Where the swan died. Military in politics: the story of Alexander Lebed

03.04.2012

The official version of the death of the helicopter with General Lebed on board does not inspire confidence in everyone. April 29, 2002
General Lebed in the days of the August putsch. First appearance in public. August 19, 1991
Secretary of the Russian Security Council Alexander Lebed and Chief of the Main Staff of the Armed Forces of Ichkeria Aslan Maskhadov. Peace negotiations. September 6, 1996
Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lebed did not feel any sympathy for each other; they communicated only in an official setting. Krasnoyarsk, March 22, 2002
Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow

10 years ago, Alexander Lebed, who could have become president of Russia, died. Or its dictator

On February 21, 2012, during a meeting with representatives of unregistered parties, Dmitry Medvedev suddenly said that “hardly anyone has any doubts about who won the presidential elections in 1996. It was not Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin.” But the debate over whether Zyuganov bypassed Yeltsin is of little interest: the main event then was the truly brilliant success of General Alexander Lebed, who immediately took the third “prize”: 14.5% of voters - almost 11 million people - voted for him. Before the second round of the presidential elections, Yeltsin appointed the “bronze winner” as Secretary of the Russian Security Council. They then prophesied a great future for the general, calling him either the president and Yeltsin’s most likely successor, or the future “Russian Pinochet.”
But Lebed never made it to Pinochet, becoming governor of the Krasnoyarsk Territory in 1998. True, a few years later they began to say that the “Swan Project” could be pulled out from under the cloth again. But on April 28, 2002, the governor of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, General Alexander Lebed, died in a plane crash. Thus ended the journey of a man who left a noticeable mark on modern Russian history. Then they even said that the paratrooper general died as he lived, almost in a combat mission, and this, they say, is a glorious death for a real military man - not in bed from senile infirmity, not in complete oblivion - still on the crest of glory and fame ...
In the summer of 2002, while preparing material about aviation accidents, I had the opportunity to visit the Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC) and talk with specialists. “We had just begun to study the Lebed case,” the then chairman of the scientific and technical commission of the MAK Viktor Trusov was indignant, “and everywhere it was already being broadcast: Lebed, who allegedly ordered the pilots to fly, was to blame for everything, and on the film of the “black box”, they say , his voice is clearly recorded. Nonsense, we don’t have any Swan’s voice, and there couldn’t be one. Whoever came up with this nonsense doesn't even have a basic understanding of how a helicopter recorder works. And it doesn’t even have film, it’s recorded on a wire.” When I asked what was recorded on that wire, I received the answer: “Do you want to listen? Take him to an acoustician, let him listen all day long!”
It would have been a sin not to take advantage of this opportunity, especially since I didn’t have to listen to it all day long - the entire recording was at most an hour and a half long. Vladimir Poperechny, an expert in the acoustic information research department, clicked his computer mouse, and the sounds of the general’s last flight poured out of the speakers. He took out a voice recorder, but immediately received a negative gesture from the acousticians: “No, just without this. Listen, take notes in a notebook, but without a voice recorder. We do not have the right to transmit these recordings for publication. After the trial, if they are in the materials of the open trial, please publish them, but with reference not to us, but to court documents...”
I listened and took notes: indeed, there was no voice of Lebed, and there was not the slightest mention of him at all - the governor did not appear in the cockpit and did not communicate with the pilots after takeoff. Crackling, on-air interference, calm voices of the crew - ordinary negotiations with dispatchers, short remarks, long stretches of complete silence. They explained to me the specifics of the helicopter voice recorder: unlike the airplane voice recorder, it is single-channel and does not record absolutely everything that is said in the cockpit. With a slight delay, it turns on only during negotiations between the crew and the ground. So, in principle, Lebed’s voice could not have been in that “black box”.
I asked a question: maybe he gave some instructions on earth? They answered: this is already the competence of the investigation, and not of the MAK. And legally it has no significance at all: on board, the commander of the ship, not the governor, is responsible for everything. I continue to listen to the recording: “Here, you hear, they have now moved into the coverage area of ​​the Abakan dispatcher, soon everything will happen. ...We barely jumped over one hill. But they couldn’t do this one anymore...” The end of the recording was played several times for me, I’ll risk quoting it from old notebook notes: “Up! Power lines! Down! No! No!!! F... in the mouth! The last remark, surprisingly, sounds completely sluggish and slow and doomed. Then I hear the howl of the engine, a distinct crackling sound and silence - the end of the recording.
“...Listen, it’s winding wires around the screw,” the acoustician continues to comment. - In general, Lebed was simply unlucky, he died purely by accident, since he was sitting on the starboard side. When it falls, the helicopter spins to the right and is literally crushed by the one and a half ton rotor. If he had been sitting on the left, he would have survived, escaping with bruises or fractures, because even the pilots survived. Although, of course, it’s already a miracle that the helicopter didn’t catch fire or explode when it fell; usually they flare up like matches...
We also talked about the weather. On departure, they say, the weather was not great, but quite suitable for flying, so the helicopter made two intermediate landings along the way without any problems. But at the third and final stage of the flight, MAK experts argued, the conditions really changed dramatically: fog, low clouds. And so the pilots had to either return to the site from which they had just taken off, or choose a place for an unscheduled landing and abort the flight. But they continued it, and, as MAK members emphasized, there is no evidence that this was done under pressure from the governor. And about the bad maps, according to them, they are also pure tales - everything on those maps, they say, is marked, the pilots simply had to prepare for the flight ahead of time, having studied the upcoming route and working it out on the map. Which, according to my interlocutors, they apparently did not do. That’s why the power line marked on the map came as a surprise to them. “They were walking at a height of 25 meters,” Ivan Mulkidzhanov, the then deputy chairman of the IAC, categorically slashed. “So they had neither time nor headroom: they jumped through once, twice - and jumped onto the power line...”
True, the helicopter pilot Takhir Akhmerov testified: “The height of the power line support is 37 meters, we started falling from about 45 meters. At this height, destruction began, and the car went down.”

“Like peace, so are sons of bitches, and like war, so are brothers.”
General Lebed flew into big politics quickly and sharply, rattling his landing boots and commanding voice, to the sound of caterpillar clanks and shots, to the rich crunch of unique soldier’s aphorisms - in this he had no equal. In principle, his path is quite typical: in a similar way, many military men entered the political arena of Russia. Only none of them managed to cling to the peaks of Olympus. Lebed was the last to leave, and with him ended the era of politicized generals of Soviet training, who gave way and chairs to the Lubyanka generals and colonels.
Alexander Lebed's military career was quite ordinary: airborne school, airborne forces, battalion commander in Afghanistan. Without skipping a single step, he went through the normal path from platoon lieutenant to division general. Four orders, two of them military - the Red Banner and the Red Star. Two more - “For service to the Motherland in the Armed Forces of the USSR” II and III degrees. The iconostasis was very decent for that time. He was considered an excellent soldier, although he did not shine with any special military leadership talents - as, indeed, all paratroopers. For the uniqueness of service in the Airborne Forces does not contribute to either a brilliant career or the identification of any leadership abilities. In Soviet times, a paratrooper, no matter how big the stars on his uniform, he was simply doomed to stew in the own juice of the airborne units - romantic and heroic, but closed in on themselves. Due to the specific nature of his service, a native of the Airborne Forces did not have the slightest chance of advancement, for example, through the General Staff or the Ministry of Defense. The airborne division was considered the airborne ceiling, and even after the Academy of the General Staff, the paratrooper general could not receive either a corps, an army, or a district.
And Lebed, who rose to the rank of commander of the Guards Tula Airborne Division, the most he could count on was only the position of one of the deputy commanders of the Airborne Forces. And even then only after graduating from the General Staff Academy, where, by the way, he was never allowed in - although he was eager to go there. By the way, formally there were no prospects for his senior comrade and colleague, General Pavel Grachev, who by 1991 also reached his upper limit, becoming commander of the Airborne Forces. People from the landing force never rose above this position in the Soviet army hierarchy.
But by 1991, the situation in the country had already become different: since 1988, paratroopers began to be more and more actively involved in solving punitive tasks. As Lebed himself wrote, “forcing the army to perform functions that are not typical for it in Transcaucasia, Central Asia...”.
On April 9-10, 1989, Lebed’s paratroopers took part in the dispersal of a rally in Tbilisi, resulting in the death of 18 people. Lebed himself cannot be blamed for that blood: he was only carrying out the order of his Minister of Defense, and the landing force simply did not know how to act otherwise. And try to be “politically correct” when rebar shivs are flying at you and a rockfall is falling! As Lebed himself later wrote in his book “It’s a shame for the state...”, blocking the approaches to the Tbilisi Government House, the 345th Parachute Regiment had almost just (February 15, 1989) been withdrawn from Afghanistan, “and here you have such a cute police officer -gendarmerie task." Regarding the accusations that his paratrooper soldier chased a 71-year-old old woman for three kilometers and hacked her to death with a shovel, Lebed expressed himself briefly and succinctly much later: “The first question: what kind of old woman was she who ran three kilometers from the soldier? Question two: what kind of soldier was it that could not catch up with the old woman at three kilometers? And the third question, the most interesting: were they running around the stadium? For three kilometers there wasn’t a single Georgian man to stand in the way of this scoundrel?”
Further, everywhere, including the bloody events in Baku in January 1990. As the paratroopers themselves bitterly joked, the formula worked: Airborne Forces + VTA (military transport aviation) = Soviet power in Transcaucasia. “The task has always been the same - to separate the fools fighting to the death and prevent mass bloodshed and unrest.” So the elite of the army was literally dragged into a big political game without rules, which did not cause any delight among the paratroopers themselves: “Hanging around fully armed in the capitals of allied states with police functions is, frankly speaking, a dubious pleasure,” Lebed later recalled. Although this experience will come in handy for Lebed later, allowing him to see the dirty belly of the kitchen of political decision-making. And from this “kitchen” the young general brought out the iron conviction that politicians do not know how to make the right decisions, nor make them on time, and in general they are setting up the army, trying to shift responsibility for their own miscalculations, blood and sacrifices onto the military. “He, being a career officer who went through all the blood of the 80s and 90s,” Dmitry Rogozin already recalls, “deep down in his soul he hated and despised all politicians, regardless of the color of their skin. Having decided to become one of them, he felt his enormous advantage - in experience, natural ingenuity, knowledge of life and death.”
Little is known about the character of Lebed himself in those days: he hardly drinks, he is strict and demanding with his subordinates, but they respect him, he does not flirt with his superiors, and does not grovel before high ranks. In a word, a servant. He also madly loves his wife, Inna Aleksandrovna Chirkova, but he has no real friends - he is especially close to anyone, he mentally tries not to get along with people, he breaks up with people easily...

