POLITICS BEHIND OUSTER OF DEFENSE COMMITTEE HEAD.

Two Russian dailies have suggested that the surprise January 23 removal of the chairman of the State Defense Committee (see Monitor, January 24) had less to do with his performance than with his politics. Komsomolskaya pravda and Izvestiya speculate that Viktor Glukhikh fell into disfavor in the Kremlin for having failed to marshal effective support within the defense industrial sector for "Russia is Our Home" during the December parliamentary elections. Russia’s estimated three million defense employees workers were said to have gravitated instead toward the Communist and Liberal Democratic parties, while Glukhikh himself refused to join any bloc. Both papers saw the hand of First Deputy Premier Oleg Soskovets in Glukhikh’s removal. One suggested that Soskovets, recently named to head Yeltsin’s presumptive reelection committee and himself expected to deliver the defense industrial vote to Yeltsin, decided to dispense with the unreliable Glukhikh well before the upcoming election. (7)

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