MOSCOW — Retired Gen. Alexander I. Lebed, the maverick politician feared by both the Kremlin and the Communist Party, returned to the forefront of national politics Sunday by winning the governorship of one of Russia's largest provinces.
Reviving a political career that many pundits had declared over, Lebed defeated the incumbent governor of Krasnoyarsk, Valery Zubov, by a ratio of 56% to 39%, with 85% of the vote counted.
"Once again, the people have proved to be much smarter than all the shrewd and crafty politicians," Lebed, 48, said early this morning in a televised interview. "I am an independent man, and I have been trying to unite under my banner all those people who are sick and tired of living like slaves on their own land."
The victory of the gravel-voiced general, who fought in Afghanistan and made peace in Chechnya, makes him a strong contender for the presidency when Boris N. Yeltsin's current term ends in 2000.
Lebed's popular appeal is based in part on the desire of many Russians to see a strong leader once again take charge of their country and return it to its former glory. But some political analysts warn that he is an ambitious military man whose only real goal is to amass power.
"He has no principles or positions to speak of," said Igor M. Klyamkin, director of the Institute of Political Analysis. "All he has is the habits of a Soviet general who is inclined to take simple and blunt decisions. He will destabilize the political situation even further. He is a very bad alternative for Russia."
With his victory as governor of Krasnoyarsk, Lebed automatically wins a seat in the Federation Council, Russia's upper house of parliament. Some observers speculate that he could become an even more influential national figure by winning election as the leader of the house.
Lebed placed third in the presidential primary in 1996 behind Yeltsin and Communist Party leader Gennady A. Zyuganov, then formed an alliance with Yeltsin that helped the president win reelection. He served as the national security advisor in Yeltsin's new administration. But after he forged the 1996 agreement that ended the war in the separatist republic of Chechnya, Yeltsin dismissed him from his high-profile post.
Exiled from the Kremlin, Lebed bided his time, built a political organization and resurfaced in Siberia to campaign in Krasnoyarsk--a territory more than three times the size of Texas.
