National Agenda : The Battle for Boris’ Mind

‘Everybody fights to be the first to get to him, the first to whisper the whole truth into his ear like a wise serpent, the first to form the czar’s concepts of reality.’--VERA KUZNETSOVA, reporter for Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper

Things appeared to be all set. After two years of arguing out amendments and honing clauses, the Russian constitutional commission was ready this month to present its finished product--the nation’s lofty new founding law.

And then, to members’ horror, word came that a group of Russian politicians headed by the mayor of St. Petersburg were preparing their own draft and that they intended to win President Boris N. Yeltsin’s endorsement first.

Once again, the race to the president through the back corridors of Russian power was on.

“Whoever gets to the bathhouse first and pours him the first glass of vodka--there’s your constitution,” Russian reporter Sergei Parkhomenko said in an admittedly cynical exaggeration that he nonetheless maintains is an accurate reflection of the true spirit of current Russian politics.

This latest round of jostling for Yeltsin’s imprimatur on a crucial policy question reflects the tumultuous inner dynamics of a government that, despite its formal elements of Western-style democracy, still revolves very much around one man and the advisers who surround him. The key battles over Russian policy, politicians and journalists here say, hinge not on parliamentary debate or public opinion polls but on the interplay of the insiders who jockey for Yeltsin’s attention.

“As it has always been in Russia, there has to be a czar to make decisions,” said Vera Kuznetsova, who covers Yeltsin for the prestigious newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta. “And everybody fights to be the first to get to him, the first to whisper the whole truth into his ear like a wise serpent, the first to form the czar’s concepts of reality.”

Ella A. Pamfilova, Russia’s social affairs minister, said she can feel from within the government that “there’s a struggle under way over Yeltsin. And it’s full of very complex feelings--jealousy, personal ambition, people finding their place in power. It’s a struggle for influence over Yeltsin.”

The maneuvering in his retinue carries crucial significance because, even though Yeltsin became Russia’s first popularly elected president by winning a hefty majority in a free vote, the other parts of a typical checks-and-balances system of government have yet to mature.

The Parliament, elected in 1990 and reflecting that earlier era’s political obedience, has repeatedly given Yeltsin greater powers and generally offers only token resistance to his decrees.

The Constitutional Court, which has the power to invalidate Yeltsin’s decrees, began work only last month. Russia remains in constitutional limbo, and the fate of the new constitution itself is to be decided at the next session of the Russian Congress, scheduled for April 6. Without Yeltsin’s political weight behind it, its chances for passage are minimal.

Political parties remain splintered, unruly and virtually powerless. Even Democratic Russia, the broad movement that ran Yeltsin’s campaign, has split.

With local elections postponed, public opinion has few direct channels of influence on the government, unless it takes the extreme form of strikes and riots.

It now seems, said Leonid Byzov, a sociologist at the Russian Parliament, that most of the “democrats” who took power from the old Communist Party elite “interpret democracy as the power of democrats--i.e., themselves, and nothing more.”

Thus, for Russian observers, keeping track of their government’s policy is much like the Kremlinology of old, turning mainly into attempts to track what happens inside Yeltsin’s inner sanctum and inside his mind.

“So many serpents are all whispering the most contradictory things in his ears,” Kuznetsova said, naming, in particular, First Deputy Prime Minister Gennady E. Burbulis, considered by many the most influential of Yeltsin’s advisers, Deputy Prime Minister Sergei M. Shakhrai and Chief of Staff Yuri V. Petrov. “You can only imagine what’s happening in Yeltsin’s head.”

The most striking aspect of the process, she added, is that “he has this certain quality that, at some moment, he takes an independent decision that, as a rule, hits the mark amazingly.”

When Yeltsin impulsively declared a state of emergency in the rebellious Caucasus enclave of Chechen-Ingushetia last fall, some politicians blamed the influence of conservative Vice President Alexander V. Rutskoi. But Russian lawmaker Vladimir N. Lysenko attributed the move to the influence of hard-line patriots who struck a chord somewhere in Yeltsin’s soul. “Yeltsin the democrat vs. Yeltsin the patriot is still a very big problem,” he said.

One Russian parliamentary staff member said that he and his colleagues have been baffled so often by Yeltsin’s moves that they thought up a new term for what happens to their president when he does something unexpected or awkward: “He has been zombie-ized again,” they say, meaning that their president has once again fallen under the spell of unseen influences.

The infighting and intrigues around Yeltsin have prompted accusations that the Russian government--in its new headquarters on Staraya Ploshchad, or Old Square, where the Communist Party apparatus once ruled supreme--is back to “old games on Old Square.”

