Did General Lebed say: “Let me recruit a company from the children of the elite, and the war will end in a day”?

On the Internet you can often find a statement whose authorship is attributed to a famous Russian general. We checked how plausible this attribution is.

The phrase allegedly uttered by a famous military and political figure during the conflict in Chechnya is: “Let me recruit a company from the children of the elite, and the war will end in a day.” The quote has gained particular popularity in social networks, having been collected, for example, in a public page on VKontakte “Moments of the past» about 804,000 views. She is also very popular on Telegram - in particular, on the channels Scott Ritter (301,000 views), Vardan Ghukasyan (177,000), "Pravda Gerashchenko"(183,000), "First People's" (250,000) and "TatPolit"(102,000). The statement also spread across websites (“Peekaboo", "Charter'97", World Inform).

Former commander of the 14th Army, candidate for President of the Russian Federation, Secretary of the Security Council, as well as Governor of the Krasnoyarsk Territory Alexander Lebed is known for his colorful statements, the most famous of which is the following (his authorship is not disputed here): “The head is a bone, it cannot hurt.” Countsthat he became the prototype for the deep-voiced General Ivolgin in the popular comedy “Peculiarities of the National Hunt.” And the quote we are considering generally fits into Lebed’s characteristic rhetoric. But let's take a look at the history of its spread.

The Telegram social network has been operating since 2013, but the first version of the phrase appeared in it only on September 26, 2022 (in the Open Politics channel, and immediately with the mention of Lebed). The very next day this phrase was literally everywhere - in Telegram, on YouTube, V LiveJournal, "VKontakte» and on a host of other sites and portals. At the same time, you won’t find it at all on other resources until late in the evening of that day—with one exception. On September 21, the day partial mobilization began in Russia, Pikabu appeared fast that “it would be nice for the Supreme Commander-in-Chief to create a battalion of elite and golden youth.” The publication gained great popularity (435,000 views to date) and collected almost 1,000 comments. One of them, posted at 14:12 by user SergeSande, read: “During the Chechen war, General Lebed said: “Let me recruit a company from the children of the elite, and the war will end in a day.”

This comment clearly did not go unnoticed (more than 1200 upvotes and 100 reply comments) and, apparently, served as the source of the spread of an aphorism that does not appear in any available written document from previous years. In the comment under another post the author stated regarding the inaccessibility of the quote: “This was said when there was practically no Internet in Russia. And, of course, they didn’t write this in the newspaper.”

If we assume that this is true and the quote cannot be found either on the Internet or in the media, then is it even possible to confirm or deny Lebed’s authorship? Surprisingly, according to book A. V. Kozlova “Unconquered Transnistria. History of Military Conflict” (2015), in January 1995 Lebed actually “offered to personally lead a regiment of children of government members and State Duma deputies and restore order in Grozny.” And journalist Sergei Beimukhametov on the pages of “Novaya Gazeta"and in his book The 2005 publication even cites a quote that was heard, as indicated, in the RTR TV channel program “Top Secret” (hosts: A. Borovik, M. Markelov). According to him, Lebed said that it is possible to finish the military campaign in the Caucasus with one regiment in a month: “The only question is formation - the regiment must be formed from the children of people’s deputies, from the children of government members, from the children of all those politicians who are now talking about the need for war in Chechnya.” We were unable to find a video recording of this program, but everything suggests that the quote was sounded at least in a similar form. And, despite the distortions, its meaning is conveyed correctly.

Cover photo: Wikipedia.

Distorted quote

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