"Military reform" and "reform of the armed forces"

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“Military Reform” and “Armed Forces Reform” are terms that are often confused. Under the first dictionaries understand the comprehensive alteration of the entire military organization of the state. Reforming the armed forces - the event is more private. So what is now being held in Russia and, most importantly, for what?

The country has long been eyeing the colorful figure of the Minister of Defense, a man not just civilian, but defiantly civilian. But the time of patronizing smiles passed quickly, the video sequence also changed dramatically: Anatoly Serdyukov became stern, plots in every possible way emphasized his efficiency, purposefully forming an idea of ​​the high-flying manager.

"Military reform" and "reform of the armed forces"


And now 14 of October 2008 broke out: the minister announced the coming changes in the Armed Forces. Everything fell into two points: a general reduction in the number and reduction of officers. After the silence reigned, broken by the individual ranks of the MoD. From their vague explanations it followed that two-thirds of the officers would be dismissed (from the current 355 thousand), the institute of warrant officers and the overwhelming majority of military schools would be liquidated. They will remove shoulder straps from military doctors - let them operate on the wounded as part of labor legislation and during working hours. They threaten to halve the brain of the military organism - headquarters, including the General. Disband the regiments and divisions, going to the brigade system.

The officers - those who survive the reform, are promised fantastic salaries. How to find the money? At the expense of those who are thrown into the street without severance payments, pensions and housing? Such a conclusion can be drawn from the sluggish replicas of the Chief of the General Staff: the state shifts the solution of social issues onto the shoulders of the officers themselves being expelled from the army. That's the whole "reform." In fact, one part of the officers was asked to eat another. What is this super task for which the state is ready for such a dangerous social experiment?

The first persons, one of whom - the current Supreme Commander, he is the president and chairman of the Security Council, and the other - the former Supreme Commander, he is the Prime Minister and the leading member of the Security Council - are silent. It is impossible to interpret this as an endorsement. And as evidence that large-scale transformations are exclusively within the competence of the minister himself: create what you want. Well, but it will not work - and you answer.

Starfall

The scope of the changes carried out in the military department is striking in scale and swiftness. Only an incomplete two years of works of Anatoly Serdyukov, but the generals decimated, as in war. Here is an incomplete statistics of movements made from February 2007 th to December 2008 th. Practically all the deputy ministers of defense were replaced: the generals Yury Baluyevsky (head of the general staff - first deputy minister), Alexander Belousov (first deputy minister), Alexei Moskovsky (head of armaments - deputy minister), Vladimir Isakov (head of the rear of the Armed Forces - deputy minister) left. Only those who, with a great stretch, can be counted as a military corporation, are steadfast - State Secretary Nikolai Pankov (supervises educational work and personnel) and Lyubov Kudelina - Deputy Minister for Financial and Economic Work.
The leadership of the General Staff was replaced almost completely in the summer of 2008: the head himself, almost all his deputies, the heads of a number of departments, areas, departments. The chiefs of the Main directorates were replaced - combat training and service of the troops, international military cooperation, military medical. At the same time, the lower links of these structures have been cleaned. The leaders of the Main Rocket and Artillery Directorate (GRUU) and the Main Automobile and Armored Directorate Directorate (GABTU) were replaced. Overnight, the Chief of Logistics of the Armed Forces was dismissed. The new command was acquired by the quartering and arrangement service and the Railway Forces.
The commanders-in-chief of the Ground Forces, the Air Force, and the Navy are now new. In the Airborne and Space Forces, the commanders were also replaced. A mass of personnel replacements was made throughout the hierarchical pyramid. So, in the Ground Forces, the command of the RKhB Defense Forces, Air Defense Forces, Missile Forces and Artillery, Engineering Forces was replaced, in four of the six military districts (Air Defense Forces, North Caucasian Military District, PUrVO, Siberian Military District) - also new commanders, a change of command is coming in the Far Eastern Federal District. Updated command of all four fleets, only Caspian flotilla not touched ...

