On the death of Grachev. Blog Review

Former Russian Defense Minister Pavel Grachev died in Moscow at the age of 65. Causes of death so far vary from mushroom poisoning to stroke. Despite the fact that Grachev ceased to be a prominent media figure in the early 2000s, the Internet community reacted very violently to the news of his death. Most bloggers remember him bringing army units into the capital, the first Chechen one, assurances that Russian soldiers “die with a smile on their faces,” expensive cars and the last lucrative position in Rosoboronexport.

PublicPost reviewed blogs and selected the most interesting and most censored reviews.

Konstantin Krylov . Publicist, journalist, public and political figure of Eurasian orientation.

After a difficult, long life, Pavel Grachev, a Russian statesman and military leader, the first Yeltsin governor, died.

It seems that no one writes anything good about him - not patriots, not liberals, not communists, no one at all.

True, they remember different things: the shot parliament, the Chechen campaign, corruption in the army, the “Mercedes Pasha”, etc.

Although, in fact, he was just a Soviet military man. Not even the worst. It was lucky that the elders saw him and promoted him, first raising him, and then appointing him to Yeltsin’s team: his place of birth played a role (even the name - “Village of Moats”, luxurious), corresponding parents, textured appearance, clumsy speech, stupid peasant greed and others circumstances: just such a person was needed. I don’t even think that he was particularly active and “eager to do it himself.” They put the man on skis and he went.

There was some good in him too. In Afghanistan, he didn’t put living people in stacks at all, he spent no more than the standard (and this is the best of all that we generally say about our “military leaders”). Before the shooting of the White House, he got drunk, which in these circles is considered a sign of humanity. He tried to “preserve” the “army” - which in some sense he succeeded, adjusted for quotation marks. In Chechnya... well, in Chechnya there was a state matter, as in Transnistria, Ossetia, Abkhazia and so on. It was not his business, his business was to carry out political decisions and bear the burden of responsibility. He carried the load to the grave without spilling a word.

And what he really knew how to do, understood and loved was a parachute. Six hundred jumps.

In the slings under the canopy he was in his place.

Arkady Babchenko . He took part in both Chechen campaigns and is a journalist.

Well, that's all. The second of the two I wanted to kill with my own hands died. This issue has been put to rest.

Gleb Pavlovsky . Political scientist

Grachev. A bit harsh for an obituary, but the dead man was no gift. The introduction of the army into politics, which did not exist in Russia, is his main innovation. And also - the outsourcing of power operations - in October 93, and then exactly a year later - in Grozny, with the same personnel; terrible failure.
And what a wonderful story in Grachev’s program! “When Boris Nikolaevich won the elections for the first time, he assembled a team of 6-7 people, we went to the forest to celebrate... “We won,” he says, “from now on you are my brothers, let’s swear on blood that we will never be friends.” We won’t abandon our friend until the grave.” He took a knife, ran it across his wrist, blood came out, we did the same and then licked each other’s blood with our tongues!..” That clears things up a bit, doesn't it?

Vladislav Shurygin . Military publicist, columnist, staff writer for the newspaper “Zavtra”

Grachev died.
I'm trying to find at least some feelings for him. And I can't find anything.
Emptiness!
I once despised and hated him. For me, he was a symbol of betrayal.
But it all burned out. Gone. Gone because, in fact, Grachev died a long time ago. Holding out his hand to the devil, he thought that crossing his fingers behind his back would save his soul. Alas! Such miracles do not happen in a game with the unclean.

After the black October 1993 and the bloody swamp of the first Chechen war, his soul forever found itself in the clutches of Satan. And, as always happens in such cases, having got what he had, the devil did not even think about keeping his promises. In August 1996, at forty-eight years old, Grachev was thrown out of his ministerial chair in disgrace, branded a “conspirator.” At the same time, Grachev was never a conspirator for a minute, it’s just that his best friend and protégé Lebed passed off an ordinary general’s drinking session in a narrow circle as a “meeting of conspirators,” and Lebed’s patron Berezovsky raised a wild fuss about this in the boudoir of Tanya Dyachenko and the “best defense minister” of all times" was simply thrown out into the street, and almost until his death he sat in third-rate commercial advisers, cut off from the army and forgotten by it.