“It’s a shame for the state...”
By the beginning of 1991, Lebed reached the peak of his military career, having been appointed deputy commander of the Airborne Forces for combat training and universities. The general’s new star lit up during the days of the August 1991 putsch, when Lebed received the task of moving units of the 106th Tula Airborne Division to Moscow. At the same time, a legend was born that the general went over to the side of Yeltsin, who was besieged in the White House. By the way, Lebed himself did not like that legend: “I didn’t go anywhere! There was an order - it stood, if another order had come, it would have taken the White House by storm.” And I would take it! As an experienced warrior, Lebed understood perfectly well that this was not the most difficult task for his paratroopers: “2-3 dozen ATGMs are driven in from two directions without much damage to the crowd surrounding him. When all this beauty starts to burn, or worse, smoke, and varnishes, paints, polishes, wool, synthetics merge in this smoke, pull up the machine gunners and wait for the inhabitants of the building to start jumping out of the windows. Those who are lucky will jump from the second floor, and those who are unlucky will jump from the 14th...” Boris Yeltsin later described the same thing in his “Presidential Marathon”: “I still remember his powerful voice in August 1991, when he told me in the White House office: one salvo from armored personnel carriers - and the entire building will burst into flames, all your heroes will jump from the windows.” But he never received a direct order to storm, and he demonstratively did not react to vague hints: we know these tricks of yours, we were already in the skin of a scapegoat, that’s enough! A similar cunning game was then played by his direct superior, Airborne Forces commander General Pavel Grachev. However, most of the high ranks of the Ministry of Defense played that game. Its rules were simple: do not make unnecessary movements in order to jump into the last carriage at the right moment, taking the side of the winner. And political views, if the military had them, did not matter at all. It is clear that ideologically the generals, including Lebed, were closer to the GKChPists, but they were too disgusting types to recklessly follow them: if they win, we followed the order, if they lose, we did everything to prevent bloodshed. Win-win position.
General Lebed was noticed. Moreover, acquaintance with Yeltsin and the then Vice-President Rutskoy did not matter much, the main thing was that the press started talking about him, excitedly describing the mythical exploits of the tough warrior. But he didn’t really fit into the army court, finding himself superfluous in that cabinet-backroom division of posts, portfolios and money. And he was passed over in ranks and awards, and was never allowed to study at the Academy of the General Staff, where Lebed was literally eager: “What to teach you - and so scientists!” - the authorities were feignedly indignant. True, without this academic badge one could not count on much: it was a pass to the circle of the elite.
But another pass was the fame of his determination, coupled with his bestial appearance and aphoristic speech. The general was sent to Transnistria when the fire of the military conflict there reached its peak. On June 23, 1992, “named Colonel Gusev, having with me a battalion of airborne special forces for respectability, I took off to Tiraspol.” Lebed was sent as commander of the now non-existent 14th Army, which had collapsed and was being pulled away left and right. He was sent not to put out the fire or to reason, much less to separate the combatants, but solely to remove the remnants of the army and, most importantly, its weapons and huge ammunition depots with the least losses. The task is obviously impossible. From the order of Defense Minister Grachev to the commander of the 14th Guards Army: “Your task is to successfully lead 14A in preventing attacks on all military installations and preserving the lives of military personnel.”
And then the general showed what is called a healthy initiative. Having gotten into the swing of things and having understood Moscow’s position of doing nothing, I realized that I could go all-in. If he loses, he will be punished, but the winner, as we know, is not judged. And after appropriate preparation, he gave the order: open fire!
Before that, Russian units had not openly taken any side, and the military superiority of the Moldovans was so obvious that the outcome of the war seemed a foregone conclusion. But Lebed’s artillery literally swept away the positions of the Moldavian army and its crossings across the Dniester. When politicians and diplomats tried to blather something, it sounded clear to the whole world in a military way: if you blather, my squadrons will sweep away Chisinau, over the ruins of which paratroopers will march. Thus ended one of the bloodiest wars in the post-Soviet space.
It is clear on whose side the sympathies of Russian society were then; the official Kremlin got off with a slight rumbling. But they did not punish the hero, although he did not receive a clear order to open fire. However, Lebed had to give up his future career. Grachev tried to send him to Tajikistan, but failed: “I told Grachev that I don’t understand why I should beat up one half of the Tajiks at the request of the other, they didn’t do anything bad to me. He calmed down." Lebed managed to stay away from the slippery events of the fall of 1993, although he made a number of sharp attacks against the White House inmates.

“Horses are not changed at the crossing, but donkeys can and should be changed”
The year 1993, 1994 - the general’s name was always heard, interviewers flocked to him in Transnistria like moths to a flame, the brutal warrior, not afraid of his superiors and cutting the truth in the eyes, impressed many. And not only “patriots” said then that they would like to see him as president. I remember very well how the “golden feathers” and “talking heads” of Gusinsky’s media concern suddenly turned to Lebed in unison, starting the campaign “give us our dear Pinochet!”
The political views of the general, who was turning into a politician, could hardly be clearly defined and sorted into categories. Rather, it was a banal set of thoughts and emotions, rather than a clearly defined position: the country and the army are collapsing, corruption and crime are flourishing, it’s a shame for the state... Dashing phrases were easily remembered, aphorisms became catchphrases: “I fell - I did a push-up”, “I hit twice, the first - in the forehead, the second - on the lid of the coffin”, “walks like a goat after a carrot”, “what kind of concussion can Grachev have - there’s a bone there.” And in the eyes of PR people, Lebed slowly but surely began to squeeze out all kinds of “patriots”, taking away the nuclear electorate even from Zhirinovsky. Lebed's points were also added to by his caustic attacks against the “best minister of defense” Pasha-Mercedes, whose popularity was confidently sliding to zero.
Who at that time did not try to bet on a rising star in camouflage! Most of the people who hung around him were “patriots” of the Rogozin type. But, graciously accepting the advances, the general did not give out specific obligations to anyone, did not take on too much, and did not react at all to the constant pleas to “raise the 14th Army and move it to Moscow.” To put it mildly, I met the war in Chechnya with disapproval. True, I focused more not on the political, but on the military component of the failed campaign: storming a city with tanks, they say, is nonsense, and throwing untrained soldiers into battle is a crime. Lebed, of course, was removed from the purely formal command of the 14th Army by that time: he was given an apartment in Moscow, shoulder straps of a lieutenant general, but not a position. Which, undoubtedly, finally pushed him to the decision to go into politics.

“When I purposefully walk toward a goal, I look like a flying crowbar.”
This is what the general plunged headlong into at the end of 1995. “Russia has long been waiting for a rider on a white horse who would restore order in the country,” wrote publicist Paul Klebnikov, who was shot dead in Moscow in July 2004, in his book about Berezovsky, “and for many this man was Lebed.” At the same time, the promotion of a new image of Lebed began: not as a banal general in uniform, but as a wise guardian of the urgent needs of the state, a man of strong will. Since the electorate craves a strong hand (the idea of ​​which was also actively promoted everywhere) - here it is for you! We can say that it was on Lebed that the technologies that later gave us Putin were first developed. Moreover, the material - in the person of Lebed - went to the political strategists, as it seemed to them at first, malleable and manageable: no ideas of their own, no team, but what color, what charisma is all over the place! Lebed, of course, had the latter in abundance, as even people who did not sympathize with him admitted. In general, the material for promotion was good, all that remained was to determine its place.
“All of January, February and the first half of March 1996, our candidate sat alone in the next office,” Dmitry Rogozin sarcastically recalls, “smoking nervously, looking at the silent phone and saying: “Nothing. They will call. They're not going anywhere." And really, don’t share it: they called from Boris Abramovich Berezovsky, inviting him to a meeting: “... from the expression on his face I immediately realized that he had been waiting for this particular call for three months.” Berezovsky of the 1996 model is a man from Yeltsin’s “family” circle. So the proposal came straight from the Kremlin. Its essence, says Rogozin, is to pull votes away from Gennady Zyuganov and Zhirinovsky in exchange for a cool position. The main bait is the promise that the sick Yeltsin will soon give up his throne to him, Lebed. The decisive role in the “taming” of the general was allegedly played by the head of the Presidential Security Service, Alexander Korzhakov.
At the very beginning of May 1996, a secret meeting between the two contenders took place. On May 8, Lebed met behind closed doors with Berezovsky and other members of the so-called “Group of Thirteen,” which included the heads of the largest Russian companies and banks. Everything went so wonderfully that I can’t resist quoting from the Strugatskys: “Everything was clear. The spiders agreed." They shook hands, and Lebed's election campaign spun to its fullest: it turned out to be almost better organized than everyone else's. TV screens were filled with the clip “There is such a person, and you know him!” (Denis Evstigneev is said to be its manufacturer), and the speechwriters hired for Lebed (for example, Leonid Radzikhovsky) brought down on readers a wave of such interviews with the general and articles about him that many people’s jaws dropped from amazement to the plinth: the general is so smart! Not only Radzikhovsky and Evstigneev, but also economists Vitaly Naishul and Sergei Glazyev worked gloriously on servicing Lebed’s campaign; Sergei Kurginyan also noted in his writings about Lebed; in addition to Berezovsky and Gusinsky, other participants in the “seven bankers” also provided their share of finance and information support. The threads of the campaign, apparently, were held in the hands of Berezovsky and Anatoly Chubais.
As is known, Lebed converted the votes of his voters into the post of Secretary of the Security Council and a completely meaningless appendage to it - the post of Assistant to the President for National Security. Then there was participation (together with Chubais) in the overthrow of Korzhakov and FSB director Mikhail Barsukov, as well as the vindictive dismissal of Defense Minister Pavel Grachev - under the pretext of the hastily invented State Emergency Committee-2. Although, of course, all this intrigue of throwing out former favorites from the Kremlin court, hiding behind the formidable figure of Lebed, was, of course, really carried out by Chubais’s guys.

“If there are no culprits, they are appointed”
After the triumph, everyday life set in, showing that the comrades who had rented Swan had no intention of sharing power with him. The Moor had done his job, but it was too early to write him off to the archives: it was necessary to maintain decency, and entrust him with some disastrous case. And Chechnya conveniently turned up: on August 6, 1996, militants launched an assault on Grozny, blocking federal checkpoints and garrisons.
Just don’t classify Lebed as a great humanist peacemaker or, on the contrary, throw around useless phrases like “Khasavyurt’s betrayal.” He always remained a professional military man to the core and, having the bloody experience of real wars behind him, he perfectly understood the futility of the then Chechen campaign. Let us not forget how ineptly the commanders of that time conducted it, how unpopular that war was in society. Such wars are not won, and glory is not gained in them.
Later they will say that Lebed did not have any sanctions for negotiating and concluding agreements with field commanders. Here is a remarkable quote from Yeltsin: “The trouble was that no one knew how to end the war. ...And Lebed knew. In complete secrecy, he flew to Chechnya, where at night he met with Maskhadov and Udugov. Effective. Like a general…” But Lebed’s actions cannot be called amateurish: in July-August 1996, the Kremlin was simply paralyzed. In the literal sense - on the eve of the second round of the presidential election, Yeltsin suffered a severe heart attack, and he was incapacitated in every sense. It turns out that everyone’s hands were untied? The calculation of the Kremlin officials, who avoided giving Lebed clear instructions and clear powers, was simple: let him try, it will work out - good, if it doesn’t work out - he will be to blame!
The paratrooper himself then acted, rather, not according to political calculations, but at the call and command of his heart. Or conscience. A strange combination for a politician, but he was still not a shameless cynic. But the cold sobriety of the military man was also present. After all, for Lebed, Yeltsin’s condition was no secret, and it seemed that his days were numbered. But when concluding the pre-election alliance, Lebed was given absolutely unambiguous advances: Lebed will be Boris Nikolaevich’s successor, only he and no one else, and he won’t have to wait for the next elections. Simply put, the general was bought with the promise that very soon “Grandfather” would leave the Kremlin, handing it over to Lebed... Very tempting and promising. There was something to take risks for. And the general was never afraid of risk, as anyone can confirm. And he risked his life to the fullest when negotiating with the militants.
The vicissitudes of the events that led to the conclusion of the Khasavyurt agreements are sufficiently covered. And there is no reason to accuse the general of treason or to label them as “surrender”, “Peace of Brest-Litovsk”, etc. In those conditions, this was perhaps the only way out of the bloody impasse, and no one offered a better one. Later they will say that Lebed did not allow the already exhausted militants to be completely defeated, that they could have been covered with one blow, that they fell into a trap, that their ammunition was running out... Perhaps this was so - both the ammunition was running out, and and so on. They just forget the main thing: the morale and fighting spirit of the soldiers fighting in Chechnya was running out, and all their thoughts were then aimed at survival. Well, they would fuck you up again, they would drive you into the mountains, so what? But still the same, hopeless dead end. Based on the experience of his business trips to the Chechen war of 1994 - 1996. I can confidently say: there was definitely no smell of victory there. And Lebed understood this no worse than anyone else.
Another thing is that he can be blamed for some naivety, improvidence, and imprudentness: the agreements were far from ideal. But neither the Kremlin, nor the military department, nor the Ministry of Internal Affairs, nor the FSB did anything to help him in terms of prudence, leaving him alone in an open Chechen field.

