Russian Roulette

By PAUL QUINN-JUDGE/MOSCOW

What faith can anyone put in Boris Yeltsin's words? Five months ago, the Russian President said Viktor Chernomyrdin was not good enough to be Prime Minister and fired him. Last week he hired him back as the "heavyweight" who could save Russia from collapse.

The obvious conclusion is that neither Yeltsin nor Chernomyrdin nor any of the other figures spinning in and out of the government's revolving door have a firm plan to quell the economic and political chaos. And even if one did, he probably could not muster the political support to make his program stick. There is, at the core of the Yeltsin regime, a vacuum of power and an absence of leadership. Yeltsin seems to be President in name only, a figure so diminished that he was forced onto national TV last Friday to insist, "I'm not going to resign." The merry-go-round of Prime Ministers bespeaks the destructively ad hoc nature of the country's governance. No wonder Russians and the rest of the world were left wondering anxiously last week, Is anyone in charge here?

Well, yes, in a way. Stepping boldly in to exploit the crisis was money power. Men made rich through political connections in the post-Soviet economy have wielded substantial influence ever since they got rich buying up government assets at bargain prices and two years ago financed Yeltsin's come-from-behind election victory. The reappointment of Chernomyrdin, the ponderous former natural-gas bureaucrat who was for years Yeltsin's most obedient Prime Minister, signals the intention of these rich men to obtain a government that will protect their ill-gotten assets.

Of course, they could not have done so without the consent of the man most responsible for the mess, Boris Yeltsin. As the economy crumbled around him, the physically and politically ailing President was more isolated than ever, humiliated and dismissed as irrelevant. Former supporters abandoned him, and some in the outgoing government even raised doubts about the loyalty of his staff. No longer hinting at the possibility of a third term, Yeltsin was left struggling to convince the Russian political establishment that he should serve out the last two years of his term.

Smelling blood in the economic meltdown, the lower house of parliament, or Duma, took the offensive, calling for Yeltsin to resign, demanding a greater share of power and disdainfully offering the President guarantees that he would not be prosecuted or harassed once he left office. More troubling still, the communists, led by Gennadi Zyuganov, prepared to parlay the failure of Russia's cutthroat capitalism into a rollback of the reforms that, for better or worse, have been credited to Yeltsin's account, such as a freely convertible ruble, a tight money supply, even some industrial privatization.

Behind the machinations that brought back Chernomyrdin stood one nimble figure in particular--Boris Berezovsky, financial baron turned political wheeler-dealer, the most ruthless of the so-called New Russians in the art of turning money into power. Unlike the men officially running the government, he always knows what he wants and has the brashness, tenacity and clout to get it. For him. Yeltsin's weakness offered a chance to strengthen the puppet strings.

Last week what Berezovsky apparently got was the hide of Sergei Kiriyenko, the earnest young reformer Yeltsin installed in March, whose solutions for salvaging Russia's failing banks, currency and international credibility entailed a well-intentioned assault on the freebooting ways of the oligarchy. Chernomyrdin's return, says Andrei Illarionov, director of the Institute of Economic Analysis, is the result of a "brilliant scheme," under way for months, by the tycoons to return to power the one man they believed could protect their interests. Men in the Chernomyrdin camp acknowledge that Berezovsky played a major role in encouraging the cautious former Prime Minister to come out publicly last summer with his plan to run for President in 2000. They confirm that the two met to discuss the future shortly before Yeltsin fired Kiriyenko and his whole Cabinet. Unlikely to be anything but lackluster on the stump, Chernomyrdin would now gain enormous advantage in a potential electoral struggle with more dynamic campaigners like retired General Alexander Lebed if Yeltsin were to quit and make him acting chief executive. By one account, it was Berezovsky too who unexpectedly called on Vice Prime Minister Anatoli Chubais, the most pugnacious reformer in the Cabinet, the evening before Kiriyenko's dismissal and bluntly told him, "It is time to go quietly."

In the days since Chernomyrdin's re-appointment, Berezovsky has been just as busy. Chernomyrdin's aides say the banker has been negotiating on the PM's behalf with a number of Duma factions, including the communists, whose support is essential to the Prime Minister's confirmation but whose demands clash with the preferences of the tycoons. This time, supporters of Berezovsky say he would like a high post in the government for himself.

Viktor Aksyuchits, an aide to former Vice Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov and one of Berezovsky's most outspoken critics, claims that the banker succeeded, as he has so often done before, by gaining intimate access to Yeltsin's closest advisers, chief of staff Valentin Yumashev and younger daughter Tatyana Dyachenko. Yumashev is a "wholly privatized" Berezovsky subsidiary, says Aksyuchits, and Dyachenko is allegedly beholden to Berezovsky for his handling the family's finances and making generous contributions to her father's re-election. Both advisers have for several months been privately urging Yeltsin to stand down, Aksyuchits tells TIME: "They almost succeeded in July, but Nemtsov and Chubais were able to stop it." Yumashev and Dyachenko argued that Chernomyrdin was the only person who could protect the President and his family from being "torn to pieces" by their enemies after he left office, says Aksyuchits. He predicted that the two advisers would keep up their pressure on Yeltsin.

The old warhorse may yet generate enough adrenaline for another comeback. But even if Yeltsin can hang on, he is a profoundly diminished political figure. His aides last week started negotiating with the Duma over a "political agreement" that would alter the Constitution by taking away the President's power to issue decrees on the economy, limiting his ability to dismiss and appoint governments and transferring many of those prerogatives to the parliament and the Cabinet. In other words, these were the terms for Yeltsin's surrender. In return, the parliament would halt impeachment proceedings and pass a law giving the President "social guarantees" when he retires.

Chernomyrdin hardly seems to offer the dynamism and political strength Russia so sorely needs. Although the Clinton Administration retains a close relationship with him through Vice President Al Gore, many U.S. officials consider him a model of mediocrity. Chernomyrdin is caught between the conflicting demands of the Duma, the oligarchs, the West and his lame-duck boss, and it is hard to see how he can transcend their demands and do what's right for Russia.