Pavel Grachev

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Russian Defence Minister Pavel Grachev speaking in the State Duma in 1994. Photo by Mikhail Evstafiev

Pavel Sergeyevich Grachev (Russian: Павел Сергеевич Грачёв; b. January 1, 1948) is a Russian Army General and the former Defence Minister of the Russian Federation. In 1988 he was declared the Hero of the Soviet Union.

1 Life and career
2 Corruption accusations
3 Quotes
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Life and career

Grachev graduated from the Ryazan Airborne Military Command School, the Frunze Military Academy and the General Staff Academy. During the Soviet war in Afghanistan, he was in command of the Soviet 103rd Guards Airborne Division in Afghanistan in the last years of the Soviet-Afghan War.

In December of 1990, he was appointed commander of the Soviet airborne troops (VDV). In August-December of 1991, Grachev was the First Deputy Minister of Defence of the USSR.

For a period of time, in the mid-1990s, Grachev was a close friend of Russian President Boris Yeltsin,^[1] and held the post of the Minister of Defence of the Russian Federation from May 1992 to June 1996. Grachev took part in the Soviet coup attempt of 1991 and the Russian constitutional crisis of 1993, during which he supported Yeltsin. In November 1994 Yeltisn said that Pavel Grachev is the best defense minister of the decade.^[2]

In 1994 to 1996, Grachev played a key role in initiating and leading the First Chechen War in the breakaway Republic of Chechnya. He promised to swiftly crush the Chechen armed drive for independence in a couple of hours^[3] by with a single airborne regiment,^[4] in an infamous quote that could have cost him his post after Russia lost the war two years later. As the TIME magazine commented in 1995: Grachev had remarked recently that only an "incompetent commander" would order tanks into the streets of central Grozny, where they would be vulnerable to rocket launchers, grenades, even Molotov cocktails. Yet at the end of December he did it.^[5]

In December 1997, Grachev was appointed a senior military adviser to Rosvooruzhenie State Corporation (later renamed Rosoboronexport), the Russian arms export monopoly. On April 25, 2007, Grachev was fired from this position.^[6]

[edit] Corruption accusations

Grachev was accused of being personally involved in major military corruption scandals, which was not proven in court, that occurred during the withdrawal of the Soviet troops from East Germany. The alleged corruption, which gained Grachev the nickname of Pashka Mercedes, was the focus of a series of articles published by the investigative journalist Dmitry Kholodov, who was killed by a suitcase bomb in 1994.

[edit] Quotes

"We shall respond to every Chechen shot with thousands of our own."^[7]
"These 18-year-old youths [Russian conscripts in Grozny] died for Russia, and they died with a smile."^[8]
"Everybody keeps saying - reform, reform. The T-72 has proved itself wonderfully in Chechnya. So we will be making reform on the basis of T-72."^[2]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Preceded by Yevgeny Shaposhnikov as Minister of Defence of Soviet Union	Defence Minister of the Russian Federation 1992-1996	Succeeded by Mikhail Kolesnikov (Acting)