“Two birds cannot live in the same den”
One way or another, the general stopped the massacre. How he ruined his relationship with the Minister of Internal Affairs, who was gaining strength and weight in the apparatus. For General Anatoly Kulikov then firmly stood his ground: to fight to the bitter end. And the entire autumn of 1996 passed under the sign of the confrontation between the two generals, which culminated in the detention by Lebed’s guards of the “outdoor surveillance” employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who were “keeping an eye” on the Secretary of the Security Council.
Kulikov described how one of Lebed’s projects was discussed in the prime minister’s office: “Lebed lit a cigarette in Chernomyrdin’s office, which no one has ever allowed himself to do: the prime minister cannot stand tobacco smoke.” When the general’s project was wrapped up at that meeting, it started: “Swan’s face is purple. He’s already hanging over the table, growling loudly: “What do you think I am, a fucking dog?” Everyone, of course, is in a trance: no one has ever spoken to the mighty “Stepanich” like that before. The Minister of Internal Affairs is trying to put his colleague in his place and also runs into trouble: “Swan, in the spirit of a scandal, shouts at me across the table and splashes saliva: “Yes, I’m a boor!” I'm a boor! And what?!"
Meanwhile, this confrontation between the “two birds” was watched with interest from the Kremlin hills, gently inciting both sides to escalate the confrontation. Naturally, the series “Highlander”: “Only one can remain”! At the same time, Lebed was constantly fed information about Yeltsin’s deteriorating health. Which was the straw that broke the camel’s hump: the general, deciding that Yeltsin’s days were numbered, bit the bit. “Ostap was carried away,” and now Lebed often said that the old man had become fried, had become insane, and it was time for him to leave. The relevant services, collecting these statements, not without pleasure, placed selections of swan pearls on the table of the enraged president. “It was no coincidence that the Swan rumbled so noisily in the corridors of power,” Yeltsin later wrote with undisguised irritation. “He showed with all his appearance: the president is bad, and I, a general politician, am ready to take his place.” There are no worthy people here except me. Only I will be able to speak to the people at this difficult moment.”
Lebed’s demonstrative support for Yeltsin’s disgraced bodyguard Korzhakov added kerosene to the fire. Lebed personally went to Tula to support Korzhakov in the Duma elections. This was already too much: the concept of loyalty of officials and military personnel to the Supreme Commander-in-Chief has not yet been canceled. In addition, Lebed forgot that the service he provided to Yeltsin is already in the past and he received the position from the hands of the president, and did not win it in the elections. But it was already difficult to slow down the paratrooper, who seriously believed that he was destined to become the “Russian de Gaulle.” The natural ending was resignation from the post of Secretary of the Security Council. Boris Yeltsin admitted that it was not so easy to “equally remove” the general: “Lebed’s authority in the armed forces and in other power structures was enormous. The trust rating among the population was close to thirty percent. The highest rating among politicians. But most importantly, Lebed... had an almost pocket Ministry of Defense, headed by his protege Igor Rodionov...” Is it any wonder at such a shocking confession from Yeltsin: “In my administration, by the way, they absolutely seriously discussed the worst-case scenario: landing of paratroopers in Moscow, seizure of buildings power ministries and so on. The paratroopers... Swan was generally idolized. They said that he could still fulfill all the landing standards - run, pull himself up, jump with a parachute, shoot at a target in short bursts and hit.” And then he still had to undergo heart bypass surgery, and Yeltsin was horrified that “he didn’t want Lebed to be in the Kremlin at the time of the operation. …This man should not get even a tiny chance to govern the country.” They were really afraid. Therefore, when sending Lebed into retirement, just in case, they kept the loyal units in full combat readiness.

“There are no sinless airborne generals”
Lebed owes his further rise to the Krasnoyarsk heights both to his charisma and money... to Berezovsky. But this became clear later, when clods of dirt from the Krasnoyarsk election campaign of 1998 began to float to the surface. And along the way, some people who were aware of Lebed’s “black cash” disappeared. So, in October 1999, Andrei Cherkashin, deputy head of the Krasnoyarsk State Property Committee, disappeared without a trace: he left a banquet, and no one saw him again, only an abandoned jeep was found. It was Cherkashin who brought Lebed millions of “black” dollars for the elections. According to the law, Lebed had the right to spend no more than 417 thousand 450 rubles on the elections (about 67 thousand dollars at that rate), but in reality 33 times more was spent - over 2 million 300 thousand dollars - this was confirmed by Yuri Bybin, who performed the duties Deputy Head of Lebed's election headquarters for finance. Disclosure of this fraud inevitably threatened Governor Lebed with impeachment. So, when it became known about Cherkashin’s disappearance, Bybin (along with his documents) immediately went on the run, rightly fearing for his life. Nowadays it is no longer a big secret that the financing came from Berezovsky.
The latter, investing funds, as always, hoped to kill several birds with one stone: if he did not take over the entire richest region, then he would definitely squeeze out his business competitors there. The most tasty morsel was, of course, the Krasnoyarsk aluminum giant, on which, in addition to Berezovsky, both the Cherny brothers and the gang of the “authoritative entrepreneur” Anatoly Bykov rolled their lips. The latter, by the way, first also bet on Swan. Then their paths diverged, and the general, answering unpleasant questions about an alliance with authority, answered without any fuss: yes, this is a military trick, “I had to penetrate the region.” And the war of the airborne general against the criminal began. As a result, Bykov fled to Hungary, but was detained there and extradited to Russia. However, he did not stay on the bunk for long. Of course, another major task of the “Krasnoyarsk sitting” was an attempt to create a springboard for the general from which, under a convenient set of circumstances, he could again begin a campaign against the Kremlin.
Only Lebed turned out to be nothing like a governor. Lebed's former press secretary Alexander Barkhatov, in his book about the general, in my opinion, tenaciously captured his essence: he has neither ideas nor people, but only an increasing desire to rule. He has no friends because he is indifferent to people, and the whirlwind of the army did not contribute to strong human connections. There are no administrative and economic skills, but there is the ability to use the energy and talent of devoted people for the time being. Stra

Tahir Akhmerov: “The disaster was not an accident”

Akhmerov drank tea. After hepatitis, which he suffered in the zone, he cannot have coffee. The sun was pouring through the washed window onto the tomato seedlings, there was a perfectly clean carpet on the kitchen floor, a drill was being drilled into the wall on the floor above, and the sound of the drill, interrupting Akhmerov’s voice, filled the recorder with an extra crackle. Seedlings, a carpet, the crack of a drill - meaningless details of the conversation. Details are generally easy to replace: one with another. Invent or mix up.

I was drinking coffee. Opposite me sat a former pilot, Takhir Akhmerov, to whom everyone has always asked and will always ask questions about the last flight of Alexander Lebed. Because he commanded the MI-8 with tail number 158, in which the Governor-General of the Krasnoyarsk Territory Alexander Lebed and seven other people were killed.

Akhmerov is going to write a book, hoping that then the questions will go away and another topic for conversation with him will appear. Any, but not this one.

You worked as a driver in the zone for two years, Tahir Shagizadovich.

They say they took the head of the GUFSIN, General Shaeshnikov?

No, his subordinates. Although in a past life the general boarded my helicopter more than once as a passenger. We had to fly together.

When I realized that my cassation appeal to the Supreme Court was an empty formality and that I would have to sit in one of its institutions, I came to Shaeshnikov.

“You’ll go near Kansk,” he answered.

I ask him: “What will I do there, a disabled person of the second group?” He thought about it and said: “If you know how to drive a car, you will stay here.”

In short, I accepted the car and started working. Although it is difficult to drive an old Zhiguli with broken legs.

How was life in the zone?

Yes, good. Many new acquaintances and friends appeared. And among those who sat like me. And among those whom I drove. Lots of good men.

Do old friends call?

They're calling. At least my students, whom I taught to fly, treat me the same as before the disaster. In this sense, little has changed in my life. Although:

But what?

We are all accustomed to perceiving people and situations as they are presented and voiced to us. Brought up in this spirit. Every pilot thinks: “If I were in their place:”

But no one was in my place, in the place of Lesha Kurilovich or Pasha Evseevsky. I didn’t fall in that helicopter. And that’s why sometimes, no, no, they will say to me: “You, Shagizadovich, don’t fantasize!..”, although they understand that they would probably do the same thing as us, and then blame themselves for the rest of their lives , as we are.

Eighty percent of people are not at all to blame for what happens to them.

What then?

Don't know.

But you thought and analyzed what happened?

Do you want a story? An acquaintance from the airline comes to me and says: “There is a certain pattern in what happened.” I ask: "Which one?" - “There were three eights above you that day, a triple sign of infinity. That’s why you went into infinity.”

I don’t understand - what eights?

You see, you don't understand. And he has a whole hypothesis.

Is there an eight in the number of April 28? Eat. The helicopter we flew on was MI-8. And eight people died. Hypothesis? No worse than the rest.

Well, have you made your own hypotheses and assumptions?

Maybe you had any premonitions that morning before the flight? Didn't want to fly?

I have none. I didn’t believe in such things and still don’t believe them.

And my wife is still reproaching herself for not waking her up when, on the eve of the flight, late in the evening, a man called and, without introducing himself, asked me to come to the phone. He refused to tell her anything and hung up. Svetlana still believes that this man wanted to warn me about the misfortune.

Do you consider it possible that this was an ordinary call from a friend or acquaintance?

My acquaintances and friends, without exception, introduce themselves. And this one remained incognito.

So, there were no premonitions.

Absolutely. A regular flight, only very early in time.

Around twelve at night I went to bed, and at half past four in the morning I was already starting the car in the garage to gather the guys. At 6.30 we had to go through medical control, and at 7.30 we had to fly from Sosen to Ermakovskoye.

By evening I expected to return to Krasnoyarsk: that day was my older brother Rashid’s fortieth birthday. In the morning, before leaving, I asked my wife to set the table and gather the children, so that after my return, as expected, the whole family could sit together.

My cousin, when he heard what happened, shouted: “Rashid, please don’t take Tahir. Rashid, don’t take Tahir.” Begged for it.

