Challenge: President Lebed

Well, Lebed was certainly not without resources in the 1990s. He was a blunt-spoken populist with an accomplished combat record who made no bones about the fact that the current Russian government had serious problems. And, of course, by the middle of the 1990s Yeltsin and his team were growing exceeding unpopular as the post-Soviet reforms wreaked havoc with the Russian economy. The problem, in my opinion, is that the events of October 1993 ended any chance of Yeltsin being voted out of power in an open political contest. Furthermore, the “loans for shares” scheme, while poisonous to the newly privatized industrial combines, had the effect of giving the various oligarchs (most of whom by the middle of the decade had made their fortunes in banking and the black market, and were on the lookout for new territories to consolidate) a pretty good reason for propping up Yeltsin’s government. If Lebed tried too hard to run against the dictates of the Kremlin, he might find myself quietly marginalized, if not worse.

In fact, some commentators on Russian politics, most notably Andrew Wilson, have suggested that Lebed’s campaign run in 1996 was just a “PR project” organized by Yeltsin and the oligarchy solely to snatch up nationalist votes, thereby channeling the nationalist voters away from any potentially dangerous independent candidates towards a safe authority figure that would support Yeltsin as required. Certainly the connections between Lebed and the oligarchs, and the ease with which his campaign was able to get official airtime, are enough to warrant a critical reconsideration of Lebed’s “outspokenness.”
 
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