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                                                                                RUSSIA, Page 48

Democratchniks


An inside look at how Yeltsin and his team of reform rookies
and veterans pursue the daunting task of radically changing
Russia

By JOHN KOHAN/MOSCOW -- With reporting by Yuri Zarakhovich/Moscow


    Few places have borne witness to so much modern history
as the fifth-floor corner conference room at No. 4 Staraya
Ploshchad, a few blocks from the Kremlin. Seated in brown
leather swivel chairs around a wooden table, the ruling
Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union made its
decisions to invade Afghanistan, reduce nuclear weapons, settle
questions of Kremlin succession. It was in this room that Mi
khail Gorbachev first discussed reform policies that would
change the world and bring the U.S.S.R. to an end. Today the
headquarters of the once powerful party belongs to Russia's new
democratic leadership: Boris Yeltsin's team.

    At 10 a.m. on most Thursdays, President (and Prime
Minister) Yeltsin takes his place at the head of the table. The
chair on his left is reserved for Vice President Alexander
Rutskoi. Gennadi Burbulis, Yeltsin's top political strategist,
and First Deputy Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar, the point man of
Russia's economic reforms, sit on the right. The old Politburo
table had to be lengthened to seat the 35 ministers in the
government and 30 state-committee chairmen. Most of Yeltsin's
staff must scramble for chairs along the walls.

    While the President glances through a green folder, the
officials responsible for each item on the day's agenda begin
briefing him from a lectern beside the table. One day the topics
might be land reform and the economic difficulties of Russia's
Far North. On another day the focus might be on more immediate
problems, like the conflict with Ukraine over the Black Sea
fleet. Yeltsin usually listens in silence, his immobile face
looking as if it were carved in stone. He has the reputation of
being a tough taskmaster, but he is also said to be fair and --
most of all -- loyal to his staff.

    This glimpse of Yeltsin, the team manager, coping with
ordinary affairs of state, is in marked contrast to the
larger-than-life image of the Russian leader that the world came
to know during last August's putsch. He displayed ruthless
daring again last December, when he delivered the political coup
de grace to Gorbachev and to the empire he ruled. But Yeltsin
has been dogged by one persistent doubt: Could he transform
himself from a defiant leader of the opposition, bent on
destroying the old order, into a competent statesman capable of
building a new one?

    There have been times when Yeltsin has come close to
squandering what he calls his "credit of trust" with the Russian
people. He has been known simply to drop out of sight for days
at a time -- leaving squabbling subordinates to govern.
Opponents have raised questions about the President's reputed
fondness for alcohol, accusing him of arriving drunk for a
meeting last month in Uzbekistan. Yeltsin denounced the charge
as "a big campaign to discredit the President, reform and
authority." Still, he possesses one quality of leadership that
sets him apart from Gorbachev: he is courageous and confident
enough of his mandate as Russia's first democratically elected
President to take the unpopular measures necessary to bring
about radical change.

    Yeltsin's relationship with Gorbachev remains tense.
Irritated by the acclaim Gorbachev received during his recent
U.S. visit, the Kremlin accused the former Soviet President of
"whipping up political tensions" by openly criticizing
government policies and vaguely hinted that "legal steps" might
have to be taken. These flare-ups of the old public feud are
more reflective of the Yeltsin team's insecurity about its image
abroad than of realities at home. Gorbachev has become
increasingly irrelevant to Moscow politics. Yeltsin clearly has
the upper hand and could make life difficult for his former
rival at the constitutional-court hearings, scheduled to begin
next month, on Communist Party crimes.

    The 61-year-old Yeltsin has felt secure enough about his
hold on power to reach across the generation gap and select
ministers and advisers for his team who are in their late 30s
and early 40s. They represent a new Russia, too young to be
burdened by memories of Stalin, old enough to have learned
during the detente era to be unafraid of the outside world.

