July 29, 1998   
This Date's Issues: 2287 • 2288 • 

Johnson's Russia List
#2288
29 July 1998
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. Tom Adshead: Duma ratification of IMF loans.
2. C. William Kauffman: Info Sought-Stankevich, Pry.
3. Fred Weir on Russia and Afghanistan.
4. AP: Russian Orchestra Plays Dour Piece.
5. Washington Times: Ronald J. Laurenzo, China, Russia Use Each Other 
For Own Aims.
6. Jamestown Foundation Monitor: WHAT ELSE MIGHT "THE FOUR" HAVE
IN MIND? and POLITICAL COALITIONS BEGIN TO EMERGE FROM THE 
SHADOWS. 
7. New York Times: Michael Specter, My Boris.
8. Reuters: Yeltsin Curtails Break for "Urgent Business."] 

*********

#1
From: Tom Adshead <TAdshead@ufg.ru>
Subject: Duma ratification of IMF loans
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 

Dimitri Gusev's comments about the legality of the IMF loans was
interesting. When I was at the EBRD we spent a lot of time negotiating with
the Russians about sovereign guarantees. It was made absolutely clear that
only the Duma can approve sovereign loans, and their ratification would be
needed to make a loan binding on the State.

The problem for us at EBRD was that the Russian Federation had never
officially joined the EBRD, they just assumed part of the Soviet Union's
shares, so there was no Duma act on the EBRD. We always looked enviously at
the World Bank and the IMF, which Russia had joined with a specific Duma
law.

I don't remember what the details were, but the general practice is that
parliament should approve annual limits for borrowing from the IMF and the
World Bank, and the government can do what it likes within those limits. You
would need to look at the specific law. My guess is that it is possible that
the Duma could block the IMF loans, and it is certain that the loans cannot
be made binding on the sovereign by Presidential decree. There may be a
provision that short term loans have different provisions, and the
government is exploiting such a loophole.

As a former international bureaucrat, with a lot of friends who are current
and ex-IMF staffers, I think that the media and the academic community tend
to be too harsh on them. There is absolutely no way that the IMF would
encourage the Russian government to break the law, and in fact loans would
require an opinion from the Ministry of Justice that the loan was in
compliance with the law. The IMF would be relying on assurances from the
Russian government that their actions were in fact legal.

As for the policy recommendations of the IMF, I am not going to dive into a
deep and complex argument. I would just point out that they are
administering taxpayers' money, and ultimately they do the will of the US,
Japanese, and major European governments, which want to see their aid money
not being wasted. No one ever forces governments to take their money, and
unless the developed world's taxpayers, (including journalists and
academics, and myself) is prepared to pay a lot more money to support
governments which mismanage their way into financial difficulty, then I hope
that IMF money remains a scarce resource, and gets allocated appropriately.


********

#2
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998
From: cwkauff@engin.umich.edu (C. William Kauffman)
Subject: Info Sought-Stankevich, Pry

Could you please post the following queries with all responses directly to
my address? Thanks!
In May 97 it was announced that there was a new book released-Peter Pry,
"War Scare." While this book seems to be listed in new books in print it
never has seemed to have been released. Does anyone know the details?

Sergei B. Stankevich has apparently been granted political refuge status in
Poland. While it is understandable that it is not desirable to have his
coordinates publicly known, does anyone know how, possibly through a third
party, to deliver a message to him?

********

#3
From: fweir@rex.iasnet.ru
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 09:31:46 (MSK)
For Hindustan Times
From: Fred Weir in Moscow

MOSCOW (HT July 29) -- Russia has rejected as false an
American report that it has been aiding anti-Taliban guerrillas
in Afghanistan with weapons, training and logistical support.
"These assertions are absolutely untrue," the independent
Interfax agency quoted a Russian foreign ministry official as
saying. "Russia strictly adheres to its position of non-
interference in Afghanistan's internal affairs."
The report, published in the New York Times Monday and
reprinted in an English-language Moscow daily, said that Russia
is giving extensive aid to the Northern Alliance, a loose group
of forces resisting the advance of the Taliban in the northern
mountains of Afghanistan.
The Soviet Union fought a nine year war to prop up a left-
wing regime in Afghanistan in the 1980's, but withdrew in failure
almost a decade ago after losing some 13,000 troops.
"This time the Russians are after oil as well as the
protection of their borders," the New York Times article said.
"Senior U.S. officials believe (it) may be part of a larger
Russian strategy to reassert influence over Central Asia and its
vast oil reserves."
Since the breakup of the USSR in 1991 several new states
have emerged in Central Asia and the region has become highly
unstable. Taliban Islamic militants, who have occupied most of
Afghanistan, are threatening to export their brand of
fundamentalism to the neighbouring former Soviet states.
Russia has also become engaged in a high-stakes game of
international intrigue over the control of huge new oil finds in
the Caspian Sea and Central Asian region.
Had the Soviet Union continued to exist, it would have owned
most of the newly discovered petroleum reserves. But now the
treasure must be divided between at least five newly-independent
states. Several outside powers, especially the United States,
have become heavily involved in the contest.
According to the New York Times report, Russia has been
cooperating with Iran to block the Taliban advance and keep
Afghanistan's conflict alive.
"Support for the Afghan rebels serves Iranian and Russian
economic and political interests," the report said. "The Northern
Alliance acts as a buffer between the Taliban and the Afghan
border with the former Soviet republics, while continuation of

