T-80UD, 4TH GUARDS KANTEMIROVSKAYA TANK DIVISION,
MOSCOW, OCTOBER 4, 1993
When first delivered to the 4th GTD in the late 1980s,
the T-80UD tanks were finished in the standard three-color scheme. When
repainted after extensive training use, this was simplified to dark green and
gray-yellow as seen here. The tactical number of this tank, 187, is seen in
shortened form on the right side due to a lack of space. The two last digits,
“87,” are also found on the rear-facing red night format ion light at
the top of the turret. The 4th GTD traditionally used a pair of oak leaves as
its symbol, usually painted on the searchlight cover, and the “2” in
the center indicates the 13th GTR. This was one of the tanks taking part in the
confrontation between Boris Yeltsin and the Russian parliament, and the burning
“White House” can be seen in the background after being shelled by
several tanks.
The constitutional crisis of 1993 was a political stand-off
between the Russian president Boris Yeltsin and the Russian parliament that was
resolved by military force. The relations between the president and the
parliament had been deteriorating for some time. The power struggle reached its
crisis on 21 September 1993, when President Yeltsin aimed to dissolve the
country’s legislature (the Congress of People’s Deputies and its Supreme
Soviet), although the constitution did not give the president the power to do
so. Yeltsin justified his orders by the results of the referendum of April
1993. In response, the parliament declared the president’s decision null and
void, impeached Yeltsin and proclaimed Vice President Aleksandr Rutskoy to be
acting president.
On 3 October, demonstrators removed police cordons around
the parliament and, urged by their leaders, took over the Mayor’s offices and
tried to storm the Ostankino television centre. The army, which had initially
declared its neutrality, stormed the Supreme Soviet building in the early
morning hours of 4 October by Yeltsin’s order, and arrested the leaders of the
resistance.
The [Red] Army’s Support?!
The dominant organizational culture of the Russian army
continued to hold the view that intervention in sovereign power issues was
illegitimate. Although Yeltsin was highly unpopular among the armed forces,
praetorian sentiments remained the minority position.
One important public change in Russian organizational norms
was the abandonment of the slogan “the army outside politics.” After
the October 1993 events the phrase came under attack from President Yeltsin and
some of his close supporters, and it was therefore dropped from Grachev’s lexicon.
Many officers continued to adhere to it in some form in private, with
qualifications. One retired colonel noted that it would make a nice
“bumper sticker,” saying he liked the slogan but in reality in all
countries the army has a political role. Other officers adhered to the
rationale used in Ministry of Defense training literature – that the army is
the “object” of politics, but should not be its “subject.”
In other words, as a state institution the military fulfilled the decisions of
civilian leaders. Other officers, such as one retired general, categorically
rejected the slogan as “complete nonsense,” but for the same
rationale given by the supporters of it – that the army implemented orders of
politicians, and was therefore, ipso facto, “in politics.” Thus,
Russian officers understood the distinction between defense politics, in which
the army obviously played a role, and sovereign power issues, a sphere where
the armed forces should not be involved.
Several major polls conducted between 1994 and 1999 provided
further evidence of the Russian army’s commitment to the norm of civilian
supremacy. A major poll by the German Friedrich-Ebert Foundation was released
in the fall of 1994. Seventy-one percent of officers thought that a military
coup in the next two years was improbable, ten percent thought it was a
certainty, and eleven percent thought it was probable. This scenario was
considered the second least likely of twelve scenarios, falling only be- hind a
“seizure of power by Russian fascist elements.” Even full Russian
membership in NATO by 1996 was considered more likely. Officers also ex-
pressed objections to most potential domestic uses of the army; the only three
that officers approved were in case of natural disasters, the struggle against
organized crime, and nuclear power accidents. They opposed being used to
protect both the parliament and the president. Majorities also opposed being
used against separatist movements, for construction and economic projects, for
gathering the harvest, and to break strikes.
The most comprehensive analysis of Russian officer corps opinion was conducted by Deborah Yarsike Ball in the summer of 1995. Ball arrived at a number of findings that are relevant to an assessment of officer corps organizational culture. She found that the majority of officers hold democratic views and do not support an authoritarian government. Furthermore, Russian officers continue to believe that the army’s primary task is external defense of the state and to reject internal usage. More than eighty percent opposed using the army for public works and railroad construction and for harvesting crops. On the other hand, seventy percent approved of using the military in case of nuclear power plant accidents, and ninety-seven percent approved using the army to help in case of natural disasters. Officers also opposed using the armed forces for a variety of domestic policing missions.
These results are very similar to those of the Ebert Foundation poll, with the exception that a majority in the Ball survey also disapproved of using the army against organized crime. Summarizing her results, Ball concludes, “the military feels that internal troops should take care of the country’s `internal’ problems, and that the military should be responsible for protecting the nation against external threats.”
Ball’s data on the willingness of officers to follow orders
are more disturbing, and they are similar to the polling data available for
1993 discussed above. Large numbers of officers said that they would not follow
orders to be used internally against separatists. Officers’ responses reflect
the institutional lessons embodied in the “Tbilisi syndrome” and
reinforced in August 1991 and October 1993: Officers’ activities in the event
of domestic usage are likely to be heavily scrutinized, and one should be very
cautious about fulfilling orders of dubious legality. It was this concern that
prompted Grachev to insist on a written order from Yeltsin on October 4, 1993.
Ball also found that fifty-one percent of officers stated that they would have
disobeyed orders to storm the White House in October 1993.
As far as is known, though, only a handful of officers
actually disobeyed direct orders in October 1993. It is easier to tell a
pollster that you would disobey an order than it is to actually do so when the
consequences could well be a dishonorable discharge from the armed forces.
Regardless, these data clearly do not demonstrate praetorian urges on the part
of the officer corps. This very hesitancy to follow questionable orders would
likely have doomed any attempt at intervention, and it may have influenced
Yeltsin’s decision not to go ahead with the disbanding of the Duma in March
1996.
Another major survey of 1,200 active-duty officers conducted
in May 1997 found that seventy-eight percent of those questioned maintained
that the military should not be involved in domestic politics. Thus, throughout
the period 1992-1997 there were strong majorities against military
participation in sovereign power issues.
Russian military behavior in a series of domestic and
foreign events in the mid- and late 1990s led some to conclude that the army
had serious political ambitions and were slipping out of civilian control. A
full discussion of these issues is not possible here, but a brief discussion of
two of them, the war in Chechnya and the sudden deployment of Russian troops to
Kosovo in June 1999, shows that these fears are exaggerated.
