Mr. Lebed gained national recognition when he emerged as one of the front runners in the 1996 Russian Presidential elections. As a self-described "soft nationalist", his main platform issue was protecting Russians in the "Near Abroad" - Russia's term for the other former Soviet Socialist Republics it once ruled. A hero of the Afganistan war (1979 - 1989) and a long-time commander in Moldova, Mr. Lebed was forced out of the army in 1994 for refusing to surrender his command because he did not think it well advised to "abandon" the Russian population in Moldova. His dismissal from the army led to a very antagonistic feud between Mr. Lebed and the Russian defense minister Pavel Grachev. That feud was the incentive for Mr. Lebed's 1996 Presidential ambitions.
As a matter of actualities, Gemeral Lebed very nearly became President Lebed. After he received 15% of the vote on the first ballot (enough votes to place him third), Mr. Lebed was the most sought-after politician in Russia. The day after the election, President Boris Yeltsin (who placed first with 35% of the vote) named Mr. Lebed as the new Federal Security Service minister. Mr. Lebed immediately sacked several close Yeltsin advisers and ordered a drastic reshuffle. Defense minister Grachev and Mr. Yeltsin's long-time personal security chief Aleksandr Korsikov were the first hard-line "Party of War" members to lose the battle. In classic Russian putsch tradition, Mr. Lebed himself assumed the duties of those former aids and ministers. Yeltsin campaign chairman Anatoli Chubais described the reshuffle as "an effort to forestall elements within the government who hoped they could prevent the second round of elections". Mr. Lebed seemed to accept this assessment. In reply, he observed: "Now the last communists are purged from Russia's government". He seemed to forget that only ten years previous, Mr. Yeltsin had sung the International as loudly and as proudly as his Communist Party colleagues.
Whatever strategy Mr. Lebed and Mr. Chubais pursued, the result was a resounding Yeltsin re-election triumph. Boris Yeltsin won 54% of the vote; the Communist candidate Genady Zyuganov won 40%. The official response to the victory was another cabinet reshuffle. Viktor Chernomyrden was prime minister and de facto vice-President. Mr. Lebed chose Igor Rodionov as the new defense minister. Mr. Radionov's reputation implied that he would easily take recourse to the brutal use of force. The April 1989 massacre in Tbilisi, Georgia was on his hands. Days after he got the defense ministry, Mr. Radionov ordered attacks against the Chechen capital of Grozny. This was a drastic policy change from the pre-election pledges to end the war in Chechnya.