And after all, each of these changes entailed a chain of personnel movements in the lower levels. From open sources alone, I have counted since February 2007 more than a hundred movements in the links of really significant and key ones. The renewal of personnel is so cardinal that it is time to talk about cleaning in the army. Especially since a one-time replacement was not enough: in several key posts several managers changed. The Main Directorate of Combat Training has been constantly shaking from 2004, when, in protest, his chief, Colonel-General Alexander Skorodumov, resigned. In 2005, he was sent to replace Colonel-General Valery Gerasimov, and the following year he was replaced by Lieutenant General Alexander Lukin. As soon as he got used to it, in November 2007 was changed to General Vladimir Shamanov. While the latter, after a seven-year separation from the army, delved into affairs, the war with Georgia broke out. The fourth boss in four years - before any combat training with such castling?

Cadres decide everything

The logic of other personnel decisions is inexplicable. Say, they designate the main armed general of Vladimir Popovkin. He is an expert on cosmodromes and orbital groups, but he is far from the problems of aviation or artillery rearmament.

Some newly minted military leaders have no idea whatsoever about military service, but also about the business for which they have to answer. In November 2008, the Minister of Defense received a new deputy, who is called upon to oversee the development of information technologies and communications in the Armed Forces, Dmitry Chushkin. Education is relatively consistent with the destination - a diploma from the Ufa Aviation Technical University with a degree in Computer Aided Design. The future master of information technology in an industry that was far from aviation, and from communication - in the tax office. They say that his experience will be useful to the army, since he oversaw informatization in the tax. But the informatization of publicans and the military is still completely different things.

It looks strange as the head of the Main Directorate of Combat Training and Military Service, General Shamanov. He is, of course, a Hero of Russia, but in seven years of being “in the civilian world” he has become very hard off the army. Experienced warrior? But the experience of what modern war our hero owns? Two Chechen campaigns - punitive and, by all measures, local. And Vladimir Anatolyevich’s reputation is peculiar. The late General Gennady Troshev now colorfully described how Shamanov “argued” with General Kazantsev, commander of the North Caucasus Military District, watering the senior commander with foul language. And he didn’t stand on ceremony with his subordinates: “I was internally jarred,” writes Troshev, “when I heard the resentment of officers at Vladimir Anatolyevich: he could easily insult, humiliate, obmatter (and in public)”. Troshev recalled how the group of General Shamanov "smashes everything in his path", regardless of his own losses: no skillful maneuvers - head on, straight ahead! At one time, even Maskhadov could not resist a malicious replica of his opponent: “At the very beginning of the war, General Shamanov said: in two weeks I will give a horse a drink in the Argun River ... Up to the Argun River, the maximum 40-50 kilometers. Those who read the combat regulations know that such an offensive, and if he, as expected, attacked, being in direct contact with the enemy at a pace of three kilometers per hour, he should have reached Arghun in twelve hours. General Shamanov came two months and two weeks, with one hundred percent superiority in the air, with a huge number of armored vehicles, including the use of rocket troops, against our grenade launchers and machine-gunners. "

Symptomatic and other appointments. In July, 2008, from the post of Chief of the Main Operational Directorate (GOU) - Deputy Chief of the General Staff, “was asked” by Colonel General Alexander Rukshin. If the General Staff is the “brain of the army”, then its operational management is the main part of this brain. The decapitation of the Defense Ministry was already backfired during the Georgian war, when the General Staff was unable to either plan the fighting, or to regulate command and control of the troops. Now, Major-General Sergei Surovikin, formerly commander of the 20 Army, has been put in charge of the State Defense Directorate. The record of the new appointee is impressive: Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Chechnya, contusion, three wounds, three orders of Courage ... However, the general, as it turns out, has not yet completed all the steps of the army ladder, he did not serve at the district level. And it is also not classified as a serious staff officer. And the real team experience is limited to the command of the division, since Surovikin “sat” for only half a year on the army. And on the previous steps I rode swiftly: after the division in just three years, I was noted as deputy chief of staff of the army, chief of staff, commander and now the head of the GOU. Exploits and orders to take off on such a staff height can not be explained, as well as merit in the field of battle.

