A Confident Yeltsin Shrugs Off Protests

Shrugging off as “hysteria” the anti-reform protests conducted across Russia last weekend, a feisty President Boris N. Yeltsin voiced confidence in his government Monday and said he sees no “political earthquakes” on the horizon.

But Yeltsin did caution that changes are entirely possible in acting Prime Minister Yegor T. Gaidar’s Cabinet, implying he may fire some ministers to stem a rising wave of political opposition before the Russian Congress of People’s Deputies meets on Dec. 1.

“I cannot exclude changes in personnel before the Congress, but hope they will not be radical,” Gaidar himself said Sunday.

But Yeltsin’s comments appeared to rule out a wholesale replacement of Gaidar’s team of bright young economists now struggling to build capitalism in Russia; they are said by their enemies to be selling Russia out to the West and reducing its populace to poverty.

Yeltsin’s remarks, reported by the Itar-Tass news agency, came as he met with American financiers and bankers in the Kremlin to try to spur commercial exchanges between the countries. In particular, the news agency said, Yeltsin reiterated support for forging a democratic, market-driven Russia, assuring his guests that “the strategy of reform is unchanged.”

So far this year, the United States has accounted for less than 5% of Russia’s imports and exports, according to the Ministry of External Economic Relations. U.S. businessmen are viewed here as decidedly timid. But they retort that an array of problems--from sheer uncertainty about Yeltsin’s political survivability and endemic official corruption to a shaky banking system and a nearly valueless local currency--force them to rein in their ambitions.

Dealing in part with those concerns, Yeltsin at his Monday meeting signed a decree founding the Russian-American Investment Bank to promote “the creation of the banking and financial infrastructure necessary for developing joint business cooperation and widening foreign investment in the Russian Federation,” Itar-Tass said.

On Saturday, Communists and other dyed-in-the-wool opponents of Yeltsin staged their most coordinated show of strength yet, holding rallies in 60 cities and uniting their disparate factions and leaders into an umbrella opposition, the National Salvation Front.

Ilya Konstantinov, chairman of the front’s executive committee, predicted Monday that it will boast half a million members by year’s end and said it has set itself the immediate goal of forcing the replacement of Gaidar’s team by a “national salvation Cabinet.”

Because of remarks made earlier this month by Yeltsin, speculation is rife that he will soon sacrifice at least two members of Gaidar’s Cabinet--Economics Minister Andrei Nechayev and Foreign Trade Minister Pyotr O. Aven.

Such a step would come nowhere near placating Yeltsin’s most extremist adversaries. Despite the protests held from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok two days before, Yeltsin indicated Monday that he believes he can safely ignore their maximalist demands.