But if he had remained faithful to the oath, had not become a traitor, and today he, Yazov’s favorite, the hero of the Soviet Union, who commanded the legendary Airborne Forces, at sixty-four, would be at the peak of his military career and could well command the most powerful army in the world.
Instead, he is an apostate, the minister of the most shameful Caucasian war in the history of Russia, a dubious businessman whose name is forever glued to the concept of “military corruption”, the hero of a scandalous chronicle, and either the cohabitant or the boss of the “general in a skirt” Elena Agapova.
Once upon a time, immediately after the shooting of the White House, several of my friends wanted to take the path of revenge and punish those whose hands were smeared with blood. And one of the first on their list was the name of Grachev. I remember an elderly priest I knew, who, having learned about these plans of theirs, talked with them for a long time, exhorted them, and even took them with him to a distant parish, from where they returned a few days later without plans to take revenge...

Today I understand all the wisdom of that old priest.

Human revenge is nothing compared to how mortal sins are repaid from above. And the fate of Grachev is the best confirmation of this.

But I don’t want this man’s soul to burn in hell until the end of eternity. After all, he was once a good soldier. And, perhaps, somewhere terribly far from rainy Moscow, under the white Afghan sun, his sinful soul will be accepted as a brother to the souls of those who fought and died in that distant campaign. They will accept and pray away his sins from God.

I forgot about Pavel Grachev a long time ago.
It’s either good about the dead or nothing.
Nothing about Grachev!
Nothing!

avramenko_konst The liquidation was successful. Tolya and Vova, Pasha is waiting for you in Hell. Don't linger.

blaster2009 The former Minister of Defense has died, and blogs on Yandex, like probably other feeds, are seething with anger. And I thought: of course, Pavel Grachev did enough to put him on trial, but nevertheless he died without any trial, as they say, in front of a notary and a doctor. And then why break spears - all the cursed characters will sooner or later leave again to the verbally inert accompaniment of the people's court.
Of course, I'm not inciting. I think that everything needs to be done on time. But it doesn't always work out. But why not always?

varjag-2007 Pavel Grachev, who participated in armed conflicts in Afghanistan and Chechnya, is also known from the events of August 1991 in Moscow. Then Grachev carried out the order of the Emergency Committee to send troops into the capital, but then doubted the legality of the actions of the conspirators and stood up to defend the White House.
Later, Grachev became involved in several scandals, for example, about the purchase of Mercedes cars with the help of the Western Group of Forces (WGV), for which the nickname Pasha Mercedes stuck to him.
Many also criticized him for speaking about the possibility of restoring order in Chechnya with the help of one airborne regiment.
Later, Grachev was a witness in the case of the murder of journalist Dmitry Kholodov.
I remind you that the body has not yet been buried, so you should not behave in the comments... not like Russians.
May God forgive him.

kirill_kaluga Pavel Grachev died. I remember very well a querulous, tipsy peasant in uniform, who was periodically shown on the news, and then they said how many were killed under footage of shelling of residential buildings, and then he and other heroes of that era were parodied in “Dolls” - Shenderovich seemed funny then. How would. Now Shenderovich himself has long been ridiculous, and Grachev is dead. But I remember everything perfectly, both 1991 and 1993, and in general my memory for events is good - not good for faces, but excellent for events.
But 20-year-old girls at work don’t remember. They were 4 years old then, younger than their son is now, they played with dolls, and older girls don’t remember either, they’re not supposed to. Now they say “You” and “Hello” to me, for them I am old. My peers already fought in the second Chechen war, I saw almost all of them who lived in our area, I issued almost all the certificates for them while working at the military registration and enlistment office. Ordinary guys, in general, were unlucky that they ended up in the war and in general in the army of those years; they were lucky that they remained alive.