the civil war in the country prevents Western oil companies from
building pipelines across Afghan territory."
A Russian expert on Central Asia, who asked not to be named,
said that the New York Times report -- which was based entirely
on comments by U.S. officials -- could be disinformation aimed at
complicating Moscow's diplomatic position in the region.
"Of course Russia views the advance of the Taliban with deep
concern, and we do deploy troops in Tajikistan to protect the 
borders of the Commonwealth of Independent States," the analyst
said. "But we have had bitter experience in Afghanistan, and
becoming involved again in a war there is just not something that
is likely to happen."

*******

#4
Russian Orchestra Plays Dour Piece
July 28, 1998

MOSCOW (AP) - Musicians played a funeral dirge in the central square of a
northern Siberian city on Tuesday to protest five months of unpaid wages, a
news agency reported.
The orchestra members from the Yakutsk Opera Theater threatened to play the
funeral march for two hours every day until they are paid, the ITAR-Tass news
agency said.
The region's culture minister, Andrei Borisov, said 2,300 local artists
are in
similar straits. He said he would resign Friday unless the federal government
comes up with the funds.
Officials in Moscow say they have paid all they owe to regional governments
and blame the wage arrears on local mismanagement.
Russia has struggled in recent years to collect taxes and other revenues,
and
has lacked the cash to pay millions of workers on time.

******

#5
From: Ronjon67@aol.com (Ronald J. Laurenzo)
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 09:04:33 EDT
Subject: russia-china

This story ran in the Washington Times in early June, but is still current. 
Ron
--------------------------------

China, Russia Use Each Other For Own Aims
By Ronald J. Laurenzo

There was a Soviet joke during the Cold War about a computer that 
gave prognoses about the future. Asked what the situation in the USSR would be
in 2000, the computer spits out: No new developments, all remains quiet on the
Finnish-Chinese border.
In its reflection of anxieties about Chinese expansionism and 
criticism of the communist government's ineptness, it was typical of the black
political humor beloved by many Russians during the Soviet period.
Now, almost seven years after the disintegration of the Soviet 
Union, Russia and China are enjoying their best relations in decades.
Their 4,300 km long border, although still disputed in a few places, 
is peaceful; a far cry from the large military clashes of the late 1960s. The
rhetoric of Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Chinese President Jiang Zemin
is sprinkled with references to a ``strategic partnership.'' Russia has sold
China numerous advanced weapons systems, and bilateral trade rings in at
around $8 billion annually while Moscow and Beijing say they want to boost it
to $20 billion.
But many Russian political and military leaders are frightened by the
transfer of high-tech weapons to their neighbor and worry about their place 
in Asia as their power - military and economic - steadily wanes and China's

waxes.
And while Russians West of the Ural Mountains may be too busy 
nowadays to joke about getting overrun by the Chinese, the concept is not
farfetched for their countrymen in the Far East, where an expanding Chinese
population is slowly spilling into mostly empty Russian territory.
Despite their self-proclaimed partnership, analysts say Sino-Russian
relations are being driven almost purely by convenience: China's need for
high-tech weapons to modernize its military meshes with Russia's desperate
need for cash. Although Yeltsin and Zemin are fond of thumbing their noses at
the United States during their frequent summits, there is no trust between 
the two giants.

Marriage of Convenience

The Sino-Russian rapprochement comes at a time when China's last 
generation of Soviet-educated leaders are in power. Jiang, among others, was
educated in Russia.
Nonetheless, plenty of potential exists for a souring of relations,
including conflicts of interest over resources in Central Asia, the future of
the Korean peninsula, and foreign-policy concerns touching regions outside
their immediate border areas.
``This is a marriage of convenience,'' said Bob Manning, a senior 
fellow in Asian studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, adding that
describing Russo-Chinese relations as a ``strategic partnership'' amounts
to a
``degradation of language.''
U.S. policies are part of the reason behind this temporary 
alignment. China is annoyed over U.S. criticism of its human rights abuses,
Russia bristles about NATO expansion and U.S. ``interference'' in its Iraq and
Iran policies, to name a few areas. Getting together is ``a cost-free way of
sending us a message,'' said Manning.
The alignment is reminiscent of the Cold War when ``Soviet hegemony 
drove the Chinese into our arms in 1971,'' said James Lilley, U.S. ambassador
to China from 1989 to 1991.
``In this case, U.S. hegemony is not enough to drive them together 
in an embrace, but {{}openbracket}makes{{}closebracket} them cooperate on
certain matters which are in their mutual interest,'' he said.
But without the overarching threats of the Cold War, the convergence 
is probably temporary.
Analysts like John Hillen of the Council on Foreign relations are
unimpressed by Sino-Russian claims to partnership.
``Sometimes they've had a summit and the headline is 'strategic 
partnership,' and there's nothing there ... the fine print is either not there
or is meaningless.'' 