About such “fast-moving” in the army they usually say: “they lead him”. For the first time, Surovikin “became famous” as a battalion commander, when, during the August coup of the 1991 BMP, it was his battalion who was crushed by three men. After the collapse of the State Emergency Committee Surovikin spent several months in the "Matross Silence." Again his name will be loudly pronounced as the commander of the 34 th motorized rifle division. There, the general had a reputation as an “iron hand”, and with his appointment, the division regularly began to appear in reports related to fights, murders and suicides. Either officers kill a soldier to death, or the general will be blamed for beating an officer. In March, 2004 sent Lieutenant Colonel Viktor Tsybizov to the military prosecutor’s office, claiming that he was beaten by the division commander, Major General Sergei Surovikin, because the lieutenant colonel had voted “not for that” candidate in the election to the State Duma. The case was hushed up. A month later, a new state of emergency: after the sprawling by the general, Colonel Andrei Shtakal shot himself right in his office. And this was hushed up, transferring the general to Chechnya - the commander of the 42 th motorized rifle division. But even there the emergency: 21 February 2005-th under the collapsed wall of the poultry farm killed nine intelligence soldiers, three seriously injured. The official version: militants fired from a grenade launcher. General Surovikin then vowed in front of the cameras that they would kill three militants for each victim. And after all, the divisional commander knew that there was no battle, the warriors just got drunk, and some of them shot inside the premises with a grenade launcher. But this did not hurt the general, again raised.

Any reorganization of the armed forces is painful. But when this is superimposed on an accelerated personnel “update”, loss of controllability is inevitable. And the military organism has been in a state of instability for a long time. In this situation, a person in uniform is not at all concerned with service. Everyone thinks of his own, of his own: who was thrown out in this taiga garrison without severance pay, pension and housing, me or his first? The preliminary results of the “reform of Serdyukov” introduce into a stupor: our army didn’t know that year since 1937 of this kind in the time of the earthquake. And most of all, the steps of the “modernizers” resemble a set of measures to prevent ... a military coup.

Lessons stories

There is no line about this event in the textbooks. Moscow, 5 August 1934, Sukharevskaya Square, Krasnoperekopsk barracks of the Moscow proletarian rifle division. An artillery division arrives at 8 in the morning - 200, called up to store the store. Suddenly, the chief of staff of the division, a military officer, a student of the military academy Artem Nakhayev, having built the fighters in the courtyard of the barracks, calls them to weapons in the hands of opposing Stalin, who usurped power and brought the country to poverty. Then, together with the soldiers, Nakhayev is trying to seize the guardroom in order to arm the Red Army soldiers with rifles. Guard barely strayed. Stalin's correspondence with Kaganovich shows that the leader took this story very seriously: he was shocked that only one battalion could easily carry out the coup. For every fireman, then they made a decision out of harm's way to withdraw a number of military units from Moscow. But the fact that the rebels would have received the support of a number of high-ranking officials of the Red Army, Stalin had no doubt.

The interests of self-preservation required to eliminate even the theoretical possibility of intercepting power, to fundamentally solve the problem of the political loyalty of the commanders. However, Stalin needed the army not only loyal, but combat-ready. One link attracted the whole chain: the cadres had to be changed desperately, but they still had to be prepared - the entire military training system was changing. The new technique entailed a change in the methods of warfare, tactics, field manuals, structure. It turned out a completely new army, which, in turn, needed a different economy and ... another country to re-equip.

What they did. In 1930, the most natural military reform took place, although no one spoke such words out loud. But the military body has undergone dramatic changes, finding a fundamentally new quality. But after all, the break-up of the whole country, in fact, turned out to be “sharpened” for the modernization of the army — and collectivization (read, the creation of a mobilization system for food supply), and industrialization, and, finally, the militarization of the country. Because there were no other ways to recreate an efficient army.

