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Dave Betz, B.A THE NEW RUSSIAN MILITARY by DAVE BETZ, B.A. A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies in partial fùlfilment of of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario 20 April 1998 copyright 1998, Dave Betz National Library Bibiiothèque nationale du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographie Services seMces bibliographiques 395 Street 395. nie Welüngton 0th- ON K1AW 0th- ON K1AW Canada canada The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive licence dowing the exclusive permettant à la National Library of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distribure or sell reproduire, prêter, distn'buer ou copies of ths thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/fïlm, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substmtial extracts fiom it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or otherwise de ceile-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. Russia's transition to democracy and to a market economy has drasticdy affecteci its arrned forces and its civil-military relations for the worse. What was the mighty Soviet Army is now in a state of penury and humiliation. Every indicator of military potential-- manpower and weapons, defence spending, training, morale and readiiess-shows the Army to be in extreme distress. The Amy is also increasingly involved in the political process, either through direct action, as in August 199 1 and October 1993, or through infiuencing the actions of civilian leaders. This undermines the relationship between mihtary and civilian authonties in Russia and poses the danger of a coup, or implosion of the armed forces. Russia's civil-military relations, in contrast with those of the Soviet Union, are now chiefly subjective, highly authoritarian, centralized and penonalized in the office of President Bons Yeltsin. This does not bode well for the consolidation of democracy in Russia. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODU-N .................................................... 1 ScopeoftheStudy ................................................. 1 Definitions ........................................................ 3 Background ....................................................... 8 Rationale ........................................................ 13 CEAP'lXR ONE: What's At Stake in Russia's Civil Military Relations? ...... 24 The Army Supphnts Foreign Policy Toward the Near Abroad ............. 27 Military Mutinies or Refuses to Obey Civiiian Authorities ................ 34 Military Contribution to Fragmentation of the Russian Federation ......... 40 MititaryResistsReform ............................................ 42 Criminalization of the Military ...................................... 51 Müitary Contribution to Insecurity in the International System ............ 56 Miiitary Inability to Pertonn its Defence Mission ........................ 59 Conclusion ....................................................... 61 CHAPTER TWO: The Amy in the 1990s: 1s it on the Verge of Collapse? ...... 63 The Amy in the Soviet Union ....................................... 65 Soviet Strctegic Culture .......................................... 67 TheAmyin1998 ................................................. 71 Mmpower &Major Weapons Systems of the Amy .................... 76 Weapons Procurement and MiIitary Reseorch and Development ........... 92 Defence Spending .............................................. 99 Defence-Iiuhstrial Complex ..................................... 109 Readness of the Amy .......................................... 114 Training the Amy ............................................. 117 MoraleintheAmy ............................................ 119 CHAPTER THREE: Mechanisms of Defence Oversight ................... 130 Soviet Civil-Milita y Relations ...................................... 137 The Amy and Gorbachev ....................................... 146 The Amymidthe Party ......................................... 154 Contemporary Civil-Military Relations ............................... 159 Powers of the President ......................................... 163 Powers of the Parliament ........................................ 167 Powers of the Ministry of Dfence ................................. 170 The Security CounciI and the Defence Council ....................... 174 Other Agencies ............................................... 179 Congmence of Values and lnterests Between the Amy. Society and the Stute 1 8 1 CONCLUSION .................................................... 188 The Optimistic View: Present Trends Improve ......................... 191 The Neutrai View: Present Trends Continue or Worsen ................. 193 The fessimistic View: Present Trends Continue or Worsen ............... 194 LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Russian and US Military Manpower and Equipment 1986-1996 ........... 75 Table 2: Procurement of Major Weapons Systems. 1986- 1996 ................... 95 Table 3: Membership of the Security and the Defence Councils .................. 176 LIST OF GRAPHS Graph 1: Defence Budget in US$ ........................................ 105 Graph 2: Defence Budget in PPP US$ .................................... 105 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Lines of Authority in Soviet Defence Decision Making ................ 142 Figure 2: Lines of Authority in Russian Defence Decision-Making ............... 166 INTRODUCTION Scope of the Study The Russian Federation has a bewildering array of militaxy and para-military Forces, most of which were uihented fiom the Soviet Union, but also including a few new formations since 199 1. Apart fiom those forces directly subordhate to the Ministry of Defence (MoD), namely the Strategic Missile Forces, the Ground Forces, the Air Forces, the Air Defence Forces and the Navy, there are the Border Troops (formerly under the KGB, but independent since 1992), the troops of the Ministry of the Intenor (MVD), the Presidentiai Guard, and armed forces belonging to no fewer than 13 other federal ministries.' This paper will focus on the current status of the forces of the Ministry of Defence, generally subsumed, following Russian practice, under the term Army, with a particular emphasis on civil-rnilitary relations. l Estimates of the actual number of men in uniform bearing weapons for the various agencies of the federal governent or private security agencies in Russia tend to be highly impressionistic. Most andysts, however, agree that Russia remains a heavily arrned society. The Secretary of the Security Council, Ivan Rybkin, put the figure as high as 4.5 dion men, suggesting also that military pluralism in Russia had produced a situation so chaotic that a reliable account was simply not feasible: "the lack of organization is incredible." (See Rossiyskiye Vesti, 29 November 1996:2.) The number of personnel under the MoD are reckoned at being between 1 and 1.2 million. The Ministry of the Interior has some 264,000 troops, and the Border Guards about 210,000. The Interior Ministry is actualiy larger now than it was under the Soviets. Having expanded greatly &er the October Crisis in 1993, the last Minister of the Interior, General Anatoli Kulikov rnay have had under his command up to 29 divisions and 15 brigades. This is a force that is beginnùig to rival the Army itself. (See Valery Borisenko, "Gendarmerie or Army?" Moscow News (Moscow) 15-2 1 February 1996: 3. Essentidy, no one really knows precisely how many troops there are in Russia today. 2 In referring to the w,the -, or the hedForces, as an actor in Russian politics, this paper does not assume that it is feasible to speak of the military as a monolithic or entirely cohesive group with shared opinions on ali matters. On the contrary, it assumes that the Russian rditary is deeply divided intemally dong a number of fault Lines. In ail amies there are différences between and within military ranks and hierarchies, as well as disputes among individual officers. In Russia, however, the cleavages between groups are particularly manifest. In fact, retired Colonel Yuri Deryugin, one of the foremost rnilitary analysts in Russia, wrote of the rnilitary in 1994 that it was "an anny of polarities charged with the latent energy of internai conflict." He divided the army into four distinctly visible factions, Myopposed to each other: the first, composed of junior officers, are pragmatists who avoid going to hot spots and try to leave the semice as soon as possible. The second, majors to fiont line generals, are the real senicemen; they support regdation, traditions, and discipline and remain on active duty because they have nowhere else to go. The third, members of the "Arbat Military District7"depend on patronage rather than military skills. The fourth, the tmly compt, use their rank for private gain.' Throughout the discussion in this paper, therefore, the reader should be aware that the Army suffen from strong fissiparious tendencies, that in rnany cases there is no single "rnilitary viewpoint," and that in the absence of survey data on a particular subject, extrapolation of such a viewpoint from anecdotal evidence can be rather subjective. * Quoted in Timothy Thomas, "Fault Lines and Factions in the Russian Army," Orbis (Fd
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