By that time, you and the governor had already been flying for two years.

Yes, somewhere like that. Including to the area of ​​Oyskoye Lake, where the opening ceremony of the ski slope was scheduled that day.

But one of the commission’s conclusions was that the area is completely unfamiliar to you.

Alexander Ivanovich and I were fishing in the area of ​​Lake Oysk three and a half months before the disaster, on January 3. Even then, I first flew to Ermakovskoye: I picked up the head of the district, Vasily Rogovoy, and the director of the Shushenskoye sanatorium, Podgorny, for the company. We flew over the area of ​​the same cable car that was supposed to open in April.

Then we went 250 kilometers to the east, to the Sayans, there are lakes there too.

But the fishing didn't go well. I was still thinking: because of such nonsense they flew from Krasnoyarsk!

For me, all the New Year holidays went by dry: we flew right after the New Year, and you start preparing for the flight two or three days in advance. On the 31st I only drank a glass of champagne.

So in January I was literally in those places where we later crashed.

I reported this to the commission, but they did not pay attention to it. It was necessary to present the case in such a way that I did not know the area, and they presented it. And I walked all the Sayans up and down.

General Shaeshnikov took guests to Bear Lake to swim. And many others. And these are the mountain Sayan Mountains - one and a half thousand meters above sea level. After 3-5 degrees of water in Medvezhye, the Yenisei seems like fresh milk.

If you knew the area, then why did Vasily Rogovoy and the director of the Shushensky sanatorium Podgorny show you the way from Ermakovsky?

In Ermakovsky, Vasya Rogovoy entered the cockpit and said: “Next, Tahir, we need to fly to Lake Oyskoye.” I told him: “Well, show Lesha on the map.” Lesha Kurilovich was sitting on the left in the commander's chair, I, as an instructor, was on the right.

For some reason, Rogovoy was without glasses, and waved his hand: “Okay,” he said, “let’s fly right over the road. The road is known to everyone - to Kyzyl. We won’t miss!” “Well, okay,” I say. “I see.”

We took off and flew to Oyskoye. I also thought: that means the governor needs to look at the road. It was later that they began to tell us that no one gave us such a command about the road. Nobody was going to watch anything there.

So, they say, Akhmerov himself chose the route and flew along it. And if I knew that Alexander Ivanovich would not go anywhere else to the lake and he didn’t need to see anything, I could have laid the route completely differently. And so, there was a command to fly along the road, and we flew along the road.

The final destination of the flight on April 28, 2002 was Ermakovskoye, Tahir Shagizadovich. We could not fly further at all.

There was nothing special about it. I knew from experience that Alexander Ivanovich would not limit himself to Ermakovsky alone. The usual flight radius with the governor was one hundred to one hundred and fifty kilometers. Therefore, when on April 26 they called and said that in two days we were flying to Ermakovskoye, I immediately asked: “Where to next?” They answered me: “You’ll figure it out on the spot.”

But the second helicopter did not fly for you and remained in Tanzybey.

The Sibaviatrans helicopter, according to my information, was supposed to fly to Vyezhy Log. The commander there was, in my opinion, Kozel. On the eve of our flight, Yura Markov from that crew comes up to me and asks: “Shagizadovich, where will you disembark your passengers?” I told him: “I don’t know yet. So what?” He: “But the Abramovichs (owners of Krasair airline - author’s note) want to go skiing from the slopes.”

And just before my birthday, April 18, I flew to Vyezhy Log, to the Manskie Lakes region, where I also played the role of a cable car: I threw high-ranking extreme guys onto the slopes of the mountains, they rolled down, I flew down and picked them up. Well, he advised Markov to fly to the Manskiye Lakes region. There were still traces of my skiers on all the slopes.

Why did they overplay their hand and decide to fly to Lake Oiskoe? It seems like there wasn’t even a conversation with the guys about it. Although later I saw their flight plan, where the final destination was “Lake Oyskoye”. It turns out they knew where they were flying. But not me!

I suspect that the entire Krasnoyarsk Territory knew that the governor was flying to the presentation of the ski resort.

Well, maybe. Although, in principle, we were going fishing. First the presentation, then the fishing. And they loaded accordingly. We had fishing rods in the helicopter.

They were flying east. I took it further west. And so, when we had already fallen, they asked the dispatchers to call our 158th aircraft. And we were no longer in the air. They descended, walked along the road, encountered clouds, turned around and flew to Tanzybey. After some time, a traffic police car drove up there and reported that our plane had crashed.

It was at 10.15 am - the time of landing on Lake Oiskoye, to which we did not reach exactly 1800 meters. You could say we crashed on the landing line.

By the way, about the weather. Tahir Shagizadovich, was there really heavy cloudiness?

Yes, I’ve already told you a thousand times that Lebed and I crashed in amazing weather. Well, cloudiness moved into the lowlands, we rose higher, everything was fine.

I was already on the ground when they pulled me out of the helicopter, and I looked up at this power line. Both weather conditions and visibility were normal. THIS EVENT SHOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED BY ANY PARAMETERS! AND THE WEATHER HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH IT.

- “There is evidence that there were difficult weather conditions, very poor visibility. The crew flew, focusing visually on the road, and not on instruments:” These words belong to the Minister of Emergency Situations Sergei Shoigu, and they sounded a few days after the tragedy.

If there was very poor visibility, how could we even navigate visually? According to the minister, nothing was visible. And then, when weather conditions deteriorate so much, the flight crew will not continue the flight. He gains altitude, turns around and leaves.

Just don’t talk about the governor’s order. On board the aircraft, decisions are made by the commander. No one can order him to continue flying in “very poor visibility.”

Alexander Ivanovich came into our cabin at Sosny and said hello, as usual. I think he was a little surprised that I was sitting on the right and not on the left - as he was used to. I explained to him that Lesha Kurilovich is the commander, I am the commander-instructor, so I am sitting in the co-pilot’s seat. But still, only I bear full responsibility for the crew and passengers. This is prescribed by our instructions and documents.

Alexander Ivanovich, not only on this flight, in general always greeted us when boarding. At the end of the flight, I said goodbye to everyone by hand - personally. And that's all.

So, they say, we were afraid of the Swan. The burden of responsibility, nerves and all that stuff. I flew helicopters for thirty years. In Evenkia, he drove the entire administration, starting with the head of the region. People are different: there were tyrants, there were fools. And there were good ones. But I did not curry favor with them and was not afraid. We are all simply workers. Everyone does their job. Only someone controls the edge, and I control the helicopter.

Maybe you were nervous because the card was old?

This is what matters later, for the prosecutor's office, for the investigation - the old map, the new one: You can even fly on a piece of paper, just draw a route on it and fly.

But the power line that caused the disaster was not indicated on your map.

We, according to Sergei Kuzhugetovich, flew visually and saw the high-voltage transmission line perfectly and did not lose sight of it. It winds in the mountains on both sides of the road. We flew over it several times.

I also told the guys that they need to be careful, the most important thing is the power line. I was at the helm as soon as we entered the high-mountain zone.

And there, if you drove along that road, there is a sharp turn, right behind the shelf that protects the road from rockfalls and snowfalls. We came out from behind the shelf, I looked - there was a power line ahead, I increased the power, and we were already passing above the wires - everything was fine.

Lesha (Kurilovich - Author's note) also told me: "Shagizadovich, that's it, let's pass!" I looked, the line was below us. And then I saw the lightning rod. He is different, black, you can immediately see him. I also thought: “There is another one - a lightning rod, it’s the top one.”

You just hooked him.

No. We didn't catch him. I saw that the lightning rod was passing underneath us. We began to collapse above the power line, fell, and one remaining blade caught the lightning rod. But this happened already when the helicopter was falling. We cut it off and wound it around the propeller when we fell.

Stop, but you said something different before.

They wrote, I agree, a lot of things. The height of the power line support is 37 meters, we started falling from about 45 meters. At this height, destruction began, and the car went down.

When you woke up, what was the first thing you felt?

I felt sadness and melancholy. Such melancholy:

I opened my eyes: the engine was humming, there was broken iron all around. Neither Pasha Evseevsky, our flight engineer, nor Lesha Kurilovich was already in the cockpit. In my opinion, there was no one at all. I'm the last one. My right arm was torn from my shoulder by the control stick. In a helicopter it is connected to the swashplate and the main rotor. Even as cadets, we knew that when a machine is destroyed, the amplitude of rotation of the control stick is such that the pilots die, wrapping their guts around it. Everything comes out!

Apparently, I held it with such force that the humerus burst: my right arm hung on tendons and a piece of skin. I somehow unfastened my belt.

Both of my legs were broken at the ankle (and so was Lesha Kurilovich).

Then a man appeared, I waved my hand to him, and, in my opinion, said: “Help me get out.”

They pulled me out, dragged me about twenty meters, I said: “Put it out.”

To me: “What to stew with?” - “Throw it with snow.”

What caught fire?

Stove. It is designed in such a way that it works even when the engines are already turned off. It has its own autonomous recharge and exhaust pipe. There was fire in the chimney. And then the kerosene flowed and the stove caught fire.

Then four of them carried me onto the bus. I was still able to sit down on my own and hold on to the handrail with my left hand. People sat around and moaned. Two were lying in the aisle, on the floor of the bus. Pasha Evseevsky was sitting behind me.

I asked him:

Where is Lesha?

In another car?

Then I asked: “Have you pulled out the swan?”

They pulled me out.

Alive. He's already been taken away.

Inside me: “Well, thank God.”

He also asked if everyone had been evacuated, were there any dead?

Already on the way to Ermaki, someone said: “Two have died.”

Inside me: EVERYTHING!..

Who told your wife about the disaster?

TV. At first there was information that the crew had died.

The confusion was terrible. Bakhmetyev was named among the dead, but he was not in our helicopter at all. They just knew that Bakhmetyev often flew with the governor, so they named him.

My younger sister Nail’s husband told Svetlana that I was alive. He found out about this in Kemerovo through some of his channels and called her in Krasnoyarsk: “Tahir is alive. Don’t lose heart.”

We were brought to Krasnoyarsk in the evening of the same day. In the pocket of my flight shirt were two fragments of a light bulb from the dashboard, which the surgeon in Ermakovsky took out of my eye. “Here,” he says, “for memory.”

When he took out the fragments, I opened my eyes - I see normally. And before this I didn’t even feel the glass.

She burned the shirt and all the other things that were given to his wife. Everything was covered in blood.

What is Alexey Kurilovich doing now?

Sick. Lesha has weak bones. They break constantly. As soon as the plaster is removed, the fracture will occur again. A large deficiency of calcium in the body, or what? Now he’s walking around with Elizarova’s devices again.

What happened to Pavel Evseevsky, who died shortly before the trial?

Don't know. I don't understand. Pasha was ten years younger than me. Nobody thought that we would have to bury him first. I have not seen the medical report. When his wife Tanya was tortured by what was written there, she said that there was no conclusion yet. Well, maybe they gave it later.

The autopsy was performed in Kedrovoye, where they lived. I arrived, and they had already taken him away to dissect him. Tanya said that they were going to visit that day. Pasha felt bad on the stairs when they were going home to the fourth floor. And before that we went to Krasnoyarsk, he drove the car himself. Everything seemed to be fine. Already at the door of the apartment, he managed to say: “Tanya, I feel bad.” He began to choke and turn blue. She somehow dragged him to the sofa. And he was already completely blue:

When we crashed, Pasha had a fractured hip, a 15-centimeter rupture in his liver, a torn diaphragm, and bruises. He even left the hospital before me.