    So far, however, the team's record has been spotty.
Gaidar's shock-therapy program has yielded mixed results: the
decision to end most price controls has brought goods back to
stores, but at a cost Russians can scarcely afford. Yeltsin
insists he does not want to serve a second five-year term and
will devote all his energy to keeping the reforms on course. But
as tensions build across Russia over unpaid wages and benefits,
the government has had to water down its tough fiscal policy and
pump more money into circulation. Gaidar expects the amount of
cash coming off government presses to increase fivefold by
August, much of it in new 1,000- and 5,000-ruble notes. To
sweeten the public mood on a visit to Siberia last month,
Yeltsin ordered that a second plane accompany him loaded with
500 million rubles in back pay.

    The Russian President shrewdly moved to mute criticism of
his reform government by expanding its ranks to include
Vladimir Shumeiko, a deputy speaker of the rebellious Russian
parliament with ties to the military-industrial complex, as a
new First Deputy Prime Minister alongside Gaidar. He also
increased the number of Deputy Prime Ministers from six to 10,
mixing strong advocates of reform with pragmatic technocrats.
Says Yeltsin: "The possibility for a compromise has been
exhausted with these appointments. There will be no more
personnel changes."

    The core members of Yeltsin's Cabinet remain half a dozen
young economists, many of whom speak English and know as much
about the free-market views of the Chicago school of economics
as the works of Karl Marx. Their common point of connection is
Gaidar, who was once director of Moscow's Institute of Economic
Policy and an economics editor of the party daily Pravda. Long
before they had any possibility of entering the government, the
group used to gather to discuss future economic models for
Russia. Then, during the coup attempt, Gaidar and friends
issued a public statement condemning the economic policies of
the putsch leaders. It caught Yeltsin's attention.

    The credit for turning their discussion club into a
functioning government goes to Burbulis, a skillful tactician
from the President's home region of Yekaterinburg, who managed
Yeltsin's election campaign last June. Widely viewed as the
President's alter ego, Burbulis gave up his post as First Deputy
Prime Minister, under mounting pressure from the opposition, to
serve full time as Yeltsin's top policy adviser in the
presidential office. He put together the initial government
lineup, including seasoned veterans of the previous Russian
government, to give more balance. But the image of a fresh,
young troop of outsiders remained unchanged. "This government
is not concerned with pensions," says Justice Minister Nikolai
Fedorov. "If they had to go tomorrow, they would make better
money working in new commercial ventures. They are here because
they believe in the reforms."

    On the evening of Nov. 6, 1991, Gaidar and company entered
the White House, the former seat of the Russian government,
only to find that the telephones were not working. Now, seven
months later, after their move to the Communist Party
headquarters at Staraya Ploshchad, Russia's reform ministers are
still not completely comfortable using the rows of ivory-color
telephones left by departing communist bureaucrats. They have
not had time to add any personal touches to the standard
furnishing of their well-appointed offices, which often come
equipped with private elevators and sleeping quarters. Empty
hooks mark the spots where the ubiquitous portraits of Vladimir
Lenin used to hang.

    The democratic reformers have been branded by opponents as
elitist "theoreticians." But, in fact, the shortages experienced
across Russia have reached into this once exclusive domain. A
hand-lettered sign in a third-floor cafeteria pointedly reminds
customers not to walk out with the aluminum cutlery, since "we
cannot buy tableware anymore."

    There is an edgy, vibrant atmosphere in the building's
once hushed hallways. The nerve center of the government is
located at the corner of the fifth floor, where chairs have been
removed from reception rooms to discourage petitioners from
settling in, but a steady stream of visitors flows up and down
the corridor.

    Yeltsin, who prefers to work with his presidential staff
in the Kremlin, is perfectly comfortable delegating day-to-day
problems to his deputies at Staraya Ploshchad, keeping in touch
by telephone. Gaidar explains how his relationship with Yeltsin
works: "There is no reason to bother the President with
technical issues like corrections in export tariffs," he says.
"But if problems arise with the other Commonwealth states or
there are questions of principle to be decided, then we report
to Yeltsin."

