Plot Alleged in Russian Corruption Scandal : Lawsuit: Defense minister sues newspaper after articles call him a thief. Controversy also involves reporter’s murder.

MOSCOW —  With his officer’s honor besmirched in a ferocious scandal involving murder and Mercedes sedans, Russia’s defense minister warned Friday of a “monstrous political provocation” meant to force him to resign and sow confusion in the Kremlin.

“The backstage conductors of this persecution are trying to cause a crisis of power,” Defense Minister Pavel S. Grachev declared in an official statement. “Playing the ‘army card’ time after time, they are pushing society to the dangerous edge of complete chaos and disorder.”

Grachev, a normally mild-mannered former paratroop leader who has kept the Russian army relatively calm as it suffered through massive post-Cold War cuts, was trying to fend off a rash of accusations that he and some of his top brass are corrupt.

He brought suit Friday against the Moskovsky Komsomolets daily, which had published a full-page story the day before using Grachev’s nickname, “Pasha Mercedes,” a reference to the Mercedes-Benz sedans that he allegedly obtained through the retreating Russian forces in Germany.

“A thief should be in prison and not be defense minister,” the headline read.

Moskovsky Komsomolets, always sensational, abandoned all caution in the wake of the murder Wednesday of its investigative reporter, Dmitri Kholodov. Kholodov, who specialized in uncovering corruption in the military, was killed in his office when a briefcase that was supposed to have contained incriminating documents on the Russian contingent in Germany blew up as he opened it.

The daily newspaper published documents on two $100,000 Mercedes-Benz automobiles that it alleged had been bought for Grachev’s personal use out of funds meant for the resettlement of Russian officers returning from Germany.

It also referred to the plentiful supplies of Russian guns, uniforms and ammunition available in Germany that could only have become available for sale through corrupt officers. Kholodov had been working on proving that Russian weaponry had been sold under the table.

The next day, Moskovsky Komsomolets went even further, accusing the head of the Western Group of Forces, Gen. Matvei Burlakov, of “knowing arithmetic--how to extract money from the budget, fold it in his pocket, share it with his bosses and multiply stars” on his uniform.

Grachev said he had asked Russia’s chief prosecutor to bring criminal charges against “the slanderers” and accused the newspaper of waging an anti-military campaign.

“I have said it before and repeat it again: We, the military, want only one thing--stability and civic consensus in society,” his statement said.

Libel and slander suits have become ever more popular weapons in Russia’s political battles. Last month, ultranationalist lawmaker Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky won a libel suit against Yegor T. Gaidar, the architect of Yeltsin’s free-market economic reforms. And a leader of the Old Guard Parliament won a libel case against President Boris N. Yeltsin, who described him as a fascist in a recent book.

The Mercedes-Benz scandal dealt a heavy blow to the prestige of the army, which remains one of the most trusted institutions in Russian society, despite its decline since its Soviet heyday.

Adding to concern about the scandal’s repercussions was a poll in Friday’s Izvestia newspaper depicting a longstanding volatile mood among Russian officers. The joint Russian-German survey of 615 of the army’s elite officers found that 50% of generals believed a shift to “some kind of dictatorship” was inevitable.

Sporadic scares about an impending military coup have largely ceased here, but the level of military discontent remains high. More than 50% of the officers interviewed said they had no confidence in Grachev, Izvestia said.

Calls for Grachev’s resignation also came from Russian liberals. One of Yeltsin’s main backers, the party known as Russia’s Democratic Choice, issued a statement saying the military leadership had compromised itself and proven incapable of reform.

Grachev left Moscow on Thursday on a trip to the Russian Far East, but he is expected to face the political firing line next week: He has been summoned to the Duma, the lower house of Parliament, to discuss the state of the army.

In other Russian political news Friday, Yeltsin announced that a summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States had failed to bring agreement on creating a body that would bind the former Soviet republics more closely together.

Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev had proposed the creation of a Eurasian Union--along the lines of the European Union--but seven decades of forced Soviet togetherness apparently left the former republics too skittish to accept such a grouping.