My doctor friend and I came to see Pasha’s wife. She said: “The signs look like a stroke.” I don't believe in such strokes.

Yes, it's all politics. I have said more than once that I do not consider Lebed’s death to be either an accident or an accident. There are many technical tricks that can only later be attributed to an accident or the unprofessionalism of the crew. I also spoke to Lebed’s younger brother, Alexei Ivanovich, about this.

What did he answer you?

Nothing, said nothing. True, then I suspected that I wanted to shield myself. And to be honest, I don’t give a damn about all this shielding.

Did you say the same thing in court?

Even more. It only took me three days to get the final word. I tell you everything as it was, my life, but I see for myself that no one needs it. And what’s the surprise that I was imprisoned? Shoigu, in my opinion, on the second day after the disaster spoke about the bad weather and the guilt of the pilots. The commission worked along this well-trodden path. Well, what conclusions should she have drawn, except that the cause of the tragedy and loss of life was recognized as the poor training of the crew and the unprofessionalism of the pilots. The version of a terrorist attack was not even considered.

And we are not boys. By that time, I had 30 years of flying experience, Lesha Kurilovich had 22, Pasha had 15.

It's not the boys who fall too.

Do you want another story? At a meeting of the commission, they say, one of its members, after watching the video, said that what happened was a terrorist attack. It seems like there was even a quarrel. He left, refusing to work on the commission.

Of course, I didn’t talk to this person personally. Everything is from the words of people who witnessed certain conversations or eyewitnesses to events.

But another story was personally told to me by the ataman of the Cossack army in Kyzyl, who was traveling from Tuva to Krasnoyarsk that day. He was one of the first to see our helicopter lying on the slope. Its gearbox was still spinning, and even a police cordon was set up later. So, Bespalov said that a man was filming the helicopter with a video camera.

He started shouting at him, saying that people should be saved now, and not filmed. The man, without saying anything, turned and left.

I say: “So this is some kind of tourist with a video camera from a passing car! A lot of people were going that day to the opening of the ski slope. They were waiting for the holiday.” The chieftain was very offended.

And just imagine. We are flying, and the general director of the Yenisei Meridian is in Peru at this time, the deputy for organization is in Igarka, the head of the interregional air transport department is in Sayanogorsk.

It was Sunday.

Well, the governor is flying, and it’s Sunday for everyone. So it turns out that flight commander Akhmerov took the helicopter and himself organized the flight of the first person of the region! In the absence of all leaders. That’s why I am a former pilot, switchman and housewife, that is, I do housework. And everything I said is bullshit.

Well, or a former pilot.

10 years ago, Alexander Lebed, who could have become president of Russia, died. Or its dictator.
On February 21, 2012, during a meeting with representatives of unregistered parties, Dmitry Medvedev suddenly said that “hardly anyone has any doubts about who won the presidential elections in 1996. It was not Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin.” But the debate over whether Zyuganov beat Yeltsin back then is of little interest: the main event then was the truly brilliant success of General Alexander Lebed, who immediately took the third “prize”: 14.5% voted for him.
voters - almost 11 million people. Before the second round of the presidential elections, Yeltsin appointed the “bronze winner” as Secretary of the Russian Security Council. They then prophesied a great future for the general, calling him either the president and Yeltsin’s most likely successor, or the future “Russian Pinochet.”
But Lebed never made it to Pinochet, becoming governor of the Krasnoyarsk Territory in 1998. True, a few years later they began to say that the “Swan Project” could be pulled out from under the cloth again. But on April 28, 2002, the governor of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, General Alexander Lebed, died in a plane crash. Thus ended the journey of a man who left a noticeable mark on modern Russian history. Then they even said that the paratrooper general died as he lived, almost in a combat mission, and this, they say, is a glorious death for a real military man - not in bed from senile infirmity, not in complete oblivion - still on the crest of glory and fame ...
In the summer of 2002, while preparing material about aviation accidents, I had the opportunity to visit the Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC) and talk with specialists. “We had only just begun to study the Lebed case,” the then chairman of the scientific and technical commission of the MAK Viktor Trusov was indignant, “and everywhere it was already being broadcast: it was all Lebed’s fault, who allegedly ordered the pilots to fly, and on the film of the “black box”, they say , his voice is clearly recorded. Nonsense, we don’t have any Swan’s voice, and there couldn’t be one. Whoever came up with this nonsense doesn't even have a basic understanding of how a helicopter recorder works. And it doesn’t even have film, it’s recorded on a wire.” When I asked what was recorded on that wire, I received the answer: “Do you want to listen? Take him to an acoustician, let him listen all day long!”
It would have been a sin not to take advantage of this opportunity, especially since I didn’t have to listen to it all day long – the whole recording lasted about an hour and a half. Vladimir Poperechny, an expert in the acoustic information research department, clicked his computer mouse, and the sounds of the general’s last flight poured out of the speakers. He took out a voice recorder, but immediately received a negative gesture from the acousticians: “No, just without this. Listen, take notes in a notebook, but without a voice recorder. We do not have the right to transmit these recordings for publication. After the trial, if they are in the materials of the open trial, please publish them, but with reference not to us, but to court documents...”
I listened and took notes: indeed, there was no voice of Lebed, and there was not the slightest mention of him at all - the governor did not appear in the cockpit and did not communicate with the pilots after takeoff. Crackling sounds, on-air interference, calm voices of the crew - ordinary negotiations with dispatchers, short remarks, long stretches of complete silence. They explained to me the specifics of the helicopter voice recorder: unlike the airplane voice recorder, it is single-channel and does not record absolutely everything that is said in the cockpit. With a slight delay, it turns on only during negotiations between the crew and the ground. So, in principle, Lebed’s voice could not have been in that “black box”.
I asked a question: maybe he gave some instructions on earth? They answered: this is already the competence of the investigation, and not of the MAK. And legally it has no significance at all: on board, the commander of the ship, not the governor, is responsible for everything. I continue to listen to the recording: “Here, you hear, they have now moved into the coverage area of ​​the Abakan dispatcher, soon everything will happen. ...We barely jumped over one hill. But they couldn’t do this one...” The end of the recording was played several times for me, I’ll risk quoting it from old notebook notes: “Up! Power lines! Down! No! No!!! F... in the mouth! The last remark, surprisingly, sounds completely sluggish and slow and doomed. Then I hear the howl of the engine, a distinct crackling sound and silence - the end of the recording.
“...Listen, it’s winding wires around the screw,” the acoustician continues to comment. – In general, Lebed was simply unlucky; he died purely by accident, since he was sitting on the starboard side. When it falls, the helicopter spins to the right and is literally crushed by the one and a half ton rotor. If he had been sitting on the left, he would have survived, escaping with bruises or fractures, because even the pilots survived. Although, of course, it’s already a miracle that the helicopter didn’t catch fire or explode when it fell; usually they flare up like matches...
We also talked about the weather. On departure, they say, the weather was not great, but quite suitable for flying, so the helicopter made two intermediate landings along the way without any problems. But at the third and final stage of the flight, MAK experts argued, the conditions really changed dramatically: fog, low clouds. And so the pilots had to either return to the site from which they had just taken off, or choose a place for an unscheduled landing and abort the flight. But they continued it, and, as MAK members emphasized, there is no evidence that this was done under pressure from the governor. And about the bad maps, according to them, they are also pure tales - everything on those maps, they say, is marked, the pilots simply had to prepare for the flight ahead of time, having studied the upcoming route and working it out on the map. Which, according to my interlocutors, they apparently did not do. That’s why the power line marked on the map came as a surprise to them. “They were walking at a height of 25 meters,” the then deputy chairman of the IAC, Ivan Mulkidzhanov, categorically slashed. “So they had neither time nor headroom: they jumped once, twice - and jumped onto the power line...”
True, the helicopter pilot Takhir Akhmerov testified: “The height of the power line support is 37 meters, we started falling from about 45 meters. At this height, destruction began, and the car went down.”

“Like peace, so are sons of bitches, and like war, so are brothers.”
General Lebed flew into big politics quickly and sharply, rattling his landing boots and commanding voice, to the sound of caterpillar clanging and shots, to the rich crunch of unique soldier’s aphorisms - in this he had no equal. In principle, his path is quite typical: in a similar way, many military men entered the political arena of Russia. Only none of them managed to cling to the peaks of Olympus. Lebed was the last to leave, and with him ended the era of politicized generals of Soviet training, who gave way and chairs to the Lubyanka generals and colonels.
Alexander Lebed's military career was quite ordinary: airborne school, airborne forces, battalion commander in Afghanistan. Without skipping a single step, he went through the normal path from platoon lieutenant to division general. Four orders, two of them military - the Red Banner and the Red Star. Two more - “For service to the Motherland in the Armed Forces of the USSR” II and III degrees. The iconostasis was very decent for that time. He was considered an excellent soldier, although he did not shine with any special military leadership talents - as, indeed, all paratroopers. For the uniqueness of service in the Airborne Forces does not contribute to either a brilliant career or the identification of any leadership abilities. In Soviet times, a paratrooper, no matter how big the stars on his shoulder straps, he was simply doomed to stew in the own juice of the airborne units - romantic and heroic, but closed in on themselves. Due to the specific nature of his service, a native of the Airborne Forces did not have the slightest chance of advancement, for example, through the General Staff or the Ministry of Defense. The airborne division was considered the airborne ceiling, and even after the Academy of the General Staff, the paratrooper general could not receive either a corps, an army, or a district.
And Lebed, who rose to the rank of commander of the Guards Tula Airborne Division, the most he could count on was only the position of one of the deputy commanders of the Airborne Forces. And even then only after graduating from the General Staff Academy, where, by the way, he was never allowed in - although he was eager to go there. By the way, formally there were no prospects for his senior comrade and colleague, General Pavel Grachev, who by 1991 also reached his upper limit, becoming commander of the Airborne Forces. People from the landing force never rose above this position in the Soviet army hierarchy.
But by 1991, the situation in the country had already become different: since 1988, paratroopers began to be more and more actively involved in solving punitive tasks. As Lebed himself wrote, “forcing the army to perform functions that are not typical for it in Transcaucasia, Central Asia...”.
On April 9-10, 1989, Lebed’s paratroopers took part in the dispersal of a rally in Tbilisi, resulting in the death of 18 people. Lebed himself cannot be blamed for that blood: he was only carrying out the order of his Minister of Defense, and the landing force simply did not know how to act otherwise. And try to be “politically correct” when rebar shivs are flying at you and a rockfall is falling! As Lebed himself later wrote in his book “It’s a shame for the state...”, the 345th Parachute Regiment, which was blocking the approaches to the Tbilisi Government House, had almost just (February 15, 1989) been withdrawn from Afghanistan, “and here you have this nice little police-gendarmerie task.” Regarding the accusations that his paratrooper soldier chased a 71-year-old old woman for three kilometers and hacked her to death with a shovel, Lebed expressed himself briefly and succinctly much later: “The first question: what kind of old woman was she who ran three kilometers from the soldier? Question two: what kind of soldier was it that could not catch up with the old woman at three kilometers? And the third question, the most interesting: were they running around the stadium? For three kilometers there wasn’t a single Georgian man to stand in the way of this scoundrel?”
Further, everywhere, including the bloody events in Baku in January 1990. As the paratroopers themselves bitterly joked, the formula worked: Airborne Forces + VTA (military transport aviation) = Soviet power in Transcaucasia. “The task has always been the same - to separate the fools fighting to the death and prevent mass bloodshed and unrest.” So the elite of the army was literally dragged into a big political game without rules, which did not cause any delight among the paratroopers themselves: “Hanging around fully armed in the capitals of the allied states with police functions is, frankly speaking, a dubious pleasure,” Lebed later recalled. Although this experience will come in handy for Lebed later, allowing him to see the dirty belly of the kitchen of political decision-making. And from this “kitchen” the young general brought out the iron conviction that politicians do not know how to make the right decisions, nor make them on time, and in general they are setting up the army, trying to shift responsibility for their own miscalculations, blood and sacrifices onto the military. “He, being a career officer who went through all the blood of the 80s and 90s,” Dmitry Rogozin already recalls, “deep down in his soul he hated and despised all politicians, regardless of the color of their skin. Having decided to become one of them, he felt his enormous advantage – in experience, natural ingenuity, knowledge of life and death.”
Little is known about the character of Lebed himself in those days: he hardly drinks, he is strict and demanding with his subordinates, but they respect him, he does not flirt with his superiors, and does not grovel before high ranks. In a word, a servant. He also madly loves his wife, Inna Aleksandrovna Chirkova, but he has no real friends - he is especially close to anyone, he mentally tries not to get along with people, he breaks up with people easily...

