THE TATYANA TROIKA

By PAUL QUINN-JUDGE/MOSCOW

Well before sunrise on Tuesday morning, a high-speed convoy of government vehicles made the short drive from Boris Yeltsin's luxurious sanatorium in the village of Barvikha to the heart center on the edge of Moscow. The patient was in a good mood, his spokesman reported later, and joked with the doctors. After two months of waiting, wild rumors and some nasty Kremlin infighting, the Russian President's heart-bypass operation--a procedure as crucial politically as it was medically--had finally become a reality. At 2 p.m., after seven hours in the operating room, during which Yeltsin's heart was stopped for more than 60 minutes, the clearly relieved surgeons announced that all had gone well. Their optimism was echoed by U.S. heart specialist Michael DeBakey, who said, "President Yeltsin will be able to return to his office and carry out his duties in normal fashion."

After close medical observation, Yeltsin can expect six to eight weeks of convalescence--and some massive political and economic problems--when he gets back to work. In any case the surgery is the most important step in ending the state of suspended political animation that has gripped the Kremlin since late June, when Yeltsin fell ill, exhausted by the campaign and drained by the stress of firing his closest aide, Alexander Korzhakov.

Yeltsin will be out of action, and probably as remote as he has been up to now, until the New Year. As he recovers, he will rule largely through three people. His Prime Minister, the stolid Viktor Chernomyrdin, will present the administration's reassuring face--business as usual. His chief of staff, Anatoli Chubais, sardonically nicknamed the Regent by his enemies, will be the strategic powerhouse of the regime. And the key will be Yeltsin's younger daughter, Tatyana Dyachenko, who is the most trusted channel of political information to and from the President.

In the week or so preceding the operation, the pro-Yeltsin media did their best to enhance Chernomyrdin's image, showing an avuncular, accordion-playing man of the people--unchanged by the enormous wealth that some specialists claim he has accumulated thanks to his connections with Russia's oil and gas industry. But when it comes to real political power, Chubais will probably retain the inside edge. In large part this will be because of his close political relationship with Dyachenko. A near contemporary of Chubais'--she was born in 1960, he in 1955--and like him highly educated, Dyachenko has emerged as a discreet but crucial figure in the presidential power structure. Her enemies--particularly Korzhakov, Yeltsin's former chief bodyguard, and the ousted national security adviser Alexander Lebed--complain loudly that Chubais is manipulating Dyachenko. In a recent interview, Korzhakov claimed that Chubais prepares key documents that Dyachenko then persuades her ailing father to sign. Lebed remarked scornfully in another recent interview that like any woman, Dyachenko is "impressionable." Their outrage is understandable. She played a significant role in the downfall of both. Dyachenko is more than a paper carrier, and Korzhakov knows it: in an unfortunately prophetic comment earlier this year, when they were both apparently on the same side, the general confided to a magazine that Dyachenko had inherited her father's "forcefulness." In the middle of the election campaign, Korzhakov tried to bring Chubais down. Dyachenko took Chubais' side in the power struggle. Korzhakov lost.

Dyachenko's influence dates back to last March, when Yeltsin, his popularity rating in single digits, rejected calls from Korzhakov and others to postpone the elections and decided instead to try what seemed to be the impossible: go all out to win. He dumped the drinking cronies who were botching his re-election bid and turned to the tough, hard-nosed Chubais. He also began spending more time with his family, a source close to Yeltsin said, and started listening to his daughter. Chubais set up a new inner campaign team. Numbering fewer than 10 people, they called themselves the analytical group. In addition to Chubais and Dyachenko, the group included the head of Russian Independent Television, Igor Malashenko, and Yeltsin's chief aide, Viktor Ilyushin. The President's daughter was no figurehead, her colleagues recall. "She's very bright, she learns fast, and she retains everything she has learned," says one. She also played a pivotal role during the campaign: it was Dyachenko who took bad news to her father and told him exactly what had to be done to turn the election around. "She was our battering ram," remembers another member of the group. She described her role at the time as being "everywhere" in the campaign--"everywhere there's a weak link." Her fierce devotion to her father, her closeness to Chubais and her continuing intolerance of weak links have made her a favorite target for sniping. So much sniping, in fact, that her mother came to her defense in a recent TV appearance. "They used to attack the President," Naina Yeltsin said; "now they attack Tatyana." Hatred is always a telling measure of power.

--With reporting by Andrew Meier and Yuri Zarakhovich/Moscow

With reporting by ANDREW MEIER AND YURI ZARAKHOVICH/ MOSCOW