Trade That Booms

Russia and China experts agree that Moscow, by selling 
state-of-the-art weapons systems to Beijing, is playing with fire.
``This is a double-edged sword for Russia,'' said Hillen. ``They 
need the cash, and they'd like to see their influence and prestige enhanced by
people using their systems. But on the other hand, it is as likely to be used
against them ... as anyone else.''
What is Russia selling?
Everything the Chinese want. ``I'd say the Russians would sell their
grandmother at this point,'' said Lilley. ``You have some very strong
indications that it is going beyond anything that anybody has reported.''

Lilley noted that no hard evidence exists about the sale or transfer 
of ICBM technology, but the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming.
``The Russians have the technology, hardware and the personnel, and 
they're starving to death,'' he said. ``The Chinese have got $140 billion
foreign exchange; it makes sense.''
Other analysts echoed Lilley's sentiment. ``I don't know the full 
depth of it, I'm not sure anyone does,'' said Manning. ``But [look 
at] all the Internet connections between Russian and Chinese scientists, how
do you keep track of that?''
Richard Fisher, a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation's 
Asian Studies Center, has catalogued Chinese acquisitions of foreign weapons,
including covert and overt attempts to attain SS-18 technology. Known in NATO
parlance as the ``Satan,'' the SS-18 ICBM would help the Chinese develop 
their own MIRVs (multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles), improve
their
liquid-fuel engines and warhead designs, increase their ICBMs' accuracy, and
allow them to deploy decoy warheads on their missiles.
The threat of a leak of SS-18 technology from Russia or Ukraine is 
very real, said Fisher, despite U.S. protests to Moscow and Kiev. It may have
already taken place.
Also in the arena of unknown sales is a MAZ transporter erector 
launcher, an all-terrain ICBM-toting tractor which would greatly enhance the
mobility and survivability of Chinese ICBMs; the high-precision, nuclear-
capable Raduga
[rainbow] cruise missile; Zvezda [star] supersonic air-to-surface missiles;
airborne infantry combat vehicles; SA-15 Tor [gauntlet] surface-to-air
missiles; and Smerch [tornado]multiple-launch rocket artillery.
The list of weapons already acquired by China is impressive.
China has bought more than 100 S-300 surface-to-air missiles, 
regarded as one of the most dangerous antiaircraft systems in the world, and
50 Su-27 `Flanker'' multirole, air-superiority fighters. Beijing acquired the
license to
build Su-27s for between $1.5 billion and $2.2 billion and plans to build 200
on its own. Russia and Israel are reportedly helping Beijing develop its own
J-10 fighter and have also cooperated to sell China AWACS aircraft.
China has also acquired: Il-76M transport planes, vital for 
projecting power, various air-to-air missiles - some of which completely
outclass the Taiwanese air force's arsenal - and transport helicopters.
Alarming for Beijing's neighbors around the South China Sea are the 
sales of two Kilo class diesel-electric submarines, new versions of which are
almost as quiet as U.S. Los Angeles-class attack subs; Sovremenniy-class
missile destroyers and advanced ship-based missiles.
This high-tech fire sale is motivated by desperation and greed - not 
an anti-western desire to arm the Chinese to the teeth. ``It's completely
mercenary, there's no larger strategy involved,'' said Manning.
And considering the level of corruption in Russia's government and
industries, high-ranking officials may not even be aware of some of the
transactions. 
``In the [Russian] political realm, there appears to be no longterm
thinking

whatsoever,'' said Fisher. ``Their main concern is how to feed the engineers
next month. The threat that could develop in five to 10 years is a mirage to
them.''
Sherman Garnett, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment, said the 
Russians also are guided by a kind of ``fuzzy official rhetoric'' that they
have a
substantial technical lead that the Chinese won't be able to make up.
Although rumblings of dissent can be heard within Russia's political 
and military elite, the sales are likely to continue until either the economy
picks up or a consensus is reached that national security is in peril.
For China, on the other hand, Russia has opened up like a divine 
gift.
``They see a land of opportunities,'' said Fisher, ``a country in 
chaos that can be exploited.''
Exploitation includes buying influence from Russian politicians - 
call it lobbying, or bribery - who help them get the technology they want,
Fisher said.
The Russian sales are key to People's Liberation Army plans to 
reduce the size of their military and bridge the technical gap that separates
them from the West - especially the United States.
``It's an opportunity that comes along once in a century'' that will 
let them '`leapfrog a generation in weapons development,'' said Lilley.
Desert Storm - in which a small, high-tech U.S.-led force devastated 
a much larger Iraqi foe - was an epiphany for Chinese military planners, who
have scrutinized the 1991 war.
PLA leaders have moved away from a doctrine reliant on mass force to 
one of finding and destroying an enemy's weaknesses, as the military
philosopher
Sun-Tzu advised in the fifth century. Critical pieces of the U.S. arsenal 
that China might try to exploit are satellites, aircraft carriers and stealth
aircraft.
The Chinese are using ``acquisitions from Russia'' to develop their 
own ways to ``deal with the American projection of power,'' said Lilley.
In 1985, the Chinese changed their northern-oriented military 
doctrine to an ``aggressive defense'' of their south and east seas, where
their most powerful opponent is the United States. The relaxed situation on 
the Sino-Russian border is a product of that change of strategic course.
``What the Chinese leadership wants now, vis-{{}'a}-vis Russia, is to 
secure a strategic rear in a possible future confrontation in the southern,
southeastern tier,'' said Ariel Cohen, a senior policy analyst at the 
Heritage Foundation.
The prospect of a military clash over the relatively minuscule - 
several thousand acres - of still-disputed territory, referred to by China as
``the lost territories,'' is slight. In 1969, fighting raged along the
border until
the Soviets unleashed a large-scale tank attack to knock back a Chinese
incursion.
``The territorial question is dormant for now, I do not think that 
in the next five years you will see China trying to revive this issue,'' Cohen
said.

