Democratchniks

By JOHN KOHAN MOSCOW

Few places have borne witness to so much modern history as the fifth-floor corner conference room at No. 4 Staraya Ploshchad, a few blocks from the Kremlin. Seated in brown leather swivel chairs around a wooden table, the ruling Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union made its decisions to invade Afghanistan, reduce nuclear weapons, settle questions of Kremlin succession. It was in this room that Mikhail Gorbachev first discussed reform policies that would change the world and bring the U.S.S.R. to an end. Today the headquarters of the once powerful party belongs to Russia's new democratic leadership: Boris Yeltsin's team.

At 10 a.m. on most Thursdays, President (and Prime Minister) Yeltsin takes his place at the head of the table. The chair on his left is reserved for Vice President Alexander Rutskoi. Gennadi Burbulis, Yeltsin's top political strategist, and First Deputy Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar, the point man of Russia's economic reforms, sit on the right. The old Politburo table had to be lengthened to seat the 35 ministers in the government and 30 state-committee chairmen. Most of Yeltsin's staff must scramble for chairs along the walls.

While the President glances through a green folder, the officials responsible for each item on the day's agenda begin briefing him from a lectern beside the table. One day the topics might be land reform and the economic difficulties of Russia's Far North. On another day the focus might be on more immediate problems, like the conflict with Ukraine over the Black Sea fleet. Yeltsin usually listens in silence, his immobile face looking as if it were carved in stone. He has the reputation of being a tough taskmaster, but he is also said to be fair and -- most of all -- loyal to his staff.

This glimpse of Yeltsin, the team manager, coping with ordinary affairs of state, is in marked contrast to the larger-than-life image of the Russian leader that the world came to know during last August's putsch. He displayed ruthless daring again last December, when he delivered the political coup de grace to Gorbachev and to the empire he ruled. But Yeltsin has been dogged by one persistent doubt: Could he transform himself from a defiant leader of the opposition, bent on destroying the old order, into a competent statesman capable of building a new one?

There have been times when Yeltsin has come close to squandering what he calls his "credit of trust" with the Russian people. He has been known simply to drop out of sight for days at a time -- leaving squabbling subordinates to govern. Opponents have raised questions about the President's reputed fondness for alcohol, accusing him of arriving drunk for a meeting last month in Uzbekistan. Yeltsin denounced the charge as "a big campaign to discredit the President, reform and authority." Still, he possesses one quality of leadership that sets him apart from Gorbachev: he is courageous and confident enough of his mandate as Russia's first democratically elected President to take the unpopular measures necessary to bring about radical change.

Yeltsin's relationship with Gorbachev remains tense. Irritated by the acclaim Gorbachev received during his recent U.S. visit, the Kremlin accused the former Soviet President of "whipping up political tensions" by openly criticizing government policies and vaguely hinted that "legal steps" might have to be taken. These flare-ups of the old public feud are more reflective of the Yeltsin team's insecurity about its image abroad than of realities at home. Gorbachev has become increasingly irrelevant to Moscow politics. Yeltsin clearly has the upper hand and could make life difficult for his former rival at the constitutional-court hearings, scheduled to begin next month, on Communist Party crimes.

The 61-year-old Yeltsin has felt secure enough about his hold on power to reach across the generation gap and select ministers and advisers for his team who are in their late 30s and early 40s. They represent a new Russia, too young to be burdened by memories of Stalin, old enough to have learned during the detente era to be unafraid of the outside world.

So far, however, the team's record has been spotty. Gaidar's shock-therapy program has yielded mixed results: the decision to end most price controls has brought goods back to stores, but at a cost Russians can scarcely afford. Yeltsin insists he does not want to serve a second five-year term and will devote all his energy to keeping the reforms on course. But as tensions build across Russia over unpaid wages and benefits, the government has had to water down its tough fiscal policy and pump more money into circulation. Gaidar expects the amount of cash coming off government presses to increase fivefold by August, much of it in new 1,000- and 5,000-ruble notes. To sweeten the public mood on a visit to Siberia last month, Yeltsin ordered that a second plane accompany him loaded with 500 million rubles in back pay.

The Russian President shrewdly moved to mute criticism of his reform government by expanding its ranks to include Vladimir Shumeiko, a deputy speaker of the rebellious Russian parliament with ties to the military- industrial complex, as a new First Deputy Prime Minister alongside Gaidar. He also increased the number of Deputy Prime Ministers from six to 10, mixing strong advocates of reform with pragmatic technocrats. Says Yeltsin: "The possibility for a compromise has been exhausted with these appointments. There will be no more personnel changes."

The core members of Yeltsin's Cabinet remain half a dozen young economists, many of whom speak English and know as much about the free-market views of the Chicago school of economics as the works of Karl Marx. Their common point of connection is Gaidar, who was once director of Moscow's Institute of Economic Policy and an economics editor of the party daily Pravda. Long before they had any possibility of entering the government, the group used to gather to discuss future economic models for Russia. Then, during the coup attempt, Gaidar and friends issued a public statement condemning the economic policies of the putsch leaders. It caught Yeltsin's attention.

The credit for turning their discussion club into a functioning government goes to Burbulis, a skillful tactician from the President's home region of Yekaterinburg, who managed Yeltsin's election campaign last June. Widely viewed as the President's alter ego, Burbulis gave up his post as First Deputy Prime Minister, under mounting pressure from the opposition, to serve full time as Yeltsin's top policy adviser in the presidential office. He put together the initial government lineup, including seasoned veterans of the previous Russian government, to give more balance. But the image of a fresh, young troop of outsiders remained unchanged. "This government is not concerned with pensions," says Justice Minister Nikolai Fedorov. "If they had to go tomorrow, they would make better money working in new commercial ventures. They are here because they believe in the reforms."