begamot_74 Pavel Grachev, a man who is not a stranger to me, has died. Commander of the Airborne Forces, Minister of Defense, under whom I served in the army. What can I say about him? An ambiguous person, a former Afghan, who was going to take Grozny with one battalion in December 1994. Very efficient and very confirmed by court intrigues.
But I remembered the events of October 1993 in Moscow and the October military airfield in the North Caucasus Military District, filled to capacity with selected troops. We were raised at night on combat alert, equipped, supplied with reinforced ammunition, and thrown in a column to the airfield, where other companies and battalions were already loading into planes heating the air with propellers. It was raining, a common occurrence in the North Caucasus in late autumn. We boarded the planes and waited an hour for departure. At this time, the command tried to answer our questions. We were told that an order had been received to fly to Moscow to suppress anti-constitutional riots. You will have to act quickly and harshly, shoot at everything that is pointed at, take some objects by storm and defend others.
All the soldiers were in the spirit of adventure, many of them had never been to Moscow and they were all ready to carry out any orders and crush anyone, because a soldier is not a thinking person, but an executing one, and the soldiers from the North Caucasus Military District are really dashing guys.
An hour later, a new order - to unload from the planes and wait for new instructions. Unloaded. Rain. We are waiting on the field, smoking under the raincoats. Nobody wants to sleep. There was one Muscovite among us, he said: “Guys, when we arrive in Moscow, don’t lose me, I’ll quickly drop by home and go straight to the refrigerator, and there we always have different types of sausages, all kinds of ham, brisket, balyk... We’ll eat, and then I’ll catch up with you.”
An hour passes - again the order to load. We sit and wait. Time passes and a new order is given - to leave the planes and wait for instructions. And so on all night. It was dawn and we were taken to the barracks.
Later I learned that our command received various thunderous orders every half hour from Moscow and from both sides. And Grachev ordered, and Yeltsin ordered something, and Rutskoi and other various figures. Our command simply did not know which side to take. And... it chose the most reliable option - to thoughtfully dumb down and remain aloof from events. And it turned out to be right. And who knows what would have happened if all this military had ended up in Moscow.

komandorva Pavel Sergeevich Grachev, one of the symbols of the drunken Yeltsin era and the ideologist of the terrible war in Chechnya, where he was going to take Grozny with one airborne regiment, has died. It is unlikely that his death will make anyone cry. Except perhaps for your loved ones, which, of course, is understandable.
The name of Hero of the Soviet Union Pavel Grachev is closely associated with his boss, Boris Yeltsin. Once upon a time, Grachev, who had already begun to carry out the order of the State Emergency Committee and sent troops into Moscow, went over to Yeltsin’s side and received the post of Minister of Defense for this, in no way, neither in terms of intelligence, nor in moral qualities, nor in experience in leading troops. . There was such a time then - no one asked about the strategic thinking necessary for the Minister of Defense of a huge state. Yeltsin desperately fought for power and he needed devotion and only devotion. Grachev ensured this devotion in full, holding back the onslaught of officers and generals who were extremely dissatisfied with the collapse of the USSR. In this incarnation, he was very good - in a short time, the Armed Forces, numbering more than 5 million people, were reduced to a helpless herd, which turned out to be unprepared to win in small, but stubborn and cruel Chechnya.
The army was not paid wages for six months, they were cut alive and humiliated as best they could. Suffice it to say that during the Chechen events, Russian television channels, including state ones, destroyed their army and its officers as enemies.
“Pasha Mercedes” is the offensive but fair nickname that Grachev received for buying himself an elite car from the impoverished military department. "Moskovsky Komsomolets", who wrote about this, was subjected to wild pressure from the Minister of Defense, and journalist Poegli became a "conditional" prisoner for the material "Mercedes Pasha, a thief should be in prison."
The Putin government did not need Grachev with such “authority” in society and he was written off as an adviser to the grain sinecure - Rosvooruzhenie (now Rosoboronexport). From this position he will go to some prestigious cemetery. Admonished with hypocritical words about how much he had done for the Motherland and all of us.
The best order that Pavel Sergeevich gave in his entire life was his last order.
Grachev ordered us to live long. Let's do it!

NPMatsko He was first my deputy, and then the regiment commander of the 345th RDP. With respect, no matter what anyone says about him.

The head of Ingushetia, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, expressed condolences to the family and friends of Pavel Grachev . He called the former minister a real officer who was not afraid of difficulties, “not only prevented the collapse of the armed forces, but also made the Russian army combat-ready.”

Photo gallery "Pavel Grachev"