“It’s a shame for the state...”
By the beginning of 1991, Lebed reached the peak of his military career, having been appointed deputy commander of the Airborne Forces for combat training and universities. The general’s new star lit up during the days of the August 1991 putsch, when Lebed received the task of moving units of the 106th Tula Airborne Division to Moscow. At the same time, a legend was born that the general went over to the side of Yeltsin, who was besieged in the White House. By the way, Lebed himself did not like that legend: “I didn’t go anywhere! There was an order - it stood, if another order had come, it would have taken the White House by storm.” And I would take it! As an experienced warrior, Lebed understood perfectly well that this was not the most difficult task for his paratroopers: “2-3 dozen ATGMs are driven in from two directions without much damage to the crowd surrounding him. When all this beauty starts to burn, or worse, smoke, and varnishes, paints, polishes, wool, synthetics merge in this smoke, pull up the machine gunners and wait for the inhabitants of the building to start jumping out of the windows. Those who are lucky will jump from the second floor, and those who are unlucky will jump from the 14th...” Boris Yeltsin later described the same thing in his “Presidential Marathon”: “I still remember his powerful voice in August 1991 , when he told me in the White House office: one salvo from armored personnel carriers - and the entire filling of the building will burst into flames, all your heroes will jump from the windows.” But he never received a direct order to storm, and he demonstratively did not react to vague hints: we know these tricks of yours, we were already in the skin of a scapegoat, that’s enough! A similar cunning game was then played by his direct superior, Airborne Forces commander General Pavel Grachev. However, most of the high ranks of the Ministry of Defense played that game. Its rules were simple: do not make unnecessary movements in order to jump into the last carriage at the right moment, taking the side of the winner. And political views, if the military had them, did not matter at all. It is clear that ideologically the generals, including Lebed, were closer to the GKChPists, but they were too disgusting types to recklessly follow them: if they win, we followed the order, if they lose, we did everything to prevent bloodshed. Win-win position.
General Lebed was noticed. Moreover, acquaintance with Yeltsin and the then Vice-President Rutskoy did not matter much, the main thing was that the press started talking about him, excitedly describing the mythical exploits of the tough warrior. But he didn’t really fit into the army court, finding himself superfluous in that cabinet-backroom division of posts, portfolios and money. And he was passed over in ranks and awards, and was never allowed to study at the Academy of the General Staff, where Lebed was literally eager: “What can I teach you - and so scientists!” - the authorities were feignedly indignant. True, without this academic badge one could not count on much: it was a pass to the circle of the elite.
But another pass was the fame of his determination, coupled with his bestial appearance and aphoristic speech. The general was sent to Transnistria when the fire of the military conflict there reached its peak. On June 23, 1992, “named Colonel Gusev, having with me a battalion of airborne special forces for respectability, I took off to Tiraspol.” Lebed was sent as commander of the now non-existent 14th Army, which had collapsed and was being pulled away left and right. He was sent not to put out the fire or to reason, much less to separate the combatants, but solely to remove the remnants of the army and, most importantly, its weapons and huge ammunition depots with the least losses. The task is obviously impossible. From the order of Defense Minister Grachev to the commander of the 14th Guards Army: “Your task is to successfully lead 14A in preventing attacks on all military installations and preserving the lives of military personnel.”
And then the general showed what is called a healthy initiative. Having gotten into the swing of things and understanding Moscow’s position of doing nothing, I realized that I could go all-in. If he loses, he will be punished, but the winner, as we know, is not judged. And after appropriate preparation, he gave the order: open fire!
Before that, Russian units had not openly taken any side, and the military superiority of the Moldovans was so obvious that the outcome of the war seemed a foregone conclusion. But Lebed’s artillery literally swept away the positions of the Moldavian army and its crossings across the Dniester. When politicians and diplomats tried to blather something, it sounded clear to the whole world in a military way: if you blather, my squadrons will sweep away Chisinau, over the ruins of which paratroopers will march. Thus ended one of the bloodiest wars in the post-Soviet space.
It is clear on whose side the sympathies of Russian society were then; the official Kremlin got off with a slight rumbling. But they did not punish the hero, although he did not receive a clear order to open fire. However, Lebed had to give up his future career. Grachev tried to send him to Tajikistan, but failed: “I told Grachev that I don’t understand why I should beat up one half of the Tajiks at the request of the other, they didn’t do anything bad to me. He calmed down." Lebed managed to stay away from the slippery events of the fall of 1993, although he made a number of sharp attacks against the White House inmates.

“Horses are not changed at the crossing, but donkeys can and should be changed”
The year 1993, 1994 - the general’s name was always heard, interviewers flocked to him in Transnistria like moths to a flame, the brutal warrior, not afraid of his superiors and cutting the truth in the eyes, impressed many. And not only “patriots” said then that they would like to see him as president. I remember very well how the “golden feathers” and “talking heads” of Gusinsky’s media concern suddenly turned to Lebed in unison, starting the campaign “give us our dear Pinochet!”
The political views of the general, who was turning into a politician, could hardly be clearly defined and sorted into categories. Rather, it was a banal set of thoughts and emotions, rather than a clearly defined position: the country and the army are collapsing, corruption and crime are flourishing, it’s a shame for the state... Dashing phrases were easily remembered, aphorisms became popular: “I fell - I did a push-up,” “ I hit him twice, the first on the forehead, the second on the lid of the coffin”, “he walks like a goat after a carrot”, “what kind of concussion can Grachev have - there’s a bone there.” And in the eyes of PR people, Lebed slowly but surely began to squeeze out all kinds of “patriots”, taking away the nuclear electorate even from Zhirinovsky. Lebed's points were also added to by his caustic attacks against the “best minister of defense” Pasha-Mercedes, whose popularity was confidently sliding to zero.
Who at that time did not try to bet on a rising star in camouflage! Most of the people who hung around him were “patriots” of the Rogozin type. But, graciously accepting the advances, the general did not give out specific obligations to anyone, did not take on too much, and did not react at all to the constant pleas to “raise the 14th Army and move it to Moscow.” To put it mildly, I met the war in Chechnya with disapproval. True, I spent more time not on the political, but on the military component of the failed campaign: storming a city with tanks, they say, is nonsense, and throwing untrained soldiers into battle is a crime. Lebed, of course, was removed from the purely formal command of the 14th Army by that time: he was given an apartment in Moscow, shoulder straps of a lieutenant general, but not a position. Which, undoubtedly, finally pushed him to the decision to go into politics.

“When I purposefully walk toward a goal, I look like a flying crowbar.”
This is what the general plunged headlong into at the end of 1995. “Russia has long been waiting for a rider on a white horse who would restore order in the country,” wrote publicist Paul Klebnikov, who was shot dead in Moscow in July 2004, in his book about Berezovsky, “and for many this man was Lebed.” At the same time, the promotion of a new image of Lebed began: not as a banal general in uniform, but as a wise guardian of the urgent needs of the state, a man of strong will. Since the electorate craves a strong hand (the idea of ​​which was also actively promoted everywhere) - here it is for you! We can say that it was on Lebed that the technologies that later gave us Putin were first developed. Moreover, the material - in the person of Lebed - went to the political strategists, as it seemed to them at first, malleable and manageable: no ideas of their own, no team, but what color, what charisma is all over the place! Lebed, of course, had the latter in abundance, as even people who did not sympathize with him admitted. In general, the material for promotion was good, all that remained was to determine its place.
“All of January, February and the first half of March 1996, our candidate sat alone in the next office,” Dmitry Rogozin sarcastically recalls, “smoking nervously, looking at the silent phone and saying: “Nothing. They will call. They're not going anywhere." And really, don’t share it: they called from Boris Abramovich Berezovsky, inviting him to a meeting: “... from the expression on his face I immediately realized that he had been waiting for this particular call for three months.” Berezovsky of 1996 is a man from Yeltsin’s “family” circle. So the proposal came straight from the Kremlin. Its essence, says Rogozin, is to steal votes from Gennady Zyuganov and Zhirinovsky in exchange for a cool position. The main bait is the promise that the sick Yeltsin will soon give up his throne to him, Lebed. The decisive role in the “taming” of the general was allegedly played by the head of the Presidential Security Service, Alexander Korzhakov.
At the very beginning of May 1996, a secret meeting between the two contenders took place. On May 8, Lebed met behind closed doors with Berezovsky and other members of the so-called “Group of Thirteen,” which included the heads of the largest Russian companies and banks. Everything went so wonderfully that I can’t resist quoting from the Strugatskys: “Everything was clear. The spiders agreed." They shook hands, and Lebed's election campaign spun to its fullest: it turned out to be almost better organized than everyone else's. TV screens were filled with the clip “There is such a person, and you know him!” (Denis Evstigneev is said to be its manufacturer), and the speechwriters hired for Lebed (for example, Leonid Radzikhovsky) brought down on readers a wave of such interviews with the general and articles about him that many people’s jaws dropped from amazement to the plinth: the general is so smart! Not only Radzikhovsky and Evstigneev, but also economists Vitaly Naishul and Sergei Glazyev worked gloriously on servicing Lebed’s campaign; Sergei Kurginyan also noted in his writings about Lebed; in addition to Berezovsky and Gusinsky, other participants in the “seven bankers” also provided their share of finance and information support. The threads of the campaign, apparently, were held in the hands of Berezovsky and Anatoly Chubais.
As is known, Lebed converted the votes of his voters into the post of Secretary of the Security Council and a completely meaningless appendage to it - the post of Assistant to the President for National Security. Then there was participation (together with Chubais) in the overthrow of Korzhakov and FSB director Mikhail Barsukov, as well as the vindictive dismissal of Defense Minister Pavel Grachev - under the pretext of the hastily invented State Emergency Committee-2. Although, of course, all this intrigue of throwing out former favorites from the Kremlin court, hiding behind the formidable figure of Lebed, was, of course, really carried out by Chubais’s guys.