On the evening of Nov. 6, 1991, Gaidar and company entered the White House, the former seat of the Russian government, only to find that the telephones were not working. Now, seven months later, after their move to the Communist Party headquarters at Staraya Ploshchad, Russia's reform ministers are still not completely comfortable using the rows of ivory-color telephones left by departing communist bureaucrats. They have not had time to add any personal touches to the standard furnishing of their well-appointed offices, which often come equipped with private elevators and sleeping quarters. Empty hooks mark the spots where the ubiquitous portraits of Vladimir Lenin used to hang.

The democratic reformers have been branded by opponents as elitist "theoreticians." But, in fact, the shortages experienced across Russia have reached into this once exclusive domain. A hand-lettered sign in a third- floor cafeteria pointedly reminds customers not to walk out with the aluminum cutlery, since "we cannot buy tableware anymore."

There is an edgy, vibrant atmosphere in the building's once hushed hallways. The nerve center of the government is located at the corner of the fifth floor, where chairs have been removed from reception rooms to discourage petitioners from settling in, but a steady stream of visitors flows up and down the corridor.

Yeltsin, who prefers to work with his presidential staff in the Kremlin, is perfectly comfortable delegating day-to-day problems to his deputies at Staraya Ploshchad, keeping in touch by telephone. Gaidar explains how his relationship with Yeltsin works: "There is no reason to bother the President with technical issues like corrections in export tariffs," he says. "But if problems arise with the other Commonwealth states or there are questions of principle to be decided, then we report to Yeltsin."

Russia's government inherited hundreds of functionaries from former Soviet ministries. Retraining them to work under new conditions has been a daunting task. "You have to watch how your ideas are implemented from start to finish," says Pyotr Aven, the Minister for Foreign Economic Relations. "People want to change, but if they don't understand what you are doing, they often try to 'improve' on your ideas." Under the circumstances, the temptation has been great for Yeltsin's men to take the entire burden on themselves. Alexei Golovkov, the government's chief of staff, claims that "my workday begins on Monday and ends on Friday."

The reformers have made significant strides in streamlining the bloated bureaucracy. At least 140 functionaries used to monitor science developments for the party, union and republican authorities; now there are just 19. Still, in trying to respond as quickly as possible to the constant barrage of daily crises, Yeltsin's men have inadvertently created a bureaucratic jumble of their own, superimposing new agencies on top of old ones. Draft laws and decrees circulate among the government ministries, Golovkov's administration and a third, separate state legal bureau. Explains Justice Minister Fedorov: "We are experimenting with new institutions. Many will not survive the test of time."

Russia's leaders contend that they have learned one important lesson from the events leading up to the August putsch: Gorbachev was too dependent on information filtered to him by his chief of staff, who proved to be one of the coup's ringleaders. Yeltsin is much more open to different points of view -- some would say too accessible. The result has been an occasional glitch between the Prime Minister-President and his government. An air of mystery still surrounds the drafting of a presidential decree merging the police and security forces into one monster agency, which Yeltsin hastily signed before departing on a state visit to Italy last December. It was later struck down by Russia's fledgling constitutional commission and withdrawn by the President, causing the Yeltsin team considerable embarrassment.

Fights have already erupted between the young reformers and the old Yeltsin loyalists, like presidential chief of staff Yuri Petrov. At first the Old Guard was dismissive of the new crowd. When the decree appointing Golovkov to the rival post of government chief of staff was sent over to the Kremlin for the President to sign, it somehow got "lost" on the way. Now presidential staffers must be wondering what will happen to them if Gaidar and the government team should actually succeed. Petrov submitted his resignation, complaining about "unfounded accusations" that he and other members of the party's old nomenklatura were sabotaging the reforms. He also carped that a planned reorganization of the President's office would reduce his job to purely managerial functions. Yeltsin did not accept the resignation and told Petrov to stay.

The greatest challenge for Yeltsin has been winning over a skeptical world, unwilling to believe that the Soviet Union and the Gorbachev era have really become part of history. "At first the West underestimated the radical nature of our reforms," says Konstantin Kagalovsky, a government counselor on international financial institutions. After Gaidar's team drafted a memorandum for the International Monetary Fund, initial doubts gave way to strong support for the Yeltsin government's tough fiscal policies. The latest compromise raises questions, once again, about what the West can do to bail out Russia. But it is Russians, feeling the bite of the reforms, who fail to understand that, as Deputy Prime Minister Valeri Makharadze points out, "if this government is toppled, there will be no reforms."

There is much that remains enigmatic about Yeltsin. Not the least intriguing question is how this provincial party chief from the Urals underwent his remarkable conversion into a defender of democracy and free markets. Still, the very fact that he embodies so many of the contradictions of this historic moment makes him a transitional leader in the best sense of the word. Yeltsin has displayed an uncanny ability to grasp what is really on the minds of millions of average Russians, who have come to see him as their defender. Doubts may linger about his latest maneuver to turn what at one time was jokingly referred to as Gaidar's "kamikaze team" into a broader coalition of forces. But as long as Yeltsin remains committed to radical change and resolute in his role as father figure to his young aides, there is hope that a new generation of Russian leaders will come of age and find a worthy place for their country in the modern world.

With reporting by Yuri Zarakhovich/Moscow