Word: yeltsin
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...another perils-of-Boris power struggle, this time between President Yeltsin and conservative Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin over the makeup of the new Cabinet, Chernomyrdin effectively won. Or at least Yeltsin beat a tactical retreat. The government's famous young reform ministers were mostly dumped or demoted. In their place arrived a group of Soviet-era leftovers, production managers from the old military-industrial complex who favor salary increases and handouts to money-losing state industries. "The period of market romanticism has ended for us," Chernomyrdin crowed. "We must make our people's life easier...
...ominously familiar. Russia embraces reform more in theory than in practice. The nation needs a leader with the skills for the inglorious task of building institutions brick by brick, compromise by compromise. But the latest accumulation of electoral miscalculations and slide to the right makes people wonder whether Yeltsin is that...
Though the West can hardly expect to call the shots for Russia's policies, the Cabinet shake-up was still an embarrassing turn of events for Clinton. During his days in Moscow, the U.S. President had praised Yeltsin for his dedication to reform. Last week a pensive Clinton predicted that Yeltsin would survive. "He's a very tough guy," Clinton said. "He's on the right side of history...
...hope so, but Yeltsin is increasingly lonely on that side. In spite of Yeltsin's pleas, Deputy Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar, the engineer of the reform train, said he would not remain in a government that was irresponsible enough to spend $500 million it does not have on a new - Parliament Building and to dilute its floundering ruble by bringing Belarus into a currency union with Russia. Gaidar finally walked out, explaining, "I cannot serve in the government and at the same time be in opposition to it." Yeltsin, Gaidar told TIME, "is trying to protect the reform process...
...fact, Yeltsin and Chernomyrdin, the top men in Russian politics, are beginning to resemble the eagle on the state seal: it has two heads facing in opposite directions. The Prime Minister, a burly former head of the Soviet gas industry who used to wear baggy gray suits, is now garbed in American-style blue suits, white shirts and photogenic red ties. He has assumed the role of spokesman for Russians who protested reform with their antigovernment votes in December, and he is apparently positioning himself for a run in the 1996 presidential election. He and Yeltsin warred repeatedly last week...