Demographics and Economics

But while the armies relax, private citizens are coming into contact 
more than ever as a result of trade and Chinese migration - a growing source
of discomfort for Russians who live near the borders.

Chinese hunters cross the border illegally in pursuit of plants and 
animals that can fetch a handsome price at home or on other Asian markets.
Russian border guards have even been killed in firefights with gangs of armed
frog poachers.
The feeling of geographic isolation is so great that residents of
Vladivostok, Russia's wind-swept Far Eastern capital on the Sea of Japan,
refer to the western region of the country as ``Russia.'' High transportation
costs have shattered trade between western Russia and the Maritime Territory,
which now imports most of its goods from Asia. China is a huge source of 
cheap consumer goods.
Simple demographics paint a bleak picture for Moscow.
Only about 8 million Russian citizens inhabit the vast territory 
from Lake Baikal to the ocean. The strategic cities of Khabarovsk and
Vladivostok, the base of Russia's Pacific fleet, are eight time zones away
from Moscow, literally on the other side of the world.
Cohen estimates that around half a million Chinese settle in Russian
territory annually: ``In 10 years it could be a serious demographic issue.''
As more Chinese move in, they are taking greater control of local 
economies.
``These [Chinese] communities are starting to muscle in on trading
activity,
and this is causing a growing resentment amongst political leaders in these
regions,'' said Fisher.
Russian governors in Siberia and the Far East, with firm popular 
support, already oppose Moscow's chumminess with Beijing. ``That's not a
regional problem, that's a bilateral problem,'' said Manning.
``Even people who aren't racists'' get concerned about border 
controls, jobs, demographic imbalances and other issues, said Garnett,
comparing the situation to American concerns over Mexican immigration in the
Southwest.
Although the weapons sales appear in more headlines, China's growing
economic and political power probably poses more danger to Russia than its
military potential.
``The real challenge for Russia is to maintain the simple political 
viability of governments in these far regions so they do not ... come 
increasingly under the sway of Chinese economic power,'' Fisher said.
The problem is not that the Chinese are actually aggressive, said 
Garnett, but that ``China seems like a much more dynamic and influential power
in the near term.''
If Russia is to counter that rising power, it will have to stimulate 
its moribund economy in the Far East, a formidable task that will require 
improved relations with Japan and Korea.
Japan and Korea are the most likely source for the massive capital 
needed to develop Russia's Far East, rich in resources but devoid of
infrastructure.
Better relations with Japan and Korea would also help counter China's growing
political weight in the neighborhood.
``The prospect of modernizing the Russian Far East, developing 
natural resources, energy and manufacturing requires money that is not going
to come from Moscow. It will come from Japan or Korea or the United States and
require labor from China or Korea ... For the Russian Far East to develop and
flourish, it will have to become more Asian in a cultural sense,'' Garnett

said.
But the prospects for a Russian revival of its Far East any time 
soon are not good because they depend on domestic political and economic
reforms that have been stunted since the collapse of communism. Despite
recent, small signs of progress, relations with Japan - Russia's best hope to
balance China and gain billions of dollars in investments - remain captive to
territorial issues.

Contact and Mob Rule
Closer contacts have brought another element of the Russian and 
Chinese societies together. Chinese organized crime groups, which expanded
into 
Russia with the businessmen and farmers, have made inroads into the Russian
mafia. Their influence reportedly extends to crime bosses and government
officials in Moscow.
A porous border that extends from China to Poland has provided an
underground highway between Asia and Europe for the smuggling of aliens - a
favorite of Chinese crime groups - drugs, counterfeit goods and weapons.
Cohen says the primacy of barter in lieu of cash payments in Far 
Eastern trade has not hurt crime groups, noting ``evidence of Chinese
organized crime [groups]swapping drugs, including heroin from the Golden
Triangle, for Russian [small arms].''
And they're not relying on junks or a-frames to get their goods around.
``You have Russian military aviation, cargo planes, being leased for 
all kinds of shady transactions all over the region'' including Vietnam,
Laos and
Burma, Cohen says. Trade goes worldwide because ``Russian military-transport
aviation has a very long reach.''

*********

#6
Jamestown Foundation Monitor
29 July 1998

WHAT ELSE MIGHT "THE FOUR" HAVE IN MIND? The open letter to the Russian
government to rethink its policy toward Chechnya, issued this week by four
leading Russian politicians, is attracting wide attention in the Russian
media. Many newspapers speculate that the "alliance of the four" represents
the germ of a new political bloc.

