Controversial Yeltsin Aide Gives Up Deputy Post : Russia: The move is seen as an attempt to blunt criticism. Burbulis will retain power, but won’t answer to Parliament.

President Boris N. Yeltsin’s closest but most controversial aide stepped aside as first deputy prime minister Friday in a further attempt to limit criticism of the government when Russia’s Congress of People’s Deputies meets next week.

Gennady E. Burbulis, 46, will remain Russia’s state secretary with virtually the same responsibilities and authority as before, according to government officials, but he will not be directly answerable to the Congress, the national Parliament, which begins meeting Monday.

Yeltsin had earlier relieved another first deputy prime minister, Yegor T. Gaidar, 36, of his duties as finance minister to allow him to concentrate on overall management of the country’s economic reforms, which will be a major item on the Congress’ agenda.

And he has now named a leading civilian strategist, Andrei A. Kokoshin, 46, and a popular, reform-minded general, Pavel Grachev, 44, as his chief deputies in the new Russian Defense Ministry, twin appointments that are likely to reassure both the army and those wanting radical military reforms.

Earlier, Yeltsin’s chief legal adviser, Sergei M. Shakrai, 35, resigned as a deputy prime minister in order to retain his parliamentary seat, which he judged to be a better position from which to fight for the changes that Yeltsin wants in the new Russian constitution that the Congress will debate.

“The resignations of Shakrai and Burbulis and the preservation of the post of a deputy prime minister for the main architect of the (economic) reforms, Gaidar, are nothing more than pre-Congress maneuvering,” political commentator Nikolai Svanidze said Friday evening on Russian television. “Yeltsin, the experienced commander, does not want to put his people under fire, and some members of the Cabinet are being withdrawn from the front line to the second row of positions.”

Gaidar, Shakrai and, above all, Burbulis had each become targets for radical as well as conservative criticism, sometimes as much for their personalities as for their policies, and Yeltsin had come under pressure to realign the government he heads as prime minister as well as president.

Russian newspapers said earlier Friday that Gaidar’s replacement as finance minister by one of his deputies, Vasily Barchuk, 51, a career ministry official, was a tactical move meant to quiet critics of the government’s painful economic reforms without changing the policies of their architect.

The well-informed Moscow newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta said, “The reshuffle was planned a long time ago,” and asserted that it was being carried out now “as a tactical operation within the framework of preparations for the Congress debates.”

Yeltsin still faces criticism, however, over the governmental power he has accumulated in the nine months since he was elected president. Prime minister and defense minister as well as president, Yeltsin on Friday declared himself head of the country’s new national security council. He also has the power to rule by decree, almost without reference to Parliament.

While it debates his policies, the Congress is also expected to question Yeltsin’s need for such sweeping powers, and the Cabinet reshuffle may remove some of the irritation felt by deputies who saw the government structure as far from democratic, with many officials, notably Burbulis, Gaidar, Shakrai and Yeltsin himself, holding multiple posts.

As state secretary, Burbulis remains the second-most-powerful person in the Yeltsin government, with responsibility for coordinating domestic and foreign policy, political aspects of the government’s reform program and liaison with political parties, according to a Yeltsin decree.

Burbulis said he had asked Yeltsin to relieve him of his additional responsibilities as first deputy prime minister that placed him in supervision of day-to-day operations of half a dozen government ministries.