Aggrieved as they are by the humiliations inflicted on their armed forces in Chechnya, Russia's military men are wary of speaking out. But one well-placed army officer, who fears his career would be ruined if his name were disclosed, has set down his views in a remarkably candid manuscript obtained by TIME. He describes a mood of truculent, often anti-American patriotism among his fellow soldiers.
Now more than ever, Russian officers are bitterly questioning what has gone wrong with their army. Trained to fight, many feel only aversion for the slaughter of fellow countrymen, which their government has forced upon them in Chechnya. They say they dream of one thing: to hear the announcement that President Boris Yeltsin has resigned, Defense Minister Pavel Grachev has been fired, and the new head of state has started negotiations to end the war and bring the troops home. But our men continue to follow orders, shooting and dying, and hope the day will come when the military will never again have to be called on to solve political problems.
Not many officers, particularly in the Defense Ministry and on the General Staff, entertained any illusions that Russia would accept the independence of the defiant Chechen republic. But since large stockpiles of weapons were left behind in 1992 when President Jokhar Dudayev deported the Russian units serving in his region, army leaders and the President's advisers could hardly have believed the Chechen crisis would have a bloodless resolution. Chechen civilians have been dying, not because the military aimed to kill them, but because many soldiers have forgotten -- or never learned -- how to shoot straight, and often their missiles hit civilian houses instead of military targets.
Today Russian servicemen feel like second-rate citizens. Career officers find themselves in 13th or 14th place on the pay scale, behind the doormen of expensive Moscow restaurants and the maids who work for Russia's novy rich class. In fact, many officers now have to moonlight as bodyguards or laborers to feed their families.
Many senior generals accuse Defense Minister Grachev of being a weak, incompetent minister with the mentality of a commander of a troop division rather than of a minister charged with his country's security, who has proved himself skilled only in political intrigues. They fault him for surrounding himself with an entourage of loyal but dull military hacks, for not fighting hard enough to defend the military budget, and for covering up corruption.
Grachev, whom Yeltsin appointed Defense Minister in 1992 over many generals with more experience, manages to hang on because of his loyalty to his patron. As commander of the Soviet Airborne troops during the attempted coup in 1991, he refused to storm the building where Yeltsin was holed up; in October 1993, when the leaders of Parliament dared to challenge Yeltsin in the streets, he sided with the President. According to people close to the President's office, Grachev even reminded Yeltsin after the October putsch: "Boris Nikolayevich, I have twice saved you." Officers have nicknamed the Defense Minister "the President's shooting crutch."