Again we turn to the book of General Troshev, "My War." Explaining the reasons for cool relations with a number of military commanders, he writes: “By the spring of 2000, Kazantsev and I began to play off ... Weaving something for me, for me - for him.” Who and why? “One of the most reliable versions seemed to me: a group of supposedly hero-generals appeared, popular in the army and the people and possessing a certain political power. And what if, having united around a large single goal, they will become a sort of “Southern Decembrist Society”, dangerous for those in power? Fear was still alive after the speeches of the late General L. Rokhlin, who turned against the Kremlin and called on his Volgograd army corps to "march on Moscow." But Rokhlin was so alone ... And there are many “of these” (Kazantsev, Troshev, Shamanov, Bulgakov and others), they are winners, they are decisive and brave ... They are not only the army, all the people will go. ” Hence, Troshev concludes, and “the line of strife between the hero generals, the policy of“ divide and rule ”.

Rokhlin is assassinated in 1998, and the Kremlin is still shaking at the mere mention of his name! And what was it? Let's take a look at Boris Yeltsin's Presidential Marathon: the summer of 1998, a wave of strikes, miners blocking railways, “a catastrophic situation,” the president writes, “this created a real threat of mass political unrest. In the All-Russian scale. I met with Nikolai Kovalev, the then director of the FSB. He was almost in a panic ... the threat to the security of the country clearly existed. ” "The threat to the security of the country", read, the seizure of power, to which General Rokhlin then called. 3 July 1998-he was shot at his cottage. Exist "Rokhlin's conspiracy" only in someone's inflamed imagination - there would have been no shot at the general's summer residence, which became a warning to all who stood behind the rebellious general. Alexander Volkov, an assistant of Rokhlin, recalled how his boss "was dizzy from the prospects that seemed to him when he flew to another region on the plane allocated to him by patriotic military-industrial complex-shnik," as Rokhlin frankly said: "If you win, we we will bring you to the Kremlin on hand. Lose - the first zatopchem. “Rokhlin was being pushed into dictators by everyone,” is another significant phrase. No wonder that in the spring of 1998, the commander of the North Caucasus Military District, General Kazantsev, quickly flew to Volgograd - cleaning the corps, shooting commanders, taking into custody the head of corps intelligence ...

When the generals sharpen their teeth on power, the choice of the latter is small: the fronders must either be destroyed, or sent to fight, or plunge the military corporation into such a personnel shake that it is not up to conspiracy. The first option did not pass: not a 1937 year, shaking shots at the end of 1990's was dangerous for the government itself. The war in Chechnya in 1999 “turned up” very opportunely.

But the generals were distracted for a while. When Putin came to the Kremlin, nothing resolved by itself, it was obvious that one couldn’t do without personnel cleaning. According to the proven method, the generals should have quarreled and disunited. The subsequent defeat of the “Chechen grouping” was already a matter of technology: first Kazantsev was taken out of the army - like an embassy, ​​a skilled intrigue was pushed into the “citizen” Shamanov. Troshev, who was left alone, was already removed slowly, skillfully persecuting small quibbles and waiting for him to fall through. They waited. When, at the end of 2002, the Minister of Defense proposed that the general move to the Siberian Military District, he got angry: not large-scale! How then do not remove the stubborn, who wants to determine where to serve him, and where - no? Then came the turn of the ambitious Kvashnin ...

But the cardinal problem has not been solved - neither military nor political. For the current elite, a military corporation is just as potentially dangerous as it is for Stalin, since there is no other organized force in an authoritarian state that can intercept power. The army officer corps also has big complaints against other security forces corporations, which received everything. Claims and ambitions of the army generals and officers, no one in the Kremlin, of course, is going to satisfy. But to keep this "Arbat Military District" under control is necessary. It seems that the so-called “military reform” is intended to serve precisely this goal.
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  1. dred
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    3 January 2012 18: 39
    The reform did nothing good.

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