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Grachev knows how to create a good impression. He gets in touch with the President at 10 each morning and gives him cheerful briefings about the high combat readiness and morale of the armed forces. Yeltsin loves these reports. When Grachev was confronted by a Moscow newspaper last summer with accusations that his briefings were not objective, he dismissed the charges as opposition intrigues.
Although Yeltsin has protected Grachev in the past, military analysts believe he will eventually abandon the minister. When there is danger of social explosion -- quite possibly because of Chechnya -- or when he needs to gain points for the 1996 presidential election, Yeltsin will dump Grachev to save himself.
Grachev, 47, is painfully jealous of the prestige and authority of Deputy Minister of Defense Boris Gromov, 51, who was his former commander in Afghanistan and reportedly castigated him for tactical combat mistakes there. The more Grachev senses his own inadequacy in the job, the cooler his relations have become with his powerful rival.
When Gromov was named as Grachev's deputy in June 1992, he was not even given an office on the so-called commanders' floor of the Defense Ministry. Instead, he had to move into a run-down building across the street. To get back at Grachev and save face among his subordinates, Gromov made sure his office was beautifully renovated. The jealous Defense Minister began to keep a close watch on Gromov, monitoring all his travels and activities.
The Defense Minister made his move to get rid of Gromov just before the action in Chechnya, by announcing plans to eliminate several deputy-minister slots. Gromov is now in bureaucratic limbo, since Yeltsin has yet to ratify the shake-up. He has tried to stake out an independent position for himself, even carrying on private telephone negotiations with Dudayev before the military intervention. Gromov has continued to call for an end to the bloodshed and even upstaged Grachev by making a holiday hospital visit to wounded soldiers from the front.
Slogans about the military remaining aloof from politics are nothing but populist declarations that do not reflect present-day reality. Yeltsin has failed to grasp that his armed forces, proclaimed to be democratic and nonpartisan, remain communist. Many generals and senior officers admit they still keep their Communist Party cards, and some continue to pay party dues.