Army General Igor Nikolaevich Rodionov, the former defence minister who in many ways epitomised what was both the best and the worst of the Soviet officer corps, died today after a lengthy illness. A career soldier, he commanded the 40th Army in Afghanistan 1985-86 and went on to become defence minister 1996-97, then chair of the Popular Patriotic Party of Russia (NPPR)/Rodina, as nationalist a group as the name would suggest, retaining links with the Communist Party (who came out with the first fulsome obituary). His reputation was as a meticulous and no nonsense soldier, of the austere rather than jovial variety, but as a nobody PhD student who wrote to him while he was heading the General Staff Academy in 1988, I found him unexpectedly thoughtful and receptive (I’ll be honest: I wrote on the very off-chance and was amazed to get a reply of any kind).
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Igor Rodionov, 1936-2014: soldier, scapegoat, minister, hard-liner and reformer, all at once
Posted by Mark Galeotti on December 19, 2014
https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2014/12/19/igor-rodionov-1936-2014-soldier-scapegoat-minister-hard-liner-and-reformer-all-at-once/
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