Soviet Union Kremlin Prop Wash

By William R. Doerner

In spite of the uproar he created by landing his Cessna Skyhawk 172 on the edge of Moscow's Red Square two weeks ago, there were signs that the Soviets might deal leniently with Mathias Rust, 19, the newly famous West German aviator. No less an insider than Valentin Falin, head of the official Novosti press agency, initially predicted that the "young man will soon see his parents and friends." But as the week wore on, the Soviets seemed to grow less and less inclined to let Rust off the hook, or for that matter to dismiss his unprecedented feat as an innocent, if dangerous, stunt. In any case, said Yegor Yakovlev, editor in chief of the foreign-language weekly Moscow News, Rust "will have to answer according to the law."

Moscow's reluctance to let Rust off with a wrist slapping, and thus deflect attention from its embarrassment, only underscored the extreme seriousness with which the Soviets viewed Rust's romp through more than 400 miles of well- guarded airspace. Soviet and Western military experts were still digesting the news of the abrupt departure of Defense Minister Sergei Sokolov, the first official of that rank to be ousted since Nikita Khrushchev's celebrated firing of Georgi Zhukov for meddling in party affairs in 1957. Marshal of Aviation Alexander Koldunov was also dismissed. Further casualties were expected in the course of a top-level investigation ordered by the ruling Politburo into why Rust's aircraft had not been forced out of the skies before it buzzed the Kremlin, the country's political and military nerve center. Meanwhile, speculation mounted that Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev had shrewdly seized on the unexpected incident to consolidate further his power inside the Politburo.

General of the Army Dmitri Yazov, 63, who leapfrogged over twelve more senior members of the Soviet high command to become the new Defense Minister, made his debut at a two-day conference in Moscow of high-ranking Warsaw Pact officers. A career soldier with combat experience in World War II, Yazov is believed to have made a favorable impression on Gorbachev during the Soviet leader's visit last summer to Vladivostok, where the general was based as commander of the U.S.S.R.'s far eastern military district. Yazov was summoned to Moscow last February and given the Defense Ministry's top personnel job. That is not a traditional launching pad to the top, but its occupant has a major role in high-level promotions and transfers, and thus plays a critical part in Gorbachev's campaign of perestroika, or economic restructuring, which has become the Soviet leader's rallying cry for all sectors of society.

Gorbachev, who has had no direct military experience, has been cautious about asserting his authority over the Soviet high command, which has a history of friction with the party leadership that extends beyond the Zhukov affair. Says Malcolm MacIntosh, senior consultant on Soviet affairs at London's International Institute for Strategic Studies: "Gorbachev realized that with his other priorities -- shaking up the party, modernizing the economy and imposing governmental reforms -- he could not take on the military as well. Hence he reached a modus vivendi with them that allowed them to retain most of their power." Now, by installing as Defense Minister a relatively obscure commander who owes his rapid rise entirely to Gorbachev, the Soviet leader is clearly seeking to assert a much higher level of personal command.

What Gorbachev is doing beyond that is less certain. One school of speculation holds that he will use his enhanced authority over the military to bolster his position in the Politburo. "The preliminary view is that this & will strengthen Gorbachev's hand," says a State Department official in Washington. "It would appear to solidify his majority status in the decision- making elite." But other analysts surmised that by choosing a less prominent candidate for Defense Minister, Gorbachev is seeking to reduce permanently the status of the military, which he is thought to regard as a rapacious consumer of Soviet resources. Says a Western diplomat in Moscow: "It appears that as far as the military goes, Gorbachev can spit in their faces and walk away without fearing, for now, that he will get knifed in the back. It was a most convincing display of authority."

One early indication of Gorbachev's intentions could come sometime later this month, when he is scheduled to preside over a twice-yearly plenum of the Communist Party's Central Committee. The ousted Sokolov is expected at that time to resign his position as a nonvoting member of the Politburo. If Yazov, who currently holds nonvoting status on the less powerful Central Committee, replaces him or wins a voting position on the Politburo, that will be seen as a sure sign that Gorbachev wants to keep a military leader at the top of the political hierarchy. If Yazov is not rewarded with a Politburo position of any kind, Soviet military brass will just as clearly be viewed as having lost some of their polish.

What still remains unknown in the whole drama is the cause of such a spectacular lapse in the abundant layers of the Soviet air-defense system. Western military observers accept Soviet claims that Rust's flight was detected on radar and spotted by interceptor jets. Those aircraft, which cruise at around 500 m.p.h., may have had trouble keeping track of a Cessna probably flying low at no more than 130 m.p.h. But Soviet authorities could easily have called out helicopters and forced the Cessna to land. Instead, they either mistook the intruder for a Soviet aircraft -- though it bore a painted West German flag -- or for some other reason decided not to attempt interference.