The four signatories were former premier Viktor Chernomyrdin, Tatarstan's
President Mintimer Shaimiev, Krasnoyarsk Governor Aleksandr Lebed and CIS
Executive Secretary Boris Berezovsky. All four have been actively involved
in policymaking toward Chechnya in the past. This week, they called on the
government to formulate and implement a clear policy toward Chechnya and the
North Caucasus as a whole. They did not explain what this policy should be,
other than to warn that "there can be no return to the mid-1990s [when
Russia invaded Chechnya]." But, the newspaper Nezavisimaya gazeta suggests,
the four are "unlikely to restrict themselves to writing letters." Their
initiative could, the paper says, engender a new political bloc aimed at the
Russian presidential elections in the year 2000. (Nezavisimaya gazeta, July
28) Nezavisimaya is not the only paper to raise this possibility. That it is
financed by Berezovsky, however, gives its views special weight.

That the "letter of the four" might indeed develop into a more permanent
coalition seems all the more likely in view of the immediate effort to
downplay its significance by Saratov Governor Dmitri Ayatskov. Ayatskov, who
never passes up an opportunity for a sound-bite, told journalists yesterday

it would be "premature" to read an emerging political alliance into the
letter. "You can't mate a hedgehog, a snake, a rhinoceros and a parrot," he
declared. (RTR, July 28) The fact is--as Ayatskov knows very well--that
everything in Russian politics now has to be viewed against the backdrop of
both the 1999 parliamentary and the 2000 presidential elections. Ayatskov
knows this since he is himself a member of another emerging and potentially
competing alliance.

POLITICAL COALITIONS BEGIN TO EMERGE FROM THE SHADOWS. The potential
importance of a coalition between Chernomyrdin and Lebed, backed with
Berezovsky's money, can hardly be overestimated. Conventional wisdom has it
that the next president of the Russian Federation will be whoever defeats
Gennady Zyuganov, leader of the left-wing Popular Patriotic Union, in the
second round of the 2000 elections. In recent weeks, there have been signs
that Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov might be that person, especially as the
outlines of a center-left alliance between Luzhkov, Ayatskov and General
Andrei Nikolaev's "Union of People's Power and Labor" have started to
emerge. Other potential members are Federation Council Speaker Yegor Stroev,
Svyatoslav Fedorov's Party of Workers' Self-Management, Aleksandr Rutskoi's
"Derzhava" Movement, Dmitri Rogozin's Congress of Russian Communities,
Sergei Glazyev's Russian Democratic Party, Sergei Baburin's Russian National
Alliance, Martin Shakkum's Social National Party and Yuri Petrov's Union of
Realists. (Izvestia, July 25)

The self-aggrandizing Ayatskov likely sees himself as prime minister to
Luzhkov's president. Whether the "letter of the four" will yield a workable
coalition is likely to depend--among other factors-- on whether Chernomyrdin
would be willing to lay aside his professed presidential ambitions to play
prime minister to the far more charismatic Lebed.

********

#7
New York Times magazine
July 26, 1998
[for personal use only]
My Boris
To American eyes, Russia's volatile President seems increasingly unmoored from
reality. A Times correspondent who spent four years in Moscow offers his take
on the warring impulses behind Yeltsin's bluster.
By Michael Specter
Michael Specter is a senior correspondent for The Times based in Rome.
His last article for the magazine was about Siberia.

As one of the few remaining
people with frequent access to the increasingly volcanic President of Russia,
Valentin Yumashev knows when to step lightly. So it was with careful planning
-- and a slightly queasy stomach -- that the Kremlin chief of staff decided to
present an important document to Boris Yeltsin one day this spring.

It happened to be a thick budget plan, chock-full of graphs, income
statistics and other data that would have sent Bill Clinton, Al Gore and the
rest of the C-Span crowd into spasms of geeky delight. But Boris Yeltsin is
not that kind of guy. He sees himself as a man of history. Budgets bore him.
So do spreadsheets, meetings and three-point plans. Yumashev knew all that,
and so he wasn't terribly surprised the next day when he saw the packet
sitting, unread, in Yeltsin's outbox. He was, however, taken aback when he

found out why.

"Silver paper clips," Yumashev later muttered to a friend in Moscow's
financial community." The President won't read any document unless it is held
together with a gold paper clip. I used silver." 

As Russia's economy once again veers desperately toward the precipice, you
have to wonder what on earth happened to this man. How did the father of
Russian democracy become an autocrat who refuses even to glance at essential
documents unless they are fastened together with the right color metal? The
parallels to capricious czars and senile Soviets are too obvious to ignore.
Yeltsin has dismissed more than 30 senior officials in the past five years;
often, he fires them, denounces them, hires them back into better jobs and
then fires them again (with even greater gusto). The 67-year-old President has
been largely absent -- addled repeatedly by mysterious respiratory infections
-- while a small group of predatory capitalists have done their best to
plunder his nation. Yet in March, just days before his country's economy
entered its most recent crisis, Yeltsin found time to assure an Internet chat
group that he was "taking care" of his thick white hair.

