Malaise Strikes Defense Chief, Has to Be Helped to His Seat

MOSCOW —  Marshal Dmitri T. Yazov, the Soviet defense minister, was visibly overcome by a malaise as he finished addressing the Communist Party congress Tuesday and had to be helped back to a seat in the audience.

Yazov, 66, delivered a 20-minute speech that echoed the concerns of the Soviet brass over the rise in draft dodging, the social consequences of the rapid repatriation of Red Army soldiers from Eastern Europe and the poor services--housing, for instance--that are often offered armed forces personnel.

He rejected calls from radicals for eliminating the political commissars who have long ensured the party’s control of the Red Army. And he stumbled over the Russian word depolitizatsiya-- depoliticization--in the process. The army, Yazov said, must be a guarantor of the country’s “socialist statehood.”

The ruddy-faced Yazov, who began his career as a platoon commander in 1942 and was given his marshal’s stars by President Mikhail S. Gorbachev earlier this year as an apparent sop to the Soviet military, thanked the delegates in the Kremlin Palace of Congresses, then turned to the right to leave the rostrum. Even viewed from the press gallery, it was obvious that he was in trouble. He gripped the speaker’s desk with both hands, and couldn’t seem to make his right leg budge.

Two burly men in the front of the auditorium quickly came to his assistance and helped him down a short flight of steps to a front-row seat. As delegates rose for the congress’ lunch break, Yazov stayed seated. After about five minutes, he too got up and left the hall.

Alexander Lebedev, a Communist Party spokesman, later told reporters that Yazov was the victim of “a minor discomfort, maybe a minor seizure, but not a stroke. If it had been that serious, we would have been told.”