SOROS TO THE RESCUE, AGAIN

By DOUGLAS WALLER/WASHINGTON

The billionaires are coming to the rescue. First, media mogul Ted Turner announced last month that he would give the ailing United Nations a $1 billion shot in the arm over the next 10 years. Then last week, American financier George Soros shocked Moscow and the West with a pledge to pump up to $500 million of his personal fortune into needy Russian health and education programs over the next three years.

The huge donation left American diplomats elated and at the same time somewhat embarrassed. Soros, a Hungarian-born philanthropist who has already poured $260 million into Russia since 1994, will now be sending more foreign aid to the country than the U.S. government. "He has been doing what we should have done but did not have the capacity or imagination to do," admitted a State Department official.

Can Soros' pot of gold make a difference? His gift will target some of the most intractable problems Russia faces. Soros, who has amassed a $5 billion personal fortune trading currencies and given $1.5 billion to humanitarian projects worldwide, so far has only vague ideas about who gets the Russia money. One initiative--to "preserve what is good in Russian education" and "reform what was too authoritarian"--appears overly ambitious and may have little effect on the country's vast school system.

The Soros donations that will have the most impact are the ones that "focus on very small things, particularly areas that we don't contribute to," says an official with the U.S. Agency for International Development. For example, AID workers are delighted that Soros wants to put more Western publications in Russian libraries and hook up more schools and hospitals to the Internet, projects that Russian officials have begged Washington to fund. He plans to set up desperately needed training programs for business managers, lawyers and local government officials. And Soros has begun consulting with U.S. health officials on funding tuberculosis treatment in Russia's provinces and decrepit prison system.

In view of the size of the gift, Moscow seemed almost ungrateful. Russian President Boris Yeltsin and his top aides were silent after Soros' announcement. The Kremlin has been leery of appearing to be too close to the 67-year-old financier, who has more than $2.5 billion worth of business investments in Russia. Soros' currency speculation has come under fire in other parts of the world. Russian communists and nationalists have been irritated because some of his charities promote free press and market reforms.

At Soros' Moscow press conference last week, Russian reporters practically ignored the gift and instead interrogated him about his bankrolling of Unexim Bank. Vladimir Potanin, Unexim's president, has been engaged in a fierce political and economic war with other Russian oligopolists, and he has scooped up parts of the Russian media to broadcast his political views. "I have not become a player in Russian politics by associating with Mr. Potanin," Soros insisted. "I have become a player in the Russian market."

The Kremlin has also been reticent because the donation draws attention to the fact that he is funding programs the government has neglected. Russian leaders are nervous because Soros "is an idealist" who also happens to have billions of dollars, says Alexander Yakovlev, who served in Mikhail Gorbachev's Politburo. "He knows what Russian society is like, and that is why he is trying to change it."

--By Douglas Waller/Washington. With reporting by Paul Quinn-Judge/Moscow

With reporting by PAUL QUINN-JUDGE/MOSCOW