Forces

Press, 6 November 1984, Page 16

Light on Soviet Armed Forces

From “The Economist,” London

A misty shaft of light was cast recently on the puzzle of what is going on at the top of the Soviet Armed Forces. Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, who was suddenly dismissed in September as Chief of the General Staff, showed up in East Berlin on October 12 for talks in connection with his new job as head of the Soviet “western command” (apparently a post created specially for him). Marshal Ogarkov is evidently not in full disgrace, even though he is no longer right-hand man to the Minister of Defence, Marshal Dmitri Ustinov — who, at 76, is in need of an heir. The Soviet Union’s marshals are not all alike. Some are professional soldiers, others are strictly party appointees. Marshal Ustinov belongs to an important third category: the representatives of Russia’s military-industrial comClex. He is really a civilian memer of the Politburo, even though he. carries the honorific military rank of marshal. Changes in the Soviet top brass are a matter of more than military interest. When there is confu-

sion about the party’s leadership (as there tends to be these days, with so many old men on the Politburo), it is not only foreigners who ask whom the marshals are backing. Despite the dogma that the party controls the Army,. the Soviet Union’s civilian politicians have a residual fear of “Bonapartist” attempts by the soldiers to install one of their own aS leader. Being too sharp-edged — “our Al Haig,” as one Russian has put it — may well have contributed to Marshal Ogarkov’s demotion; he may also have wanted a bigger defence budget than did the Politburo. Before Marshal Ogarkov was taken down a peg, the best-known example of a soldier’s rise and fall was that of Marshal Zhukov. A hero of World War 11,. Marshal Zhukov helped Khrushchev defeat his party rivals in 1957 (notably by airlifting members of the central committee on military aircraft to Moscow to overcome an antiKhrushchev majority in the Politburo). Khrushchev rewarded

Zhukov with a Politburo seat, only to remove it as soon as he feared that he was growing too powerful.

It took 16 years for another professional soldier to reach the party’s top body. In 1973 Brezhnev wanted to have representatives of all the main centres of Soviet power inside the Politburo, where he could keep an eye on them; so he brought in Mr Gromyko (for the foreign policy establishment), Yuri Andropov (for the K.G.8.) — and, for the soldiers, Marshal Grechko.

When Grechko died three years later, the pattern was changed again, and the arms industry got its place in the sun in the shape of Mr Ustinov, whose rise had coincided with a rapid expansion in arms spending. The party keeps its men throughout the services. General Alexei Yepishev, the head of the Armed Forces’ main political directorate, is less a soldier than a party watchdog and moralechecker. So are the political officers (previously known as commissars) down to company level in the services. Another nonsoldier with a soldierly title is

Marshal Viktor Chebrikov, who got his rank last year because he is the head of the K.G.B. Unlike these men, the new Chief of Staff, Marshal Sergei, Akhromeyev, is a proper soldier. He is an essential link between the politicians and the military men. The Soviet military machine is a tighter hierarchy than the American one. Marshal Akhromeyev has under him the commanders of the Army, the Navy and the Air Force, as well as the heads of the missile and anti-aircraft commands and the civil defence forces.

Only the border troops of the K.G.B. and the security units of the Ministry of Internal Affairs are outside his control. His political influence, however, is limited. He answers to the Minister of Defence and, beyond him, to the Defence Council under the party leader, Mr Chernenko.

Drawing a sharp distinction between the Army and the party would be wrong, since more than nine out of 10 officers carry a party card. There are rivalries between the services, and clashes of economic interest within the military-industrial complex. All

the same, the fact that the Chief of Staff is undoubted top dog in the military structure (unlike the looser American system) makes it easier for the Soviet Armed Forces to lobby as a block.

They have done so. The Armed Forces seem to have agreed to back Andropov for the party leadership in 1982, largely because he offered a chance of getting the economy moving again — and thus getting more money for them.

The Ustinov succession will be worth watching. The Defence Minister passes the party’s orders on to the Chief of Staff, and reports to the Politburo on the mood of the soldiers. Though still sprightly enough to hop on a flight, to Delhi or Prague, the 76-year-old Mr Ustinov cannot last for ever. Since there is no obvious successor of his own special breed — the arms technocrat — will the next Minister of Defence be a party politician or a professional soldier? The choice will cast a clearer light on the relationship between Russia’s soldiers and civilians than Marshal Ogarkov’s comings and goings.— Copyright — The Economist.