Rumblings in the 'Red Army'

...Other surveys show that officers and enlisted men alike, of whatever nationality, overwhelmingly mourn the loss of a unified military command, and that a majority regret the demise of the Soviet Union...

...Even the ribboned combat medals that World War II veterans used to wear with pride for taking Berlin are hawked for dollars to foreign tourists as if they were cheap costume jewelry...

...Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Sakhrai, in an apparent effort to keep a dying idea alive, said it was being formed "with the view that these forces are part of the joint Commonwealth Armed Forces and are subject to its operational command...

...What is left of the Commonwealth Armed Forces is largely a Russian army headed by a Russian, the articulate and forceful Marshal Sha-poshnikov, who is an ally of Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin...

...But a security officer in one of the previously secret cities where they were designed and built told the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda that nuclear weapons have never been under certain control, and still are not...

...Throughout their long years of subordination to and control by the Communist Party, military leaders engaged in politics only at the highest levels, and with the greatest care...

...Moreover, it now appears that they would willingly support an effort to reimpose strong central authority in Russia in the name of stability and military honor...

...The Army is largely commanded by Russians, and most of its troops are Russian...

...Russian orders for new weapons, including jet fighters, armored personnel carriers and ships, have declined so sharply that 20 per cent of the Russian military industry is nearly bankrupt, and another 40 per cent is approaching that point...

...Not since Tsarist times, more than seven decades ago, has the Orthodox Church called on its sons in the Army to save the Slavic nation...

...An opinion survey of officers, reported in the Army newspaper Red Star, has found that 70 per cent of them think a civil war is possible, and 40 per cent are ready to fight with their respective national forces...

...As Russia begins to form its own army, it is faced as well with supporting the troops scheduled to be withdrawn from the Baltics, Poland and what was East Germany...

...Ukrainian President Leonid M. Krav-chuk said recently that the "veto" button to stop the launching of strategic nuclear missiles has yet to be put into place...

...To consist of professionals under contract at pay of up to 8,000 rubles for officers (eight times the minimum worker's wage), the new Russian army will gradually take shape over the next two years...

...When the Soviet state fell apart last December and the Commonwealth was born, the participants originally agreed to convert the Soviet military into a unified Commonwealth organization...

...To further complicate matters, it is impossible to precisely quantify what is now the Armed Forces of the Commonwealth of Independent States...

...As a result, Russia has formed its own Ministry of Defense and is planning an army of up to 1.2 million...

...While that might seem a positive development, the military has become an anachronism in the post-Soviet scheme of the society it had served...

...Few would be surprised if it endorsed a conservative, hard-line govermnent before the year is out...

...It is no longer united by a particular nationalism, though, but by loyalty to a military establishment that is disintegrating before its eyes...

...But its defense budget is being drastically cut because of the deepening economic recession here...

...Perhaps the most telling moment of the meeting came when the emissary of the Russian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Kirill—an impressive figure in black robes and white headdress emblazoned with a gold cross—recalled the thousand year history of Russia to give the church's blessing to a strong and unified military...

...In the city of Nizh-ny Novgorod (Gorky), where mig jet fighters are produced, 25 of the highly regarded mg-29 combat planes are sitting outside the factory because no Russian ministry can pay for them...

...YEARNING FOR A STRONG HAND Rumblings in the 'Red Army' BY MARK HOPKINS Moscow Shop the Arbat these days and you can virtually outfit yourself in the full regalia of a Soviet Army or Navy officer...

...That makes more than economic sense...

...They also see the Armed Forces being abused in political maneuvers between Russia and Ukraine, not to mention among half a dozen other republics of the 11-member Commonwealth of Independent States...

...Russian analysts wonder at the military's patience...

...The way the situation is evolving, it seems a Russian army nominally under the Commonwealth's aegis will provide the defense for Russia and Central Asia...

...After they are demobilized they will be searching for jobs in an economy suffering rising unemployment...