But the team of dedicated young economists working into the small hours most nights on the government’s critical reforms actually has brought about a total change of atmosphere in the imposing block of gray buildings near the Kremlin.

Yeltsin and his closest aides occupy offices in the traditional heights of the Kremlin, and the Russian Parliament continues to meet down on the Moscow River embankment in the famous White House. But Staraya Ploshchad is the beehive of economists where the government’s real labor is now being done.

The reforms drawn up there, asserts Burbulis, contain the underlying rationale for nearly everything the Russian government does, including its conscious decision to concentrate such tremendous power in Yeltsin’s hands.

“Under any other variation of Russia’s power structure, it would not be possible in practice to put through reforms,” Burbulis, considered Yeltsin’s second in command and closest adviser, told Nezavisimaya Gazeta.

“There is an absolutely unique Russian mentality,” he said. “This mentality predetermined for us that only this option would work.” The economic reforms now being effected, Burbulis said, are “the paramount issue that has determined everything else: When can people start to live better?”

For several weeks after he led the resistance to last August’s abortive coup, Yeltsin appeared to lose momentum, unable to adjust to the political upheaval that ensued. He even withdrew from the scene just when crucial decisions were needed on economic reforms and the future shape of the country.

By November, however, he had made up his mind. He staked his political authority on economic reforms by formally becoming his own prime minister. And he appointed Yegor T. Gaidar, 35, as his deputy to run the reforms and promised him both a free hand and unflinching support.

When, in early December, Yeltsin finished off the Soviet Union by agreeing with Ukraine and Belarus to form a Commonwealth of Independent States, that, too--according to Burbulis--was motivated by the understanding that Russia could pursue reform only if it was free of the Soviet government.

With the appointment of the Gaidar team, political domination in the government shifted decisively to what some analysts call the Young Turks--those 30 to 50 years old who have thrown off the Communist past better than most. With Burbulis, a 46-year-old former Marxism professor at their head, they include Gaidar, Shakhrai--a lawyer who oversees the legal aspects of Yeltsin’s decrees--the ministers of justice, labor and the media and Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev.

They are seen as the brash strategists who have pushed Yeltsin into drastic economic reform. They have also tried to hold together the Soviet Union’s assets and superpower status and shift them wholesale to Russia.

Rather than cater to other former Soviet republics, the Young Turks support a “Russia first” approach to surviving the Soviet economy’s collapse. They took a hard line on liquidating the Communist Party and now support a tough policy against letting Russian regions and republics secede.

Some of the original democratic leaders who struggled shoulder to shoulder with Yeltsin in 1989 and 1990 have now distanced themselves from him, among them Moscow Mayor Gavriil Popov and Chairman Ruslan I. Khasbulatov of the Russian Parliament, who disagree with Gaidar’s reform tactics. Other prominent figures, including Rutskoi and economist Grigory Yavlinsky, were reportedly driven away by Burbulis.

Overall, however, said Alexei L. Golovkov, chief of the central government “apparatus” of 600 experts and paper-stamping officials, Yeltsin has recruited a strong and sizable team to fill the top levels of his administration. Almost the entire staff, Golovkov said, is made up of “the old opposition,” the anti-Communists who brought the party down.

Still, many conservative apparatchiks reportedly remain.

Petrov, chief of staff and long Yeltsin’s No. 2 man when he was Communist Party boss in the Ural Mountains city of Sverdlovsk, has won the president’s deep trust over their many years together. But some observers brand him an old-style apparatchik who still plays party-style games and has barely changed his beliefs.

Pamfilova, the social affairs minister, said she often finds her initiatives blocked by obsolete bureaucrats at lower levels of the hierarchy. “This second echelon brakes our work,” she complained.

Lysenko, who heads the Republican Party of Russia, divides Yeltsin’s inner circle into three overlapping groups.

There are Yeltsin’s comrades from the democratic movement, such as Media Minister Mikhail Poltoranin. Then there are the old apparatchiks, like Petrov, who remain powerful enough to influence such key questions as who gets former Communist Party property, Lysenko said. And finally there are Yeltsin’s longtime allies, still known as the “Sverdlovsk Gang” even though the city has been renamed Ekaterinburg.

“These are people whom Yeltsin values for their personal devotion,” Lysenko said, “so that if what happened to (former President Mikhail S.) Gorbachev happens to him, they won’t sell him out to Foros”--the Crimean seaside location where Gorbachev was held hostage during the coup attempt.