“If there are no culprits, they are appointed”
After the triumph, everyday life set in, showing that the comrades who had rented Swan had no intention of sharing power with him. The Moor had done his job, but it was too early to write him off to the archives: it was necessary to maintain decency, and entrust him with some disastrous case. And Chechnya conveniently turned up: on August 6, 1996, militants launched an assault on Grozny, blocking federal checkpoints and garrisons.
Just don’t classify Lebed as a great humanist peacemaker or, on the contrary, throw around useless phrases like “Khasavyurt’s betrayal.” He always remained a professional military man to the core and, having the bloody experience of real wars behind him, he perfectly understood the futility of the then Chechen campaign. Let us not forget how ineptly the commanders of that time conducted it, how unpopular that war was in society. Such wars are not won, and glory is not gained in them.
Later they will say that Lebed did not have any sanctions for negotiating and concluding agreements with field commanders. Here is a remarkable quote from Yeltsin: “The trouble was that no one knew how to end the war. ...And Lebed knew. In complete secrecy, he flew to Chechnya, where at night he met with Maskhadov and Udugov. Effective. Like a general...” But Lebed’s actions cannot be called amateurish: in July-August 1996, the Kremlin was simply paralyzed. In the literal sense - on the eve of the second round of the presidential election, Yeltsin suffered a severe heart attack, and he was incapacitated in every sense. It turns out that everyone’s hands were untied? The calculation of the Kremlin officials, who shied away from giving Lebed clear instructions and clear powers, was simple: let him try, it will work out - good, if it doesn’t work out - he will be to blame!
The paratrooper himself then acted, rather, not according to political calculations, but at the call and command of his heart. Or conscience. A strange combination for a politician, but he was still not a shameless cynic. But the cold sobriety of the military man was also present. After all, for Lebed, Yeltsin’s condition was no secret, and it seemed that his days were numbered. But when concluding the pre-election alliance, Lebed was given absolutely unambiguous advances: Lebed will be Boris Nikolaevich’s successor, only he and no one else, and he won’t have to wait for the next elections. Simply put, the general was bought with the promise that very soon “Grandfather” would leave the Kremlin, handing it over to Lebed... Very tempting and promising. There was something to take risks for. And the general was never afraid of risk, as anyone can confirm. And he risked his life to the fullest when negotiating with the militants.
The vicissitudes of the events that led to the conclusion of the Khasavyurt agreements are sufficiently covered. And there is no reason to accuse the general of treason or to label them as “surrender”, “Peace of Brest-Litovsk”, etc. In those conditions, this was perhaps the only way out of the bloody impasse, and no one offered a better one. Later they will say that Lebed did not allow the already exhausted militants to be completely defeated, that they could have been covered with one blow, that they fell into a trap, that their ammunition was running out... Perhaps this was so - both ammunition was running out, and this and that. They just forget the main thing: the morale and fighting spirit of the soldiers fighting in Chechnya was running out, and all their thoughts were then aimed at survival. Well, they would fuck you up again, they would drive you into the mountains, so what? But still the same, hopeless dead end. Based on the experience of his business trips to the Chechen war from 1994 to 1996. I can confidently say: there was definitely no smell of victory there. And Lebed understood this no worse than anyone else.
Another thing is that he can be blamed for some naivety, improvidence, and imprudentness: the agreements were far from ideal. But neither the Kremlin, nor the military department, nor the Ministry of Internal Affairs, nor the FSB did anything to help him in terms of prudence, leaving him alone in an open Chechen field.

“Two birds cannot live in the same den”
One way or another, the general stopped the massacre. How he ruined his relationship with the Minister of Internal Affairs, who was gaining strength and weight in the apparatus. For General Anatoly Kulikov then firmly stood his ground: to fight to the bitter end. And the entire autumn of 1996 passed under the sign of the confrontation between the two generals, which culminated in the detention by Lebed’s guards of the “outdoor surveillance” employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who were “keeping an eye” on the Secretary of the Security Council.
Kulikov described how one of Lebed’s projects was discussed in the prime minister’s office: “Lebed lit a cigarette in Chernomyrdin’s office, which no one has ever allowed himself to do: the prime minister cannot stand tobacco smoke.” When the general’s project was wrapped up at that meeting, it started: “Swan’s face is purple. He’s already hanging over the table, growling loudly: “What do you think I am, a fucking dog?” Everyone, of course, is in a trance: no one has ever spoken to the mighty “Stepanich” like that before. The Minister of Internal Affairs is trying to put his colleague in his place and also runs into trouble: “Swan, in the spirit of a scandal, shouts at me across the table and splashes saliva: “Yes, I’m a boor!” I'm a boor! And what?!"
Meanwhile, this confrontation between the “two birds” was watched with interest from the Kremlin hills, gently inciting both sides to escalate the confrontation. Naturally, the series “Highlander”: “Only one can remain”! At the same time, Lebed was constantly fed information about Yeltsin’s deteriorating health. Which was the straw that broke the camel’s hump: the general, deciding that Yeltsin’s days were numbered, bit the bit. “Ostap was carried away,” and now Lebed often said that the old man had become fried, had become insane, and it was time for him to leave. The relevant services, collecting these statements, not without pleasure, placed selections of swan pearls on the table of the enraged president. “It was not by chance that the Swan rumbled so noisily in the corridors of power,” Yeltsin later wrote with undisguised irritation. “He showed with all his appearance: the president is bad, and I, the general politician, am ready to take his place.” There are no worthy people here except me. Only I will be able to speak to the people at this difficult moment.”
Lebed’s demonstrative support for Yeltsin’s disgraced bodyguard Korzhakov added kerosene to the fire. Lebed personally went to Tula to support Korzhakov in the Duma elections. This was already too much: the concept of loyalty of officials and military personnel to the Supreme Commander-in-Chief has not yet been canceled. In addition, Lebed forgot that the service he provided to Yeltsin is already in the past and he received the position from the hands of the president, and did not win it in the elections. But it was already difficult to slow down the paratrooper, who seriously believed that he was destined to become the “Russian de Gaulle.” The natural ending was resignation from the post of Secretary of the Security Council. Boris Yeltsin admitted that it was not so easy to “equally remove” the general: “Lebed’s authority in the armed forces and in other power structures was enormous. The trust rating among the population was close to thirty percent. The highest rating among politicians. But most importantly, Lebed... had an almost pocket Ministry of Defense, headed by his protege Igor Rodionov...” Is it any wonder that Yeltsin had such a shocking confession: “In my administration, by the way, they absolutely seriously discussed the worst-case scenario: a landing in Moscow paratroopers, seizure of buildings of power ministries, etc. The paratroopers... Swan was generally idolized. They said that he could still fulfill all the landing standards - run, pull himself up, jump with a parachute, shoot at a target in short bursts and hit.” And then he still had to undergo heart bypass surgery, and Yeltsin was horrified that “he didn’t want Lebed to be in the Kremlin at the time of the operation. ...This man should not get even a tiny chance to govern the country.” They were really afraid. Therefore, when sending Lebed into retirement, just in case, they kept the loyal units in full combat readiness.

“There are no sinless airborne generals”
Lebed owes his further rise to the Krasnoyarsk heights both to his charisma and to the money... of Berezovsky. But this became clear later, when clods of dirt from the Krasnoyarsk election campaign of 1998 began to float to the surface. And along the way, some people who were aware of Lebed’s “black cash” disappeared. So, in October 1999, Andrei Cherkashin, deputy head of the Krasnoyarsk State Property Committee, disappeared without a trace: he left a banquet, and no one saw him again, only an abandoned jeep was found. It was Cherkashin who brought Lebed millions of “black” dollars for the elections. According to the law, Lebed had the right to spend no more than 417 thousand 450 rubles (about 67 thousand dollars at that exchange rate) on the elections, but in reality 33 times more was spent - over 2 million 300 thousand dollars - this was confirmed by Yuri Bybin, who performed the duties Deputy Head of Lebed's election headquarters for finance. Disclosure of this fraud inevitably threatened Governor Lebed with impeachment. So, when it became known about Cherkashin’s disappearance, Bybin (along with his documents) immediately went on the run, rightly fearing for his life. Nowadays it is no longer a big secret that the financing came from Berezovsky.
The latter, investing funds, as always, hoped to kill several birds with one stone: if he did not take over the entire richest region, then he would definitely squeeze out his business competitors there. The most tasty morsel was, of course, the Krasnoyarsk aluminum giant, on which, in addition to Berezovsky, both the Cherny brothers and the gang of the “authoritative entrepreneur” Anatoly Bykov rolled their lips. The latter, by the way, first also bet on Swan. Then their paths diverged, and the general, answering unpleasant questions about an alliance with authority, answered without any fuss: yes, this is a military trick, “I had to penetrate the region.” And the war of the airborne general against the criminal began. As a result, Bykov fled to Hungary, but was detained there and extradited to Russia. However, he did not stay on the bunk for long. Of course, another major task of the “Krasnoyarsk sitting” was an attempt to create a springboard for the general from which, under a convenient set of circumstances, he could again begin a campaign against the Kremlin.
Only Lebed turned out to be nothing like a governor. Lebed's former press secretary Alexander Barkhatov, in his book about the general, in my opinion, tenaciously captured his essence: he has neither ideas nor people, but only an increasing desire to rule. He has no friends because he is indifferent to people, and the whirlwind of the army did not contribute to strong human connections. There are no administrative and economic skills, but there is the ability to use the energy and talent of devoted people for the time being. Then pitting them against each other. It is also a fact that over the years the general’s taste for the sweet life intensified, and it was already difficult to call him a beggar, although his official earnings were small...
Lebed's reign did not bring anything good to the Krasnoyarsk people: a new team arrived, property redistribution and bloody showdowns broke out again. Moreover, there is constant personnel reshuffle: Lebed “combed” even his own administration incessantly, shaking it up from top to bottom several times a year.
For the time being, the Kremlin looked condescendingly at Lebed’s pranks – until 2000, before Putin. In which they took on the Swan thoroughly. Moreover, the paratrooper general himself immediately treated the “upstart lieutenant colonel” from the KGB without respect and condemned the second Chechen campaign...
In the last six months of his life, Swan the Governor was literally surrounded from all sides. Attack after attack followed continuously, in modern terms, these were attacks and roll-ups. Officials from the Prosecutor General's Office became more frequent with constant checks, and from behind the Kremlin walls remarks began to leak out, vague in form but quite clear in content, from which it was clear that Lebed was in disgrace; The thesis about the “Khasavyurt betrayal” instantly surfaced, the story of the dirty financing of the gubernatorial elections also surfaced, and rumors about an imminent resignation began to circulate. The Kremlin began to hint that the Krasnoyarsk region is ungovernable and that several regions must either be isolated from it, or, on the contrary, the region must be merged with others - without Lebed, of course. In general, the Kremlin in every possible way demonstrated its displeasure with the very fact that a certain citizen Lebed was in the post of governor of one of the richest regions of Russia.

