Yeltsin Gives Critical VP Tough Agriculture Post : Russia: President says--with a grin--he reached ‘understanding’ with Rutskoi. Farm task is seen as doomed to failure.

Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin on Thursday attempted to silence Alexander V. Rutskoi, his increasingly critical vice president, by putting him in charge of agriculture, long the most troubled sector of the Russian economy.

Yeltsin, under attack from both conservatives and radicals over his economic reforms, said he has ordered Rutskoi to oversee the establishment of private farming as Russia ends more than six decades of collective agriculture.

Answering critical questions from members of the Supreme Soviet, the Russian legislature, Yeltsin said he reached “a common understanding” with Rutskoi in a two-hour, closed-door talk on Wednesday evening, after Rutskoi denounced Yeltsin’s reform program as “economic genocide” against the country.

“To occupy his time to the fullest extent, (Rutskoi) has been entrusted with the task of overseeing agricultural reform in Russia,” Yeltsin said, a grin creeping across his face as lawmakers guffawed. “He can report to the president twice monthly and to Parliament monthly.”

The country’s previous Soviet leaders often put their Communist Party rivals in charge of agriculture, a task doomed to failure--former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s favorable experience being the notable exception--and the legislators immediately recognized the irony of Rutskoi’s new assignment.

Rutskoi, who was becoming the rallying point for those Yeltsin critics who fear he is pursuing too radical a program of reform too fast, has declared that he “supports the actions taken by the president, the Supreme Soviet and the government to promote reform,” Yeltsin said.

But Yeltsin himself had been the deputies’ target as he answered questions after reporting on his recent travels to Britain, Canada, France, the United States and the United Nations. Deputy Vladimir Zakharov, suggesting that the president has serious problems at home to attend to, told Yeltsin bluntly, “The situation in the countryside can be correctly described as catastrophic.”

With spring planting only six weeks away and preparations far from complete, Yeltsin acknowledged: “We are faced with definite problems”--and announced he is putting Rutskoi in charge.

But Yeltsin indicated that he will ease some of the harshest aspects of the broader economic reforms, which ended state subsidies for most consumer goods, including food, and which are soon likely to bring massive unemployment as Russian enterprises are forced to put efficiency and profits first.

“Life changes constantly,” Yeltsin said. “Changes are natural and inevitable. It has become clear that we need a series of urgent measures to stimulate our economic policy. Measures will be discussed to introduce the necessary changes.”

Gennady E. Burbulis, Russia’s state secretary and first deputy prime minister, said later after a Cabinet meeting that Yeltsin will soon sign decrees to protect those below the poverty line, to adjust the country’s price, tax and credit policies and to speed agricultural reform.

But like Yeltsin, he provided no details of the policy changes; he, too, joined in the humiliation of Rutskoi, whose popularity as an Afghan war hero contributed to Yeltsin’s election victory last June.

“The wish of Rutskoi to take part in our work may now find an outstanding application,” Burbulis said, calling Yeltsin’s decision to assign Rutskoi, an air force general, to agriculture “normal and natural.”

“We hope and expect that private farmers will forge ahead,” Burbulis said, adding that “the vice president has a taste for (farming), an interest in it and some experience.”

Rutskoi told the Interfax news agency that he had never criticized Yeltsin personally and was directing his anger at “other officials” in the Yeltsin government from which he has been increasingly excluded. In his most recent interview, a broadside against the economic reforms, Rutskoi told the influential newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta that they had created “a state of lawlessness, a dictatorship of new businessmen and sometimes the dictatorship of the street.”

Only somewhat chastened, Rutskoi told Interfax that he did, indeed, differ with Yeltsin on some points. He suggested there would be changes in agricultural policy. “I have a couple ideas of my own as to how the reforms should be seen through,” the vice president told Interfax.

Asked if Rutskoi were up to a task that has defeated virtually everyone, Yeltsin told journalists later: “He has enough stamina to work 48 hours a day. Let him travel around Russia to see if the reform is being sabotaged. The Cabinet and I will help him, but we’ll be demanding.”

Yeltsin was putting his own house in order politically before proceeding to a crucial meeting today of the leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States, which is made up of Russia and 10 of the 11 other former Soviet republics.

There are deep fissures appearing in the 2-month-old organization, largely over Russia’s leadership of it, efforts to preserve a common market among its members and the future of the massive Soviet armed forces that it inherited.

Yeltsin told journalists that he will attempt to find new agreements and compromises to preserve a working unity within the Commonwealth while its members develop their political independence. But he said the meeting will “not be easy,” and he refused to predict its outcome in view of Russia’s increasingly difficult relationship with Ukraine.