Boris Yeltsin has always thrived on his ability to confound his enemies and
keep his allies off balance. But lately his behavior comes across simply as
bizarre. As a result, the man who destroyed Communism in Russia, helped
vanquish the Soviet Union and pushed the century's great totalitarian monolith
toward the free market has become a joke, abroad and at home. Recently on the
Russian television satire "Kukly" -- which is a cross between "60 Minutes" and
"Saturday Night Live" -- he was depicted as a senile and incontinent hospital
patient, begging the nurses to give him a second chance to remain on the ward.

Still, he remains a hard man to ignore. Yeltsin rules through contradiction,
confusion, subversion. As a leader, he has two great desires, and you can
watch them at war with each other nearly every day. First, he wants to bring
Russia into the league of Western nations, to be taken seriously, to be
embraced by the organizations -- NATO, the European Union, the G7 (which he
alone refers to as the Big 8) -- that were largely invented to keep his
country out. So his speeches are laden with cliches about his love of
democracy and his lack of patience for fools who don't love it too. Yeltsin's
second desire often cancels out the first. Clinging to the notion of Russia as
a great power, he wants somehow to rescue his nation from its well-deserved
place in the third world and to restore its imperial greatness. But that
requires him to pander to a different crowd completely: the many powerful
nationalists at home. Like the Soviet leaders he so defiantly replaced, Boris
Yeltsin believes in carrying a very big stick.

Most world leaders are besieged by contradictions. But as Russia flirts yet
again with social chaos and economic disaster, it is reasonable to ask some
pointed questions about the country's first freely elected President. Is the
man who led Russia away from Communism now dragging it toward the abyss? Has
Boris Yeltsin become so reckless that he is destined to bankrupt the country

he saved? Perhaps most important of all, does he now represent any cause but
his own?

I arrived in the
Moscow bureau of The Times in 1994, not long after Yeltsin resolved an impasse
with the petulant and reactionary Russian Parliament by pounding it for days
with machine-gun and mortar fire -- and then locking up the leaders of the
revolt and trying to close the opposition press. He then forced through a
Constitution that allocated real power almost solely to himself. I also lived
in Russia while the President waged a useless war in Chechnya that killed tens
of thousands of his own citizens, savaged a beautiful region, humiliated his
once-great army and resolved nothing. Having witnessed all that -- and then
watched in 1996 as he won re-election through lies, payoffs and the sheer luck
of running against a doctrinaire Communist who was tone deaf to the changing
mood of the Russian people -- I may not be the most objective judge of Boris
Yeltsin.

To me he will always be a selfish, arrogant bully who believes the only good
advice is advice he gives. I once watched him lecture the bosses at a metal
plant in southern Russia -- in front of about 1,000 of their employees. Times
were tough, so he told them to raise wages and provide better pensions. And to
do it today. His economic advisers cowered hopelessly in the background. It
hardly mattered that this cheap promise -- and many others like it -- would
help drive Russia into its current financial black hole. Nor did it matter to
Yeltsin that every one of his advisers told him that. 

He did not always seem so arrogant. An earlier generation of correspondents
compared Yeltsin favorably with the repugnant and brutal leaders of the Soviet
Union. He was different, of course, and better. People often stood in awe of
his genuine courage. Many will always remember Boris Yeltsin as the man who
climbed to the top of a tank in 1991 -- truly one of the most powerful
political gestures of recent times -- to banish the Communist past with a wave
of his meaty arms.

My colleagues and I, however, tend to remember the man who appeared on TV one
grim morning in December 1994 to announce that his Air Force had stopped
bombing the citizens of Grozny for good -- the first of many times he lied
openly to the world about wanting to end the carnage. Later that day, I saw
the results when a squadron of unchallenged Su-27 bombers destroyed Chechnya's
biggest orphanage. I remember the leader who took one quick trip to Chechnya
during a 21-month war. He spent three hours on a highly protected air base and
told the dazed, starved and defeated soldiers there that they "had won the
war" that they knew they had lost. Then he got on his plane and flew back to
Moscow. 

Boris Yeltsin
is so obsessed with being one of the Western leaders it's pathetic," said
Aleksandr Prokhanov, the philosopher of the extreme anti-Western old guard.
"But you know what? He acts like a Soviet. He always has. He knows what people
want to hear, but he couldn't care less about democracy."

Americans can't accept that simple fact. We love to see Yeltsin as the savior
of a savage land. Hey, if he's a little rough around the edges -- as a senior

White House official once suggested to me -- then George Washington was, too.
American leaders are so invested in believing in the good Boris that they are
willing to say anything to support him, as long as Yeltsin continues to
believe in the stock market and to refer to Clinton as my friend Bill."

That is why Clinton could put on his most earnest expression in 1996, appear
at a news conference in Moscow and say with a straight face that the brutal
slaughter in Chechnya was similar to "a civil war in our own country" and that
Yeltsin's merciless assault on the Chechen people reminded him of Abraham
Lincoln's efforts to keep the United States from falling apart in the 19th
century. If a Soviet leader had acted with such clear aggression, any American
President would have led an international call for sanctions.

