With his May 17 election as governor of the giant Krasnoyarsk Territory in Siberia, former army Gen. Alexander Lebed has re-established himself as one of Russia’s most popular politicians. Praised for ending the war in Chechnya and standing up to President Boris Yeltsin, who fired him as national security adviser in 1996, Lebed has set his steely gaze on running for the presidency, perhaps as early as 2000. With Russia’s economy in crisis, Lebed’s attacks on Kremlin policies are winning over more Russians. The 48-year-old Lebed talked with Tribune senior editors in Moscow before launching his successful campaign in Krasnoyarsk.
Q: Let’s start with the economy. What’s its overall status?
A: It is the seventh year of reforms and a number of major issues have not been solved yet. For example, there is no land code or a comprehensible land law or a land inventory. Tax policy is outrageous, and the tax code that is now being discussed will kill off the middle class, which did not even get the chance to develop.
The privatization was being conducted for the benefit of 3 percent or at most 5 percent of the population. A superficially thin layer of rich people has formed. There is an enormous layer of people who are either on the verge or have crossed the border of poverty.
The social scales are tilted so much they can break. Capital is escaping out of Russia, which means it is neither safe nor profitable in Russia. It seems to me that (leaders) have merely been displaying official optimism.
Q: Is that an occasional show just for outsiders, or is it an everyday masquerade?
A: For us, too, but there are some nuances here. Moscow has concentrated in itself not less than 80 percent of the banking capital of the country. Up to 30 percent of the federal budget is either directly or indirectly used for Moscow. Moscow now is like a commercial facade, and the Americans, French and Germans come here and are being shown, “Look, this is how we live.”
But beyond the Urals lives a fifth of the population with 3 percent of the capital. You can judge what kind of life they have.
Q: You have formed a political party. What solutions do you see?
A: I think we must begin by solving the land issue. Russia is the owner of the largest black-earth area in the world, but 73 years of Communist rule did not go without an impact. No people here know through practice what private property is. For almost four generations people were being forced to forget what it is like to feel the responsibility of the ownership of anything.
Moreover, two-thirds of the country is in the north, therefore it is not possible to solve the land issue by the means of an all-Russia referendum. I do not think there will be many people who would desire to own a square meter of the tundra.
The south is a fertile land and, with an irrational solution, people over there will fight for every meter, because the division of land always means war. Those issues could be solved gradually and through regional referendums of people living in similar conditions.
Another problem is the tax policy: 35 to 40 percent must be the tax limit for Russian citizens; today it is 92 to 95 percent if you are lucky. . . . That is why all entrepreneurs and businessmen in Russia have become crooks.
Q: Privatization in agriculture will require capital investment. Where will the money come from?
A: Investment in the agricultural sector starts giving profits by the sixth year. It’s a long-term investment, and that’s why the Russian people today refuse to get into that. This must be taken phase by phase, by reviving the trust of the people in the state.
Land is the most precious thing after the people, and these imbeciles are running around saying that they are afraid of
selling their motherland. Ten percent of investment capital in the U.S. comes from Japan, but I never heard any complaints that anybody gets their wages in the yen.
Q: How have your travels affected your point of view regarding Russian foreign policy?
A: The West wants Russia to look only to the West. In the West, everybody refuses to acknowledge such a simple fact that three-fifths of Russian territory is Asia and that one-half of Europe is Russia.
In the West–especially in Europe–China, Korea and Japan are regarded as faraway, exotic countries. For us they are neighbors. A system of European security cannot be constructed without Russia, and hence the world system of security.
Russia is a natural bridge between East and West. This Eurasian idea is very close and understandable to me, and I think this is what the future is. I am an optimist by nature, and I do not want to paint a picture of an apocalypse, but if one studies history thoroughly, one sees that a collapse of any country, especially one the size of the Soviet Union, means a change in world order, and change usually means war.
I call everyone to love Russia, to love it not because you like it, but become completely selfish and love yourself, and through that love Russia, so that it doesn’t collapse and bury everything under its ruins.
Q: You say you are an optimistic man, but you talk mostly of problems. What makes you optimistic?
A: I know the history of my country and my people. And I know that Russia possesses a unique ability to crawl out of a ditch even if all its bones are broken. Russians will use their teeth, their gums if they have no teeth.
Q: But you don’t think the current president is up to it, do you?
A: Do you know what was a previous job of the first democratically elected president of Russia? He was secretary of the Sverdlovsk public committee, and to hold such a post in Leonid Brezhnev’s time, one had to possess very special qualities. He was also the secretary of the Moscow city party committee. He was a candidate to the political bureau and a member of the central committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. And suddenly when he was 60 years old, when one is supposed to get old and sick, he decided that he was a democrat, and the whole world believed him. “My friend Bill. My friend Kohl. My friend Jacques Chirac. Very good friends.”
Q: When was the last time you spoke with Yeltsin?
A: I clearly remember the time before the last, on Aug. 12, 1996. I decided to report to the president on the situation in Chechnya. As I went on with my report he looked more and more bored and then excused himself, saying he was not feeling well. After that he refused to see me. I had violated the main commandment: I had tried to report to the president things that did not please him.
Numerous flatterers are at his ears, who keep telling him that “the reforms are going on, the people are happy, everybody loves you.” And suddenly there is this impolite person who wants to spoil the bowl of honey with a spoon of tar.
Q: What makes you think that having been a decorated general in the Soviet army would be a credential to be the president of Russia?
A:.Let Gen. Eisenhower be the one to answer that question.
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An edited transcript
