WHEN President Yeltsin addressed his final rally of the first round of Russia's presidential elections in his home town of Yekaterinburg, he announced he was sure to win and he was thinking of who his successor might be in 2000 "Yest takoi chelovek," (There is such a man) he told his cheering supporters.
It was no coincidence that "Yest takoi chelovek" just happened to have been the catchphrase in the TV advertising campaign of Gen Alexander Lebed, a tough military man who fought the election as an opponent of both Yeltsin and the communist candidate, Gennady Zyuganov.
The polls showed Yeltsin 12 percentage points ahead of Zyuganov with Gen Lebed nowhere. The actual results gave Yeltsin a mere three point lead over his communist rival, and Gen Lebed surged into third place to make himself the potential kingmaker for the vital second round vote.
Yeltsin acted with the speed of light. The results were still trickling in when the tough general from southern Russia was appointed head of the Security Council and chief security adviser. The hated Defence Minister, Gen Pavel Grachev, who had been Lebed's superior officer, immediately got the boot.
On Thursday, more heads rolled, and there may be more "to come. Some observers even say that in the long term "Lebed's own head will roll in a "Kremlin intrigue if, as expected, "he proves a rival to Yeltsin. But that eventuality is a long way 9ff, and at the moment his star is very much in the ascendant.
A 46 year old father of a daughter and two sons, Lebed gave up alcohol three years ago, saying in a backhander at Yeltsin: "There should at least one sober Russian to run the country."
Inna Lebeda, his wife of 25 years, says he is a "caring, loving man who loves walking the dog", but others regard him as a ruthless man who wants to be to Russia what the dictator Gen Augusto Pinochet was to Chile.
Russia's leading human rights activist, Sergei Kovalyov, the spiritual heir to Andrei Sakharov, says the "marriage of convenience" between Yeltsin and Lebed will lead to a "draconian regime in Russia".
regime in Russia".
Kukli, the Russian version of Spitting Image, portrays him as a stem military disciplinarian who orders everyone within earshot to "get down and do your push ups."
But some Russians, weary of the collapse of law and the rise of crime in their country, regard him as a Messiah who will bring order back to the state and make Russia great once more. A neighbour in my apartment block saw him as a bastion against foreigners.
"I support him," she said. "He's just the man to throw out those Vietnamese who are living here without passports. He'll throw out the blacks, too."
There was a matter of semantics involved in the latter statement. In America whites are known as "caucasians" while in Russia, Caucasians - the natives of the Caucasus regions - are known as "blacks" because of their swarthy appearance.
Alexander Ivanovich Lebed - his surname in Russian means "swan" - has rarely been mute.
He came to prominence as the officer commanding the Russian - 14th army when Moldova became independent following the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. Ethnic Romanians and ethnic Russians fought a short sharp war until Lebed interposed his forces between the two warring factions.
He became a national hero to the Russian population of Transdniestria, a narrow strip of land on the left bank of the Dniester driver where the Slavic population is concentrated.
But the defence minister, Gen Pavel Grachev, immediately spotted a potential rival and succeeded in having Lebed dismissed from the army.
Lebed entered politics last June and immediately began to criticise Grachev's, and by definition Yeltsin's, involvement in the war in Chechnya, describing the conflict as futile.
He formed an alliance with the shadowy Yuri Skokov, a former Yeltsin aide, and this almost proved his political undoing in the parliamentary elections last December, in which his party failed to get the 5 per cent necessary to gain representation in the Duma in the list system which, elected half of the members.
Lebed was elected from the military city of Tula to one of the seats for the other half of the parliament which was elected on the first past the post system. He now had a voice in parliament and he used it.
In the presidential campaign, his TV advertisements caught the public attention. He put himself forward as the man who would at last bring order to a country in which criminality had got out of control.
His campaign took off only in the final days, and his support was not reflected in the opinion polls, publication of which were banned in the final three days of the campaign.
His third placing with almost 11 million votes made him the man with whom Yeltsin most needed to deal and now he finds himself in charge of Russia's "power ministries", including the armed forces, the interior ministry troops and the agencies which made up the former KGB.
The intelligence services still form a "state within a state" as they did in Soviet times. Many of their members will await the opportunity to oust this dangerous newcomer.
