New York Times - 09/20/98
By CELESTINE BOHLEN
OSCOW -- President Boris Yeltsin made a rare appearance in public last Wednesday evening at a gala concert at Moscow's Conservatory. At least, he was there for the start of a performance by the Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and Seiji Ozawa, the Boston Symphony's conductor.
By intermission, he was gone.
As Russia's new prime minister, Yevgeny Primakov, struggled to patch together a coalition Cabinet last week, Yeltsin's involvement in the affairs of his crisis-ridden country has provided the background noise, audible enough but increasingly distant.
In an eerie sequence reminiscent of the stylized protocol of Soviet times, television news broadcasts show him in his Kremlin office, ushering a visitor to a table where the cameras silently track opening remarks. The next news item shows an identical scene, with a different guest. The images only support the growing impression that Russia's once powerful president, weakened by crisis and poor health, has been sidelined to a largely ceremonial role.
News agencies report his telephone conversations with world leaders, and his decrees on ministerial appointments. But Primakov, the artful diplomat, is clearly making the choices that will define Russia's future course, as he sifts through opposing political factions in the difficult search for consensus.
How Yeltsin will figure into that consensus is no longer relevant: His views on Russia's economic policies have been washed over by events that have left him isolated, and humbled.
For the first time in a career that capitalized on conflicts, Yeltsin backed away from a certain showdown with the parliamentary opposition over the nomination of Viktor Chernomyrdin as prime minister. In Russia's play-for-keeps politics, a compromise -- in this case, the nomination of Primakov -- carries with it the faint aroma of defeat.
"Today, very little remains of President Yeltsin's clout," wrote Natalia Konstantinova in the newspaper Independent last week. Even Boris Berezovsky, the Russian tycoon and master intriguer said to have close ties to the president's family, told British television last week that Yeltsin's time had run out.
Instead of statements of policy, or words of reassurance, the Kremlin has been the source of tales of shadowy intrigue and petty power plays in the last week.
Soon after Primakov's nomination was confirmed, two top Kremlin aides -- Andrei Kokoshin, secretary of the National Security Council, and Sergei Yastrzhembsky, Yeltsin's top press spokesman -- were summarily
dismissed, reportedly for disloyalty to the president.
Neither has been available to provide his version of events, but according to press reports, and people who know the details, their transgressions consisted of going directly to Yeltsin with unsolicited advice on how to get Parliament to confirm a new prime minister.
They reportedly argued that the situation was too volatile to contain a conflict between the president and the Parliament, and urged Yeltsin to drop Chernomyrdin for a compromise candidate. According to one version, they pushed the candidacy of Moscow's mayor, Yuri Luzhkov; according to another, they were advocating anyone but Chernomyrdin.
By picking Primakov, Yeltsin would seem to have heeded their advice.
"It is a paradox, but it is in the tradition of Russian paradoxes," said Pavel Voshchanov, a journalist who is also one of Yeltsin's former press secretaries. "When servants come to their master with unwelcome advice with which he is obliged to agree, he accepts it grudgingly, and resentfully."
Although the dismissal of the two highly respected advisers was undoubtedly ordered by Yeltsin, it was pushed by his chief of staff, Valentin Yumashev, a former journalist who became Yeltsin's top aide and chief gatekeeper after he helped write Yeltsin's book, "The Struggle for Russia."
According to press reports, Yumashev and his close ally, Yeltsin's daughter and adviser Tatyana Dyachenko, 38, had pressed the president to stand firm against the Parliament. In the end, they were overruled, but eventually took their revenge.
Kokoshin and Yastrzhembsky had acted without informing Yumashev, who then preferred to insist on their dismissal "rather than undermine his power and ability to control the president," said Vyacheslav Nikonov,
director of the Politica Fund, a Moscow research organization.
Their departure has depleted Yeltsin's already dwindling circle of close advisers. His team of young free-market reformers -- figures like Anatoly Chubais, the architect of Russia's privatization, and former Prime Minister Sergei Kiriyenko, who used to huddle under his long political shadow -- have been dispersed, unlikely to return.
His old allies from Russia's democratic movement now lack a leader, or even a credible heir.
Even Chernomyrdin, the yo-yo of Russian politics for his ability to rebound in difficulty, has been left stranded,
with little hope of another reincarnation.
Yumashev, 40, who began his career editing letters to the popular weekly Ogonyok, has neither the skills nor the authority to fill the widening gap left around Yeltsin, observers say.
"I saw him at a number of meetings during the 1996 campaign, and afterward, and I don't remember him ever saying a word," Nikonov said. His former newspaper colleagues remember Yumashev as an unimpressive,
scruffy figure whose power lies in his total loyalty to the president.
Sensing Yeltsin's weakness, the leftist opposition continues to press its advantage. An impeachment process is still wending its way to the floor of the Parliament, even though its chances of clearing the constitutional hurdles remain slight. More realistically, a series of legal changes to the constitution would reduce the powers of the presidency. These have already been drafted and are also making their way through the opposition-dominated Parliament.
In tracking the decline of Yeltsin's influence, many look to Berezovsky, seeing in him a political bellwether whose main loyalty is to power, no matter who holds it. In his interview with the BBC, Berezovsky was asked if Yeltsin should resign. "I think yes," he replied. "Of course, that depends on what the alternative would be, but I think we have an alternative better than him."
Typically, he gave no clues on whom he had in mind.
Yeltsin's health is another handicap, although no one knows for sure what ails him, other than the aftereffects of his 1996 quintuple bypass heart surgery and a history of heavy drinking. He has his good days when his step is firm and his gaze focused. But he also has his bad days, when his attention drifts and his off-the-cuff remarks
have to be interpreted by aides. Whatever the nature of his medical problem, both he and his staff seem leery of his being before the public for long periods.
And yet, in these past hectic weeks, Yeltsin has surprised his harshest detractors by proving that he can still make decisions, and even impromptu appearances. On Thursday, he paid a 15-minute visit to a Moscow grocery store, although no reporters or television crews were present to record the scene.
Several analysts still caution against ruling him out of the picture entirely, noting that as long as he still has power he will try to wield it, if for no other reason than to insure his survival in office.
Yeltsin's retirement before the end of his term in 2000, followed by early presidential elections, is a recurrent theme among Moscow's political elite. Few who know the president expect him to leave office of his own free will.
"I would give anything for Boris Nikolayevich to quit -- I would promise him anything he wants," Pyotr Sumin, the governor of the Chelyabinsk region, told the Russian magazine Profil. "We could live without him. But he will not quit." |