"He who shoots first laughs last"
On the morning of April 28, 2002, the governor was heading to a presentation of a ski slope in the area of ​​Lake Oysk; besides him, there were 19 more people on board: crew, security, officials, and journalists. After the presentation, a fishing trip was planned. At 10:15 a.m. local time, the Mi-8 helicopter crashed from a height of 40-45 meters and fell into pieces. This happened in the Ermakovsky district of the Krasnoyarsk Territory near the Buibinsky mountain pass. When Alexander Lebed was pulled out of the wreckage, he was still alive. He died soon after. Besides him, seven more people became victims of the disaster; all the helicopter pilots survived, having received severe injuries. Pilots Takhir Akhmerov and Alexey Kurilovich were later put on trial; flight engineer Pavel Evseevsky, who was involved in the case as a witness, did not live to see the trial, dying either from a stroke or a heart attack. Later, Lebed’s guard also died, having fallen into a hole from a 23-meter height - after hitting a power line, the tail of the helicopter broke off...
Despite the fact that the helicopter recorders (“black boxes”) were found the next day and the number of witnesses was through the roof, the official investigation into the disaster immediately began to resemble a dashingly twisted detective story. Just listing the versions could confuse any Sherlock Holmes: the weather is to blame; the flight maps are to blame, on which the ill-fated power line was allegedly not marked; Lebed himself is to blame for ordering the pilots to fly despite the bad weather; the pilots are to blame for flying when they should not have flown... And, as usual, leaks and washes of “genuine” transcripts of the “black box” recordings immediately appeared in the media. And the people in charge, irresponsibly, without even waiting for the investigation to begin, hastily issued one version after another. One of the security ministers already on April 30, 2002, categorically said: “The transcript (of the recorders - V.V.) confirms: difficult weather conditions, very poor visibility. The crew flew focusing on the road, that is, not using instruments, but visually.” “Yes, I’ve already told you a thousand times that Lebed and I crashed in amazing weather,” helicopter pilot Takhir Akhmerov almost shouted in an interview with Vecherniy Krasnoyarsk. This is unanimously confirmed by eyewitnesses of the tragedy.
The technical condition of the helicopter, according to the minister, “was impeccable.” He rejected the version of the terrorist attack immediately and categorically. But what conclusions could be drawn at all, what kind of high-quality decoding could one talk about if the notorious “black boxes” were found on April 29, the day after the disaster?!
In January 2004, the Krasnoyarsk Regional Court found the helicopter pilots guilty under Article 263 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation “Violation of traffic safety rules and operation of railway, air or water transport.” The crew commander, Takhir Akhmerov, was sentenced to four years in prison, and the pilot, Alexey Kurilovich, to a three-year suspended sentence with a probationary period of two years. In February 2006, pilot Tahir Akhmerov was released on parole.
The pilots themselves categorically deny their guilt to this day. After his release, Akhmerov told Vecherniy Krasnoyarsk: “We began to collapse above the power line, fell, and one blade that remained caught the lightning rod. But this happened already when the helicopter was falling. ...The height of the power line support is 37 meters, we started falling from about 45 meters. At this height, destruction began, and the car went down. ...Yes, politics is all this. I have said more than once that I do not consider Lebed’s death to be either an accident or an accident. There are many technical tricks that can only later be attributed to an accident or the unprofessionalism of the crew. ...The version of a terrorist attack was not even considered.”
By the way, several years ago, a deputy of the Legislative Assembly of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, Igor Zakharov, also claimed that General Lebed fell victim to a special operation: GRU officers who conducted an independent investigation allegedly came to this conclusion. And they are sure that several grams of explosives were attached to the helicopter's propeller blades and the charge was activated from the ground when the car flew over power lines.
After my visit to the MAK, the sabotage version seemed doubtful to me for a long time. The fact that Lebed was in the Kremlin’s sights does not speak in favor of this version: for the physical elimination of the general there must be very compelling reasons, and such were not directly visible. And the method itself is somewhat dubious: it is unrealistic to arrange a plane crash so that it is the general who dies. And who needed the death of a general who was no longer on horseback? The fact that Lebed could be promoted, for example, for the 2004 elections, then, in 2002, seemed almost unrealistic.
However, who could then say how the chip would fall by the election year? After all, the famous charisma of Lebed’s personal charm has not gone away, and one that Putin’s was not even close to. And it is possible that in other heads the idea of ​​Lebed’s return to big politics could have arisen: good image makers, a good cash injection, good PR on key TV channels - after all, they were brought under the Kremlin later, after “Nord-Ost”... So a triumphant return did not seem so impossible. But who could place the bet by investing the appropriate money? Rhetorical question: no other names come to mind except one – Boris Berezovsky. The consequences of such an already tested alliance in the new conditions could be promising. And it doesn’t matter that the thought of such a “binary bomb” could only excite empirically: somewhere, somewhere, and on the Kremlin hill, they know very well that from the most fantastic idea to its implementation, sometimes there is only one step. Why not take the lead before the governor is once again inflated into a national figure? The bird must be beaten into the nesting area before it spreads its wings.
All these, of course, are theories, but by the spring of 2002 the general was squeezed tightly, this is a fact. And he went into eternity. We are interested in Swan not only as a person, certainly gifted, extraordinary and charismatic, but also as a phenomenon. The general was not the first to try to realize the dream of a strong hand. But it was he who became the first on whom political strategists in civilian clothes practically tested the technology of promoting such a figure. And after all, in fact, the experiment turned out to be successful, only others skimmed the cream, and the paratrooper general only got the role of an accommodating experimental subject, who in 1996 contributed to the fermentation of the wort, from which the “Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin” project was subsequently brewed.

10 years ago, the last flight of the Governor of the Krasnoyarsk Territory Alexander Lebed took place. The Governor General crashed in a helicopter on the way to the opening of a new ski slope. Was that disaster accidental?

Rise of the coup in Transnistria

Immediately after his election, the new president of Transnistria, Yevgeny Shevchuk, promised to erect a monument to General Lebed in Bendery. The red ribbon is scheduled to be cut in June.

“This is a significant event for us,” the deputy shared her joy. head of the city administration Elena Gorshchenko, especially in the year of the twentieth anniversary of the tragedy in Bendery.

Two years ago there was even a referendum on whether the general was worthy of a statue. And more than 90% of those who voted answered “yes.” However, former deputy of the Supreme Council Viktor Alksnis is convinced that the love of the republic’s residents for Swan is based more on myths than facts:

– Lebed’s role in resolving that conflict is greatly exaggerated. First of all, to themselves. He became commander only in the summer of 1992. By that time, the situation had stabilized even without him thanks to the heroic resistance of the Pridnestrovians themselves, and Lebed only consolidated someone else’s success. On his orders, artillery struck the positions of the Moldovan troops, and, as they now say, Chisinau was encouraged to peace. The general certainly had some merit in this, but after the ceasefire, Lebed decided to put the leadership of Transnistria under control in order to pacify Tiraspol. He had clear instructions from Yeltsin: Transnistria should be part of Moldova, no independence. The former president of the republic, Smirnov, understandably, did not want this. And Lebed began to prepare a military coup - he persuaded the local chiefs of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the KGB to seize power. But they publicly announced Lebed’s proposals, there was a scandal, the plan failed.

After this, Alksnis personally accused the general of betraying the interests of Russia:

– It was February 1993, and I arrived in Tiraspol on a private visit at the invitation of Smirnov. I asked Lebed for a meeting myself. We talked in the lounge room located behind his office. And I openly told him that his position is treason to the country. He immediately jumped up, stood at attention to his full height (and he was not small) and rapped out: “I was, am and will be an officer, faithful to my oath!” But there was a sense of rehearsal in all this, as if he was not speaking from the heart, but performing a performance.

Alexander Lebed generally loved to play to the public, making loud statements and issuing vivid aphorisms. Lebed’s most famous catchphrase was “I fell and did a push-up.” In fact, the phrase was invented for his character in the “Dolls” program on NTV, but the military man liked these words so much that he sometimes actually used them. After all, the general’s whole life, in fact, fit into these two capacious words: all his life he fell, but time after time he did push-ups again.

GRU version: Swan was killed

Fell: in 1995 Lebed was put into reserve. He did push-ups: he immediately became a deputy. Fell: lost the 1996 presidential election in the first round. He did the push-ups: in the second round he supported Yeltsin and, in gratitude, received the post of head of the country's Security Council. Fell: three months later, after the conclusion of the Khasavyurt Peace Treaty with the Chechen separatists, he was dismissed again. He did push-ups: he won the election for governor of the Krasnoyarsk Territory.

On April 28, 2002, Lebed fell, but was no longer able to do push-ups. A service helicopter with the Governor General on board crashed in the area of ​​Lake Oyskoye on the Buibinsky Pass. Of the 19 people on board, 7 died. The official version: the helicopter was flying too low and, due to poor visibility, touched power line wires. True, the surviving pilots assured that the altitude was safe and visibility was normal, it was just that the car suddenly began to fall apart in the air.

“When it became known about the death of Alexander Ivanovich, the whole country gasped: “They killed Lebed,” said one of Lebed’s associates, Oleg Zakharov. – I was skeptical about this version then. But then at the Novodevichy cemetery I met former GRU officers. They, on their own initiative, went to the scene of the disaster and came to the unequivocal conclusion: it was a special operation. Several grams of explosives were attached to the propeller blades. The charge was activated from the ground. Under normal conditions, the helicopter is not afraid of such damage - it will simply “fall” into an air pocket of 10–20 m and again gain altitude or land softly. But here there was a collision with a power line - despite the skill of the pilots, who did everything humanly possible, the wire wound around the tail rotor.

The version may be fantastic, but in any case, the “Russian Pinochet,” as Lebed was also called, in the 2000s was already an extra figure in the new political space. Especially after his words: “Short people are the shittiest. Obviously, because their head is closer to their ass than that of normal people.” On the eve of the governor’s death, incriminating evidence about his relationship with Berezovsky was freshened up, inspections by the Prosecutor General’s Office became frequent in the region, and rumors began to circulate about his imminent resignation. Big men in Russian politics have become out of fashion.

Dossier

Alexander Ivanovich Lebed

Born on April 20, 1950 in Novocherkassk into a working-class family, in his youth he himself worked as a loader. I failed three times when entering a flight school due to my height, and as a result I went to the Ryazan Higher Airborne School. In the early 80s he fought in Afghanistan and was shell-shocked.

On August 19, 1991, by order of the Airborne Forces commander Pavel Grachev, at the head of a battalion of Tula paratroopers, he took the building of the Supreme Council under guard. In the summer of 1992, he arrived on a peacekeeping mission in Transnistria, where he led the 14th Combined Arms Army. Three years later, he was relieved of his post and early transferred to the reserve with the rank of lieutenant general.

In 1998, he was elected governor of the Krasnoyarsk Territory. Died on April 28, 2002 in a Mi-8 helicopter crash during a business trip. The Governor General is survived by his wife and three children. He was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery. According to rumors, the installation of a bronze monument there was sponsored by oligarch Oleg Deripaska.

Quotes

Fell and did push-ups.

We don't swear - we talk to them.

A democratic general is the same as a Jewish reindeer herder.

A smart man demonstrates his strength, but a fool uses it.

The head cannot hurt – it’s a bone.

When I purposefully walk towards a goal, I look like a flying crowbar.

The one who knows everything needs to be erected a monument, buried up to the waist, and the rest whitewashed.

Over the past decade, the people of our country have been fed so much bullshit that it no longer fits there—it’s slipping off.

If there are no culprits, they are appointed.

Shake any Russian, and you will definitely get five or six years in prison out of him.

The task of the state is not to create heaven, but to prevent hell.

Horses are not changed at the crossing, but donkeys can and should be changed.

He who shoots first laughs last.