...The arrangement will keep Russian-commanded forces on the lengthy borders with China, Afghanistan and Iran...

...These views of the disgruntled military reflect a formidable political sentiment that is shared by conservative Russian political leaders, not to mention the Russian Orthodox Church...

...The five Central Asian republics, including the huge Kazakhstan, have neither the funds nor the political will to support their own military units...

...The Ukrainian government says it expects to have a republic army of about 200,000...

...And the political tug of war has greatly disturbed the military...

...The nationalist and militarist appeal of Mark Hopkins, a longtime contributor to the NL, is chief of Voice of America's news bureau in Moscow...

...Ukraine soon upset that plan by insisting on its own soldiers, and other republics followed suit...

...Although President Yeltsin and Marshal Shaposhnikov inherited the codes for launching long-range rockets from former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the presidents of Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan—where other strategic missiles are deployed—were to have access to an electronic system that would prevent Russia from unilaterally firing the weapons...

...As 300,000 professional officers struggle to find housing for themselves and their families, they see their troops getting shot defending weapons depots against marauding ethnic groups in the Caucasus and Moldova...

...The Moscow government, seizing the opportunity to essentially take over the former Soviet Army, has pledged to fund the mostly Russian Commonwealth forces...

...Marshal Shaposhnikov and other senior Commonwealth officers have repeatedly declared that every nuclear warhead, whether for tactical or strategic use, is accounted for...

...Indeed, the demoralized, divided military, lacking any firm command or purpose, is a ticking bomb in the Commonwealth...

...Metropolitan Kirill, delivered in resonant Russian, brought the 5,000 officers to their feet in a spontaneous ovation...

...Officers stationed in Ukraine are torn by demands that they swear allegiance to the republic and thus implicitly disavow the broader oaths they took upon donning their uniforms...

...Moldova, Belarus and Azerbaijan are aiming at 100,000 each...

...The professional officers' corps, by contrast, as one could see at the Kremlin meeting, includes a mix of Slavs and Asians...

...Yesterday's glorified Red Army has been thoroughly battered and humiliated since the collapse of the Soviet state...

...UNFORTUNATELY, Control of the Soviet nuclear arsenal is as much a political as a military issue—whether the argument concerns the Black Sea Fleet with its nuclear missiles, long-range bombers in Ukraine, or the portion of the still disputed nuclear inventory that should come under Commonwealth (read Russian) command...

...Yet hundreds of thousands of those troops—the statistics are not clear—are being taken over by Ukraine, Moldova, Azerbaijan, and Belarus, as they form their own armies from former Soviet units on their territories...

...The old central Moscow street where Russian merchants and literary figures once lived in handsome classic buildings is now a shoddy open-air souvenir market...

...For a few dollars you can buy authentic brass belt buckles stamped with the Red Army star, a Navy officer's dark blue dress coat, the tan cotton desert hat and combat fatigues of the USSR's Afghan expeditionary forces, the saucer shaped Soviet Army officer's hat ringed with a red band...

...When they return home they will need housing...

...The disposition of the USSR's nuclear arsenal, a matter of paramount concern to the West, is far less clear...

...This bleak future has not been lost on the professional Army officers, who witnessed the breakup of the Soviet Empire and today are watching conflict intensify among its past components...

...All three groups deplore the disintegration of the powerful state...

...The effect this has had on morale was dramatically illustrated earlier this year when 5,000 officers held a conference in the Kremlin's Hall of Congresses...

...The officers, representing the Army, Navy and Air Force and led by the temporary commander of the supposed Commonwealth forces, Marshal Yevgeny I. Shaposhnikov, overwhelmingly denounced the breakup of the Soviet Union and the disintegration of the Armed Forces...

...After the collapse of the Party, the political commissars who monitored the Army, for example, were banished from the regiments and divisions...

...The London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies puts the total number of Army, Navy and Air Force personnel at 3.4 million...

...President Yeltsin, who has named himself Acting Defense Minister, has assumed command of those roughly 500,000 men...