General Lebed in the army and big politics

In the summer of 1992 in Moldova, most recentlywhich became an independent country, events took place, which today, more than two decades later, they prefer not to remember. Only the inhabitants of Transnistria remember how large the scale was acquired by the inhabitants of Transdniestria, remembering only the inhabitants of Odessa who saw the consequences of the massacre and through local television channels (these footage did not repeat anywhere), and personally, watching refugees from Tiraspol and Bender, who came massively to suddenly became a border town. As in the war, they got in freight cars.

Soon the name of the hero became known, decisivelywho ended this massacre. According to eyewitnesses, General Lebed covered the Moldovan troops who were preparing to cross the Dniester with artillery fire, and then threatened to enter with their paratroopers in Chisinau and restore order there.

Paratroopers rarely occupy high army posts. They are not taught strategy, the lot of "winged infantry" - the solution of tactical tasks. At the turn of the last decades of the existence of the USSR, the landing party began to be used to resolve interethnic conflicts. General Lebed commanded the dispersal of the Tbilisi rally in April 1989, when 18 of its participants died. After he ridiculed the attempt to extradite these acts of protest for exceptionally peaceful ones, asking simple questions about the sports training of the old woman, who the paratrooper could not catch up with, was talking about him.

A veteran of Afghanistan, a chevalier of four orders, hereally stood out among the "parquet generals." Courageous appearance combined with an aphoristic manner of polemic and a gloomy, but subtle sense of humor, which someone mistakenly considered soldierly coarse. The ability to express the essence of the situation figuratively and clearly, neglecting the norms of political correctness, was the feature that characterized General Alexander Lebed.

At the same time behind the outward directness there was a reasonablecaution, manifested in 1991 during the events of the August putsch and two years later, when the tanks shot the building of the Supreme Council. Then it was easy to be among the "stranglers of freedom", "satraps" and put on his career a fat cross. No, General Lebed did not refuse to carry out the order, but he did not show any special initiative, so characteristic of his character.

But in 1996, when all the Kremlinthe leadership withdrew from solving the Chechen problem, he signed an agreement with the leaders of the militants, which at first many people understood as betrayal. In fact, as a true military man, General Lebed realized that victory by the methods used by the war was impossible to achieve, it took a breather to make the right decisions.

Of course, such a colorful figure could notto be ignored by the then political technologists. In the hope of taming the charismatic military soldier and the people, the then rulers of the country's destinies made him a tempting proposal, the essence of which was to distract the votes of some of the presidential candidates. General Lebed agreed.

Political career brought him togovernor's seat in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. And in this process, Boris Berezovsky's desire to observe his interests was seen, financing the campaign with "black cash". However, expectations did not come true.

Swan was not a very successful leader. It was more difficult to control the edge than the landing regiment. The struggle against the criminal authority Bykov ended in a tactical victory, but in general the economic successes of the region left much to be desired.

The death of General Lebed in a plane crash causedwide public resonance. Most of the citizens of Russia refused to believe in its coincidence. It seemed to many that a very real contender for the presidential post had been eliminated, which would have introduced a real military order in the country.

The facts, rather, refute this opinion.