For all their bemusement at Soviet discomfiture over the Rust affair, U.S. air-defense officials could offer few assurances that the same thing might not happen in American airspace. While Air Force and civilian radar systems can spot virtually all aircraft entering the country, the U.S. is still incapable of intercepting or destroying them at will. Because its fleet of interceptor jets was useless against intercontinental ballistic missiles, which became the primary offensive weapon in the Soviet arsenal in the 1950s, the U.S. air- defense system has been allowed to deteriorate and is now dangerously out of date. By coincidence, on the very day of Rust's flight, the approaching Cessna aircraft of a defecting Cuban air force general was spotted and tracked by two U.S. F-15 fighters until it landed at Key West, Fla. But many unidentified aircraft, especially those involved in the huge drug-smuggling trade, disappear daily from radar screens without a trace. Says former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger: "The U.S. does not have an air-defense system worthy of the name."

As the amateur who shook up the military establishment of a superpower, Rust was being held in Moscow's Lefortovo prison, home last year to Nicholas Daniloff, an American journalist who was arrested on espionage charges and released 13 days later. West German diplomatic officials were permitted last week to speak for 30 minutes with the youthful flyer, who became an instant media hero back in West Germany. The diplomats said they found him "calm." Rust could face an investigation lasting up to nine months and a trial on charges of conducting an unauthorized flight into Soviet airspace. The maximum punishment for conviction is ten years in prison, but West German diplomats believe it is unlikely that Rust will serve more than six months.

Whatever Rust was telling his hosts, their skepticism about his motives seemed to grow by the minute. The Soviets claimed to have found evidence that far from deciding to take a joyride on the spur of the moment, Rust had carefully planned the trip over an extended period of time, studying "maps and models" in his hometown of Wedel, near Hamburg. The implication, of course, was that he was in the employ of a Western intelligence service. The Soviet news agency TASS noted that West German newspapers had begun raising "worried questions" about Rust's odyssey. Among them: Was it timed to coincide with an international peace conference of physicians, thus guaranteeing that more foreigners than normal would be on hand? And when the Cessna touched down, why did so many camera-bearing tourists just happen to be in Red Square to record the event in all its audacious derring-do?

West German officials had plenty of their own questions, but nothing they had learned so far pointed to anti-Soviet political motives behind the trip, or for that matter any other kind of political rationale. Investigators were not able to link Rust, a computer operator, to any organization other than his flying club, from which he rented the single-engine aircraft. One intriguing theory for Rust's motivation was advanced by a West German amateur pilot named Silke Matzen, who was traveling in the Soviet Union and witnessed the Red Square landing. Since it occurred on the Christian holy day marking Christ's ascension to heaven, she noted, Rust may have been acting out a popular German aviators' drinking toast that goes, "On Ascension Day we land in Red Square."

The son of an engineer, Rust lived with his parents and 15-year-old brother, who were described by Bonn officials as "completely bewildered" by Mathias' spectacular dilemma. Said one investigator: "He was a nice, quiet, dedicated young man from whom no one expected great deeds, or great misadventures either." The Rust family decided to sell the rights to their story, presumably to offset some $100,000 in fines and charges that Mathias could face, to the weekly West German picture magazine Stern.

That coup for Stern, however, hardly deterred the rest of the West German press from devoting an avalanche of coverage to the Rust saga. Night after night, television stations showed footage* of the small aircraft bobbing past the onion-shaped domes of St. Basil's Cathedral and the other famous buildings facing Red Square, and the figure of Rust, dressed in $45 red flying overalls, emerging from the cockpit. Newspaper editorials compared his exploits to those of Manfred von Richthofen, the legendary "Red Baron" of World War I. Rust's status as instant folk hero was further certified by the appearance in West Berlin of $8 T shirts with a drawing of the flyer's Cessna in its now famous background and the inscription INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, RED SQUARE. OPENING MAY 28, 1987. Indeed, so persistent was the hoopla surrounding the strange case of Mathias Rust that Soviet Foreign Ministry Spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov jokingly suggested that the "Cessna company organized all of this mess for advertising purposes." Not likely. As they say on Madison Avenue, no one can buy that kind of publicity.

FOOTNOTE: *The only known videotape of Rust's approach and landing, shot by an unidentified British tourist, was obtained by NBC News, which bought worldwide distribution rights. The Soviets have made no attempt to obtain the tape, and it was not until last week that Soviet print media began admitting that the plane had made it all the way to Red Square.

With reporting by John Kohan/Moscow and William McWhirter/Bonn