Boris Yeltsin, Boris-Yeltsin.com

Is this any way to run a country?

Is this any way to run a country?

Russian president Boris Yeltsin fired his cabinet on Mar 23, 1998. Yeltsin’s advisers feel his unexpected behavior and occasional public mistakes matter less than his ability to govern. Appointing Sergei Kiriyenko, a little-known bureaucrat, to prime minister raises questions about Yeltsin’s judgment.

Boris Yeltsin has sacked his entire cabinet. More bizarre behavior, or a real effort at reform?

Russia’s President had coyly suggested for months that he knew exactly who should succeed him in 2000, the year the country is scheduled to hold its next presidential election. And nearly everyone in Moscow figured Boris Yeltsin would pick Viktor Chernomyrdin, his long-suffering and intensely loyal prime minister. For the past three months, Chernomyrdin had worked to raise his political profile, submitting to fawning interviews in the Russian press and even taking live phone calls on Russian television–a remarkable step for someone as charismatically challenged as his American counterpart, Vice President Al Gore. Chernomyrdin’s unofficial 2000 campaign had clearly begun–by all appearances with Yeltsin’s blessing.

Chernomyrdin should have known better. Boris Yeltsin has never tolerated anyone with designs on his job. Last week–by far the most tumultuous of his second term–Chernomyrdin learned that lesson. On March 23 the Russian president returned to the Kremlin from yet another week of illness and announced that, tired of their political infighting and inability to resolve Russia’s deepening economic mess, he was sacking his entire cabinet. While some ministers were quickly reinstated, two of the cabinet’s most powerful men were decidedly out: Chernomyrdin and economic czar Anatoly Chubais. No one, outside of a few intimates led by daughter Tatyana (sidebar), had seen it coming.

By the end of the week Yeltsin had named Sergei Kiriyenko, a little-known 35-year-old fuel-industry bureaucrat, to the prime minister’s post. With the choice, Yeltsin made it clear that he, not anyone else, is running Russia–perhaps for years to come. The question now: can a shaky Yeltsin, with an inexperienced No. 2, kick-start a Russian economy that has slipped into a dangerous period of stagnation?

Yeltsin’s erratic recent behavior doesn’t necessarily inspire confidence. For a full 24 hours after the firings, there was nothing but silence from the Kremlin. That day, Yeltsin, the 67-year-old quintuple-bypass recipient, was home alone. “We did not have the slightest idea what was going on, and neither did anyone else,” says one high-ranking Western diplomat. Traveling in Africa, President Clinton dashed off a letter to Yeltsin, urging him to stick to the course of reform. “I’m thinking of you,” the American president told Yeltsin. If Clinton had concerns about the ailing Yeltsin’s decision-making, he had good reason. Last December, on a visit to Sweden, the Russian president seemed to have no idea where he was and announced that Russia was dismantling its nuclear arsenal (Russia’s generals begged to differ). And last month, at a dinner hosted by Pope John Paul II in Rome, Yeltsin in a toast made a lascivious reference to Italian women.

Yeltsin’s advisers say the gaffes don’t matter. Governing does. That’s why even some of his most loyal aides were jarred by last week’s decisions. At his daily press briefing on March 24, a plainly flummoxed spokesman for Yeltsin announced that the president had chosen an “acting prime minister.” It was Kiriyenko, the boyish-looking minister of fuel and energy. The room was stunned. “Sergei who?” bellowed one Russian reporter.

It was a reasonable question. Kiriyenko is a former banking and oil-company executive who had first helped run the deeply conservative fuel and energy ministry as a deputy to economic reformer Boris Nemtsov, then became minister. In recent months Kiriyenko had become one of the Kremlin’s most effective troubleshooters. Just two months ago Yeltsin sent him to the coal fields of southwestern Siberia to quell a revolt from miners who had not been paid in two years. Late last summer he traveled hack and forth to the Russian Far East, where electrical blackouts were increasing. Bespectacled and short, he has the confident manner of an A student fully conversant in the nuances of market economies. With seasoning, he was clearly destined to be a power in a future government.

But prime minister? Now? Last Friday, to the astonishment of everyone, including Kiriyenko (”Believe me,” he told one interviewer, “this is all a bigger surprise to me than it is to you”), Yeltsin submitted his name to the Russian Parliament as Chernomyrdin’s permanent replacement. Kiriyenko quickly did his best to play the new part. He hustled out to the airport to greet French President Jacques Chirac and Chancellor Helmut Kohl of Germany, in town for a three-power summit with Yeltsin. The sight of the obese, aging Helmut Kohl next to the young, diminutive new Russian prime minister looked like “Grandfather Frost visiting with the children,” said Russian businessman Boris Berezovsky.

It would almost be funny–if it weren’t so serious. Yeltsin said Friday that “professionalism and energy are not determined by your date of birth,” and his defenders believe the moves last week do provide a chance to rev up economic reforms. They argue that Chubais, despite competence as a manager, had become a serious liability to Yeltsin The communists have always hated him, and over the past year he had engaged in a furious, debilitating war over privatization deals with powerful businessmen. And Chernomyrdin was resisting the sort of free-market capitalism that Russia hopes to put into place. Dumping them both could allow Nemtsov to get on with his reforms, with his former subordinate now in the prime minister’s office to absorb the political heat.

Still, the choice of Kiriyenko says less about him than the man who made it. By shedding Chernomyrdin and vaulting an anonymous technocrat over Nemtsov, Yeltsin had effectively cleared the way for his own candidacy in 2000. Chernomyrdin announced last week that he would run anyway. But without the prime minister’s platform it will be an uphill struggle. “This,” says political consultant Sergei Markov, “is all about Yeltsin 2000.” Last November, in fact, Yeltsin’s team asked the constitutional court to review whether he was serving his first or second term. The current Constitution limits a president to two terms. But Yeltsin’s inner circle says he was first elected under the old Soviet Constitution, and thus can run again.

The court will rule in the fall. Meanwhile, it is worth remembering that in the course of Russian history, only one czar has formally abdicated the throne; the rest either died in office or were overthrown. The exception was Nicholas II, who, one March day, stepped aside after deciding he had hung on to the job too long. The year was 1917.