Russia's New Icon

By PAUL QUINN-JUDGE/MOSCOW

When Boris Yeltsin was too sick to go on a state visit to Austria last week, Prime Minister Yevgeni Primakov quickly stepped in--in every sense of the word. Yeltsin's advancemen sketched out Primakov's arrival and departure; Yeltsin's chief of protocol arranged the state visits; and Yeltsin's personal interpreter did the German-to-Russian translating. The only things missing, a Moscow newspaper wagged, were Mrs. Yeltsin and a battery of doctors. Not to mention the gaffes, stumbles and truncated schedules. The Russian establishment reacted with relief. "It's so good to see the country represented by something other than a walking corpse," sighed a Foreign Ministry official. And as if to emphasize the quiet shift of power from Yeltsin to Primakov, press coverage of the Prime Minister's farewell visit to Yeltsin before leaving for Vienna included a new twist. Ministers usually swing by the Kremlin to receive "instructions" before a state visit. Primakov dropped by Yeltsin's sanatorium to hear a few "suggestions."

Primakov's ascent to the position of Russia's virtual President has been accomplished in the secretive style that has marked his whole career. He has always moved in the shadows, rising ever higher in the apparatus of state thanks to a reputation for diligence, loyalty and--crucial in a world of big egos--aversion to publicity. He has never been seen to lobby for a job but has carefully managed to be on hand when the powers that be were casting around for a candidate. He was a last-minute compromise candidate for the premiership last September when, after weeks of chaos, it became clear that Yeltsin's attempt to reappoint Viktor Chernomyrdin Prime Minister was leading the country deeper into crisis.

Since then Primakov has moved fast to consolidate his position. He has established good relations with Yeltsin's bitter enemies in the communist-dominated Duma, or lower house of parliament. But he has also become the President's most stalwart defender against a chorus of resignation calls. He is still, theoretically at least, dependent on Yeltsin, whose unpredictability is as notorious as his envy of any underling's success. But Primakov's power is growing daily, and despite his vociferous denials of presidential ambitions--the next scheduled elections are in 2000--he is increasingly seen as a front runner.

On the face of it, this may be dismaying news to Americans. Primakov's stubborn, bluntly phrased opposition to U.S. policy in most parts of the world--from the Middle East to the gulf to the Balkans--has, after all, made him the bane of U.S. officials. In public, at least. In private, Primakov seems to have shown a little more flexibility. Diplomacy, he sometimes says, is a process of mutual concessions. He has been able to establish a good working relationship with U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. And officials at NATO, one of Primakov's least favorite organizations, say they view the new Russian Prime Minister as a stabilizing force in Moscow's relations with the West. "Primakov is smart, and he's realistic," a NATO official remarks.

What Primakov seems to lack is any clear vision for Russia. He is a passionate believer in the need for a strong state and is insistent that Russia should be heard as an important voice in world affairs. Yet his handling of Russia's current economic pandemic has been slow, if not tentative. So far, strangely enough, this has not hurt him in the slightest. His popularity ratings keep going up: what Western bankers and the International Monetary Fund call distressing slowness, the Russian public views as refreshing caution.

Behind the scenes, however, Primakov is showing signs of determination, even ruthlessness. He has told confidants that he would like to move against one of Russia's most powerful business figures, the billionaire political fixer Boris Berezovsky. Primakov would be very happy to see Berezovsky either behind bars or living permanently outside Russia, says a political insider, and has already put the Russian security service on Berezovsky's case. He would also like to remove Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the flashy young millionaire who runs Kalmykia, a tiny republic on the Caspian Sea. Ilyumzhinov has been accused in the Russian media of involvement in the murder four months ago of his republic's only opposition newspaper editor. In both the Berezovsky and Ilyumzhinov cases, say friends, Primakov will stay his hand until he is certain he can strike a killing blow.

