Feature: The Military in Russian Politics - Then and Now

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Mar 20, 1998

Russia has never been a banana republic. Not that it always or even almost always was politically stable, but even when the military is directly involved, it plays the tail to the civilian dog. Rumours have surfaced of a possible attempted coup in 1953 by the NKVD (the secret police) under Lavrenti Beria after Stalin died. But the latest confirmed coup in Russia took place on November 7, 1917, when the Bolsheviks, headed by Lenin (with Leon Trotsky as the military leader) dispersed the Kerensky Provisional Government, after eight months of chaos which had followed Czar Nicholas II's abdication. And even then, the Soviet cadres made sure to stay on top. (It wasn't overly difficult - the whole reason for their success was that the army had been demoralized by domestic events, not to mention shattered by the German army. The Bolshevik councils, or Soviets, provided the only effective organization in the army.)

Communist political control over the military was ensured throughout the Soviet period. In the early years, especially since many of the officers were holdovers from the Czarist period, political commissars were assigned to all units, and their countersignatures were required for all orders. The whole point of having the political commissars was to make use of their political skills and ideological dedication, not their military prowess, so not surprisingly this strict system reduced the strength of the military.

Eventually the veto power of the political commissars was taken away, but the Communist Party retained political officers at every level of the military to keep watch on political developments and ensure the military's loyalty. Also, the secret police (under various names throughout Soviet times) kept its own officers throughout the military, generally to recruit agents for domestic spying and destroying political opposition. Both sets of officers wore military uniforms and held military ranks, but those ranks were assigned by their respective organizations, not the military, and did not encompass their actual responsibilities. For example, a junior political officer may have held the rank of lieutenant, but his job was not the leadership of an actual platoon, or aiding in the planning of a larger unit. These officers were not subordinated to military officers of higher rank, but to superior officials in their respective organizations.

This principle was even applied at the very top. The minister of defense (unlike in the Western democracies) was a top-ranking officer (usually a marshal), but at least once, in the case of Andrei Ustinov, the marshal's rank was simply given to a Party official who had never served as an actual military officer. (This was not always the case, though: his predecessor, Andrei Grechko, was a career soldier and a highly respected one to boot.)

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