But Boris Yeltsin is our guy. And people like Clinton are so relieved about
it that they let him get away with almost anything. And he clearly knows that.
Recently Yeltsin met with Michel Camdessus, the managing director of the
International Monetary Fund, which is trying to help Russia cure itself of its
fiscal ills. The I.M.F. is seen -- with some justification -- as a Western
control agency, and nobody in Russia gets much pleasure in remembering that
their country is weak and the West is not. Yeltsin's aides and those of
Camdessus dreaded what might have come from this encounter: the rectitude of
the I.M.F. chief in direct conflict with the raging ego of a Russian ruler who
needs the support of the West. The possibility for confrontation was enormous.

As usual, Yeltsin was crafty and surprising. He started off by admitting his
sins: Russia hadn't always tightened the belt when it should have, Yeltsin
said. And he was now going to take an interest in the details, not just the
landscape. Then he grew conspiratorial. "They even say I'm too sick to run
this country," one of the meeting's participants recalls a grinning Yeltsin
telling an astonished Camdessus. "Maybe it's not such a bad idea if people
think I am too sick to do my job sometimes. Maybe it keeps people guessing."

In the end, that's what Boris Yeltsin -- so desperate to retain power --
cares about more than anything: keeping people guessing. Like many successful
politicians, he is a human mood ring, a man whose ideology changes with the
seasons, with the country he is visiting, with the phases of the moon. Such
tactics work in Russia, which has never really decided whether it belongs in
Europe or Asia. The debate has lasted for more than 200 years -- Dostoyevsky
railed against what he considered the false pull toward the West -- and nobody
milks that ambivalence like Yeltsin. Who else could sell nuclear technology to
Iran, seek to moderate world opinion about Serbian war criminals and lecture
his own Parliament about the need for currency reforms and open markets?

Yeltsin
resembles no one more than Nikita Khrushchev, who also wanted to make Russia
more acceptable to the West -- and didn't mind resorting to some earthy
theatrics to get the job done. In late March -- acting after a few words
placed in his ear by his daughter Tanya, who has become singularly powerful

within the cloistered walls of the Kremlin -- Yeltsin decided to dismiss his
Government. He did it mostly so he could get rid of its slavishly loyal
leader, Viktor Chernomyrdin, who after five years of dedicated service was
starting to look a bit too much like a leader to suit the first freely elected
President of Russia. So one morning, Yeltsin went on TV and told an astonished
nation that his Prime Minister would have to go.

At first, he tried to appoint himself as acting Prime Minister. When his
lawyers sheepishly told him that such an action was against the law that
Yeltsin himself had created, he turned reluctantly to an untested young reform
politician who had only spoken with the President once and who heard about his
new job while eating breakfast that morning. By creating a political crisis,
Yeltsin was back where he loves to be: unquestionably and single-handedly in
charge of his country.
"It now seems pretty clear that the most primitive and vulgar explanation for
all that was true," says Tanya Malkina, a well-known political journalist in
Moscow who has followed Yeltsin's career through nearly every one of its many
tortuous turnings. "Boris Yeltsin cannot stand for anyone to share power or
even think about sharing power. He must have all the limelight."

Even so, Yeltsin's most recent explosion with Chernomyrdin may turn out to
have made more sense than most people think. Sure, firing Chernomydin was the
work of a disloyal, selfish egomaniac. Commentators were shocked when Yeltsin
essentially offered to buy off Parliament with better cars and apartments if
they would confirm Sergei Kiryenko, his new Prime Minister. Yeltsin offered to
"solve the outstanding problems" of parliamentary officials who needed nice
summer places. They know what it's all about," Yeltsin said just before
Kiriyenko was confirmed. Do what I want, and I'll give you a nice big car and
a pretty little dacha.

So Yeltsin is corrupt, venal and has little regard for Robert's Rules of
Order. That's no surprise. But by getting rid of his stolid old retainer,
Boris Yeltsin actually made the most decisive step he has ever taken toward
the road of reform. 

Nothing got done when Viktor Chernomyrdin ran the Government. He had a
magical ability to seek consensus in a Parliament whose most famous members
have been known to pull one another's hair or fling orange juice in one
another's faces during debate. He made the Communists feel comfortable, and he
made the reformers feel as if he was at least on their side. The result was an
endless stalemate. The vast machine of Soviet industry lumbered automatically
on -- like a phantom limb. Factories produced nothing worth buying, yet they
never closed. Chernomyrdin was too much a creature of the past to pull out the
padlocks and tell his industrialist friends that the era of tanks and tractors
was over.

For all its boorishness, then, Yeltsin's decision was ultimately good for his
country. And yet is that why he fired Chernomyrdin? Or was it because -- as
Kremlin insiders whispered -- he was upset as he watched him at a meeting with
Vice President Gore? "He looked like he was enjoying it," says one former

Yeltsin aide about Chernomyrdin's brief moment in the sun." And that was
really the end of him."

At a tense point during the 1996 Presidential campaign -- the election in
which Boris Yeltsin, half dead and often incoherent, finally put a stake
through the heart of Russian Communism -- I was summoned to the office of Igor
Malashenko, Yeltsin's chief public-relations adviser. Malashenko began to
describe his boss as a man who was desperately trying to figure out what to do
with his life -- and with Russia. "He is from the old world," Malashenko said.
"He has many friends who want to go back to the old ways. And sometimes even
he doesn't know what side he is on. It is hard to know whether democracy
matters to him sometimes. The battle that is going on now for Russia is really
a battle for one man. And it is never clear how it will all come out." 