Primakov is a combination of opposites: ambition tempered with caution; forcefulness allied with compromise; a secretive, taciturn official persona paired with a reputation for gregariousness and wit in private. His obsessive secrecy about his personal life has allowed legends and rumors to embed themselves in his biography: that he was a career KGB officer; that his father's name was Finkelstein or Kirschenblatt; that his current family name is actually a pseudonym, taken to mask his Jewish roots. The stories are plausible but unprovable. The one man who could confirm or deny them, Primakov himself, refuses to comment. As a longtime colleague puts it, you inquire about his private life at your own risk.

He was born in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, on Oct. 29, 1929, and is said to never have known his father, who by some accounts perished during the Stalinist purges of 1937. His parents seem to have separated before this, and Primakov was brought up in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, where his mother Anna was a gynecologist attached to a local textile factory. The family home was a 14-sq-m room in a kommunalka--a communal apartment where kitchen and toilet facilities were shared by a number of families. He left Tbilisi for Moscow in the late 1940s to study Arabic. Another neighbor headed for Moscow at the same time--his future wife Laura. They were soon married and later had two children, Alexander and Nana. After graduation, Primakov became a journalist, first for the state radio corporation, then as Middle East correspondent for Pravda, the Soviet Union's most prestigious and authoritative paper.

His involvement in the Middle East, as both a journalist and an academic, coincided with the nastiest period of the cold war in that part of the world--when the KGB, for example, was making weapons drops off the coast of Aden for radical Palestinian guerrillas. During this period, he developed close working relationships with some of the U.S.'s least favorite rulers, most notoriously with Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi. According to widespread but unconfirmed reports, he worked for the KGB at this time. Primakov never comments on the allegations, though the fact that his two top aides are both senior intelligence officers shows that he is very much at home with the world of spies. A Russian who intimately knows Primakov's background doubts that Primakov was a staff KGB officer but is certain that he did "special assignments" for the KGB in the Middle East.

After Pravda came academe--the directorship first of his alma mater, the Institute of Oriental Studies, and then, in 1985, of the country's premier think tank, the Institute for World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO). Primakov took over IMEMO at the beginning of the Gorbachev era and quickly became a key part of the Gorbachev team. He played a major role in creating the ideology of perestroika, in particular questioning the communist dogmas that had traditionally determined foreign relations. But his predilection for the shadows and his stiffness in public meant that he received less credit than Gorbachev's more charismatic aides.

His private life, meanwhile, was marked by tragedy. First his son died suddenly in his mid-20s, killed by a heart attack that struck without warning during the traditional May Day ceremonies. A few years later his wife died with equal suddenness, the victim, friends say, of the same inherited heart condition. He has since remarried; his current wife Irina is a doctor.

Those who know Primakov say that in his personal life, he is the complete opposite of his dour public image. He has the reputation of an accomplished tamada, the master of ceremonies who keeps parties going with banter, songs and humorous speeches. He is widely described as a very loyal, though discriminating, friend, with a social circle that includes former perestroika-era officials, entertainers and academics.

Though he seems every inch a disciplinarian, Primakov has not yet been able to shake the new government into shape. Ministers contradict one another in public. They unnerve the markets and the IMF with widely varying figures for the amount of new money that will have to be printed to keep the economy afloat. Primakov, meanwhile, has struck some visitors as strangely removed from the day-to-day business of government. A senior diplomat recalled a recent high-level meeting with the new Prime Minister. "We asked about foreign policy," the diplomat said, "and Primakov waved his hand and referred us to Ivanov [his Foreign Minister]." The delegation then raised trade, but "Primakov waved his hand and referred us to Maslyukov [the Deputy Prime Minister in charge of the economy]."

But Primakov cannot wave Russia's current disaster away. Wages have to be paid on time, even if the government still cannot afford payment of back salaries for a while. The nation's idled factories have to start production again--even if they are not producing anything of great quality. Moscow theorists say the Russian public gives its leaders a three-month honeymoon. Primakov, who took office in September, is halfway through his. It is time to step out from the shadows.

--With reporting by James L. Graff/Brussels

With reporting by James L. Graff/Brussels