    Russia's government inherited hundreds of functionaries
from former Soviet ministries. Retraining them to work under
new conditions has been a daunting task. "You have to watch how
your ideas are implemented from start to finish," says Pyotr
Aven, the Minister for Foreign Economic Relations. "People want
to change, but if they don't understand what you are doing, they
often try to `improve' on your ideas." Under the circumstances,
the temptation has been great for Yeltsin's men to take the
entire burden on themselves. Alexei Golovkov, the government's
chief of staff, claims that "my workday begins on Monday and
ends on Friday."

    The reformers have made significant strides in
streamlining the bloated bureaucracy. At least 140 functionaries
used to monitor science developments for the party, union and
republican authorities; now there are just 19. Still, in trying
to respond as quickly as possible to the constant barrage of
daily crises, Yeltsin's men have inadvertently created a
bureaucratic jumble of their own, superimposing new agencies on
top of old ones. Draft laws and decrees circulate among the
government ministries, Golovkov's administration and a third,
separate state legal bureau. Explains Justice Minister Fedorov:
"We are experimenting with new institutions. Many will not
survive the test of time."

    Russia's leaders contend that they have learned one
important lesson from the events leading up to the August
putsch: Gorbachev was too dependent on information filtered to
him by his chief of staff, who proved to be one of the coup's
ringleaders. Yeltsin is much more open to different points of
view -- some would say too accessible. The result has been an
occasional glitch between the Prime Minister-President and his
government. An air of mystery still surrounds the drafting of
a presidential decree merging the police and security forces
into one monster agency, which Yeltsin hastily signed before
departing on a state visit to Italy last December. It was later
struck down by Russia's fledgling constitutional commission and
withdrawn by the President, causing the Yeltsin team
considerable embarrassment.

    Fights have already erupted between the young reformers
and the old Yeltsin loyalists, like presidential chief of staff
Yuri Petrov. At first the Old Guard was dismissive of the new
crowd. When the decree appointing Golovkov to the rival post of
government chief of staff was sent over to the Kremlin for the
President to sign, it somehow got "lost" on the way. Now
presidential staffers must be wondering what will happen to them
if Gaidar and the government team should actually succeed.
Petrov submitted his resignation, complaining about "unfounded
accusations" that he and other members of the party's old
nomenklatura were sabotaging the reforms. He also carped that
a planned reorganization of the President's office would reduce
his job to purely managerial functions. Yeltsin did not accept
the resignation and told Petrov to stay.

    The greatest challenge for Yeltsin has been winning over
a skeptical world, unwilling to believe that the Soviet Union
and the Gorbachev era have really become part of history. "At
first the West underestimated the radical nature of our
reforms," says Konstantin Kagalov sky, a government counselor
on international financial institutions. After Gaidar's team
drafted a memorandum for the International Monetary Fund,
initial doubts gave way to strong support for the Yeltsin
government's tough fiscal policies. The latest compromise raises
questions, once again, about what the West can do to bail out
Russia. But it is Russians, feeling the bite of the reforms, who
fail to understand that, as Deputy Prime Minister Valeri
Makharadze points out, "if this government is toppled, there
will be no reforms."

    There is much that remains enigmatic about Yeltsin. Not
the least intriguing question is how this provincial party
chief from the Urals underwent his remarkable conversion into
a defender of democracy and free markets. Still, the very fact
that he embodies so many of the contradictions of this historic
moment makes him a transitional leader in the best sense of the
word. Yeltsin has displayed an uncanny ability to grasp what is
really on the minds of millions of average Russians, who have
come to see him as their defender. Doubts may linger about his
latest maneuver to turn what at one time was jokingly referred
to as Gaidar's "kamikaze team" into a broader coalition of
forces. But as long as Yeltsin remains committed to radical
change and resolute in his role as father figure to his young
aides, there is hope that a new generation of Russian leaders
will come of age and find a worthy place for their country in
the modern world.