At the time, I thought Malashenko was breathing a little too hard to be
believed. But he turned out to be right. As I would later learn, the
President's friend -- the brutish ex-bodyguard Aleksandr Korzhakov -- was
trying hard to get him to call off future elections. "I think he will have the
elections," Malashenko said with more hope than certainty, "because he wants
to be the man who changed Russia for good."
That, in the end, may be all that motivates Boris Yeltsin now. Yeltsin
appointed Kiriyenko because he wants to rule unchallenged and because he wants
to move Russia toward markets and the West. After all, if he doesn't succeed,
how will history remember him? Getting rid of Communism is not a bad line on a
resume. Turning your country over to a bunch of greedy thugs, however, is.

There is
supposed to be an election in the year 2000 -- an election without Boris
Yeltsin. It will be the President's ultimate test. If he manufactures some
reason to run again (nobody else is ready; he alone can lead Russia through
these troubling times), he will have thrown away his last weak claim to
greatness. He will become the man who took Russia from Communism to autocracy.
If Boris Yeltsin becomes the first Russian leader to walk away from the
Kremlin without a push or a gun at his head, it will say a lot about what kind
of country he wants to see emerge in the 21st century.

A few months ago, he announced that he would not run for a third term. But he
has said that before only to dance back into the ring. Don't hold your breath
this time, either. Giving up power has never been one of Boris Yeltsin's
strong suits. And every time some prominent official notes that his current
term will have to be his last, a Kremlin spokesman races out of his office to
remind people that the Constitutional Court -- the judicial arm of Boris
Yeltsin -- has not decided that question yet. Presumably it will decide when
he does.

Until then, the President will have his hands full. He just used his
political wiles, the desperation of the people and the eternal Western fear of
what Russia might become without him to wrangle another $17 billion from the
I.M.F. But Russia doesn't just need a loan -- it needs a leader with the will
to carry out the toughest possible reforms. Before too long, Yeltsin will be

forced back in the dock, begging for salvation. That will make the folks at
home even more bitter about their status in the world. So he will tell them
not to worry, that he can handle the weak leaders in the West and that
eventually, Russia will prevail.

I never hung out with Boris Yeltsin. By the time I got to Moscow, Western
reporters had gone from being good props in his campaign for exposure to
political poison. But I once watched him bound out of his black Zil and wade
into an angry Moscow crowd. "Boris Nikolayevich, we live worse than we did
under Brezhnev!" they screamed. It was the most savage possible insult. "It's
a Western plot," an old woman screamed. "They are driving us to ruin."

Yeltsin took it all in. His eyes said, I feel your pain. Then he responded
with a quick, vulgar joke. I must admit I hardly caught a word he said -- and
no one would repeat it. But when I sidled up to the old lady who attacked him
and asked what she thought of the President now, she broke into a smile as big
as Siberia. "He's a muzhik," she said, using a term that describes a tough
peasant, a man of the people. "I don't think you have those where you're
from."

*******

#8
Yeltsin Curtails Break for "Urgent Business" 
July 29, 1998

MOSCOW -- (Reuters) President Boris Yeltsin cut short a holiday in
northwest Russia on Wednesday to fly back to Moscow, and Itar-Tass news
agency quoted him citing "urgent business" linked to the country's severe
economic crisis. 
Russia was going through a transition period "on the eve of the autumn
political season," Tass quoted Yeltsin as saying before he left the
lakeland resort of Shuiskaya Chupa in the Karelia region. 
Yeltsin recently said he expected the autumn to be "politically rather
difficult" owing to tough austerity measures demanded by the International
Monetary Fund and other creditors in return for a big loan package to
stabilize the economy. 
On Wednesday the Kremlin confirmed that Yeltsin would return to Moscow a
few days earlier than planned, but gave no reason. 
"The president decided to return," the presidential press service said. 
Interfax news agency said bad weather had contributed to Yeltsin's
decision. Daily temperatures in Shuiskaya Chupa averaged just 15-16 degrees
Celsius (59-61 Fahrenheit), it said. 
Frequent rain has hindered the Kremlin leader's plans to go fishing and
he has spent much of his time indoors working on documents and monitoring
his government's efforts in Moscow to fight the economic crisis. 
Yeltsin, 67, had been due to visit the Arctic city of Murmansk and also
possibly the ancient town of Novgorod next week, both within striking
distance of Shuiskaya Chupa. 
Tass said Yeltsin would spend several days at his Gorky-9 residence
outside Moscow and would then resume his holiday, but that the new venue
had not yet been decided. 
The Kremlin has said Yeltsin will not return to work in Moscow until the
latter part of August when he is scheduled to play host to various foreign
leaders in the Russian capital. 
Yeltsin began his holiday on July 18, just after his government clinched
the loan deal with the IMF. 
Despite the loans, Russia's jittery financial markets have resumed their
descent in recent days amid fears about the government's ability to improve
tax collection and avert serious labor unrest over chronic wage delays.

*******