The resulting mix of cadres may provide Yeltsin with the emotional security he needs, but it also produces a government that often seems inconsistent and disorganized in everything from policy on Ukraine to press arrangements on presidential trips.

Yeltsin flip-flopped on Chechen-Ingushetia in early November, first sending in troops and declaring a state of emergency, then backing off after Parliament rejected the move; similarly, the decision to combine the police and the KGB was abandoned after it was ruled illegal by the Constitutional Court.

The Russian president sponsored peace talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan with great fanfare last fall; then, in December, he abruptly began pulling out the former Soviet troops who had been acting as buffers in disputed Nagorno-Karabakh, saying he saw no reason why “Russian boys” should die there.

Yeltsin’s administration raised hackles soon after the August coup by threatening to dispute its borders with other former Soviet republics; then he agreed hurriedly to retain all current borders even though several areas, including the Crimea, remain sources of problems.

Most recently, Yeltsin began negotiations with Ukraine over control of the Black Sea Fleet, then suddenly declared that the fleet “was, is and will be Russia’s.”

Sometimes, Lysenko said, Yeltsin appears to act based purely on personal loyalty, like the time this winter when he dumbfounded many members of his own government by suddenly issuing a decree combining the police and the KGB into a new monster security agency. The only way lawmakers could make sense of the decree was by positing that Yeltsin’s highly trusted interior minister must have “slipped it to Boris Nikolayevich in a car somewhere and Yeltsin accepted it based on his emotions,” Lysenko recalled.

He acknowledged, however, that Yeltsin also sometimes shifts his opinion under influence from outside his immediate circle, as he did when he planned to name Yuri V. Skokov, a relatively conservative official, as his economics chief, and then passed over him when a coalition of deputies said they would switch to the opposition if Skokov was appointed.

Golovkov said the government routinely has to deal with powerful lobbies--from the collective farm chairmen who tried to block land reform to military factories fighting for defense funds and businessmen agitating for lower taxes or exemptions.

Lobbies “are here in full volume. I feel that on myself,” Golovkov said.

“All the political forces have appeared; they all act and really participate in this process,” he said. “And the same thing with the voters who gather under the windows with posters and demand an accounting, and the same with political parties.

“It’s all just less visible,” Golovkov said. “It doesn’t lend itself to advertising. It happens in the corridors, but it’s no less effective.”

According to Kuznetsova, however, virtually no one outside the government can have a significant effect on it. “You can’t frighten this government with anything,” she said, “because what else is there to be afraid of? So there will be hunger riots or strikes. Gaidar still has nowhere to get the steel that workers need for their factories.”

Yeltsin has made open attempts to buy off the restive armed forces, even announcing last month that Russia would sell military hardware to pay for housing construction for officers. But he has nonetheless denied them backing for what they want most--to keep the former Soviet forces united.

Ultimately, Kuznetsova said, if Yeltsin continues to govern this way, he will be doomed despite all his political brilliance.

He is surrounded by his own people, she said, but without his own party to support him and, more significantly, without the backing of full-fledged classes of businessmen and private farmers who benefit from his reforms.

He stands, she said, “with the paupers who are the people on all sides and none of the political support he needs behind him.”

The Brash Young Turks

Since November, 1991, Yeltsin’s inner circle has been dominated by 30- to 50-year-olds dubbed the Young Turks. They unabashedly back a “Russia first” approach to surviving the Soviet collapse and have pushed the president into drastic economic reforms. Some prominent ‘Turks’:

Gennady Burbulis, 46: First deputy prime minister. Yeltsin’s second in command and closest adviser.

Sergei M. Shakhrai, 35: Deputy prime minister. Lawyer who oversees legal aspects of Yeltsin’s decrees.

Yegor T. Gaidar, 35: Deputy prime minister. Heads team directing economic reforms.

Andrei V. Kozyrev, 40: Foreign minister. Advocates drastic economic reform.

Yeltsin Versus Yeltsin

Whipsawed by conflicting advice and changing conditions. Russian President Boris. N. Yeltsin often flip-flops. Some examples:

* The decision: Send troops into Chechen-Ingushetia in early November.

* The reversal: Backed off after Parliament rejected the move.

* The decision: Combine police and KGB into huge security agency.

* The reversal: Abandoned after it was ruled illegal by Constitutional Court.

* The decision: Sponsor peace talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan last fall.

* The reversal: Withdrew former Soviet troops who had acted as buffers in disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.

* The decision: Threaten to dispute Russia’s borders with other former Soviet republics after August, 1991, coup.

* The reversal: Agreed to retain all current borders even though several areas, including the Crimea, remain sources of problems.