Soldier's Return

After Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, 67, was abruptly removed last September as chief of the Soviet general staff, he was variously reported to be in charge of a military academy or a command in the western U.S.S.R. Some analysts interpreted the ouster as a rebuke to a strong-willed career soldier who refused to tailor his views to prevailing political sentiment. Ogarkov's call to intensify the development of nonnuclear weaponry and his public hectoring of the U.S. had apparently put him at odds with the ruling Politburo's aging members. But Communist Party Leader Mikhail Gorbachev has been making his power felt, and last week, according to some reports in Moscow, he rehabilitated Ogarkov. The general, it was said, had been appointed First Deputy Defense Minister and commander in chief of the Warsaw Pact forces. That would make Ogarkov the No. 3 man in the Soviet military.

If Ogarkov's reported demise was baffling, so was his reported return. There was speculation that he was never demoted, but was heading a secret project to help reorganize the Soviet Union's western defenses.

There was other compelling evidence last week that Gorbachev is carrying out a high-level shuffle of the Soviet military. The current Warsaw Pact commander, Marshal Viktor Kulikov, 64, it was rumored, had been given a lesser post. Marshal Vladimir Tolubko, 70, who was in charge of the country's strategic rocket forces, has retired. So has Marshal Alexei Yepishev, 77, chief of the powerful main political directorate of the army and navy; his replacement is General Alexei Lizichev, 57, currently political commissar of Soviet forces in East Germany. Western diplomats believe these changes bear the marks of Gorbachev's insistence on greater efficiency in the military. Under Gorbachev, declared one West European diplomat in Moscow, "there will be no overspending."

Another of Gorbachev's recent appointments, Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, will travel to Washington in September to meet President Reagan. Before that, Shevardnadze will see Secretary of State George Shultz in Helsinki, on July 30. Shultz may ask for an explanation of the latest confrontation between Soviet and American military personnel in East Germany. On June 13, a U.S. Army vehicle was rammed by a Soviet truck near Potsdam. One U.S. officer was injured slightly.