Russian Conservative Gains From Reformers’ Failures : Politics: As Prime Minister Chernomyrdin’s power strengthens, hope for a Western-style economy fades.

When it comes to charisma, he’s no match for Boris N. Yeltsin or Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky. He sat out last month’s parliamentary elections, quietly supporting two parties that finished far back.

His job performance in 1993, his first year as head of the Cabinet, was just as mediocre: The economy shrank 14%; prices shot up 900%.

Yet Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin has gained more clout than any other figure from Russia’s recent political upheavals. As President Yeltsin comes to resemble an aloof constitutional monarch, and Zhirinovsky’s populist tantrums start to bore fellow lawmakers, Chernomyrdin is shaping a far more conservative government in his own gray, managerial image.

The 55-year-old prime minister, who once ran the Soviet gas industry, took the initiative after free-market candidates close to Yeltsin fared poorly in the parliamentary vote. While two reform economists quit the Cabinet last week and Yeltsin kept silent, Chernomyrdin announced a new lineup and a new mandate--no more Western-style monetarist reform at the expense of production.

“What sort of reforms can one talk about at a time when huge enterprises come to a standstill?” he asked. “No matter how progressive it might be, no theory can by itself salvage a huge country from shortages of food, energy and commodities. . . . If we fail to boost production, we will fail to salvage the emerging market economy.”

Chernomyrdin is convinced that the state must return to a bigger role in the economy, supporting heavy industry and collective agriculture--unprofitable stalwarts of the failed Soviet system. How far he can go in slowing the reformers’ 2-year-old effort to shrink the state--or in reviving a central-command economy--remains to be seen.

It is unclear, for example, whether Boris G. Fyodorov, the strict-monetarist finance minister who quit Thursday, is really out. Amid signs of unease in the West, Chernomyrdin asked him Saturday to stay but refused his demand for more authority in the Cabinet. Fyodorov said he will press his case in a meeting with Yeltsin this week.

It’s also worth remembering that Chernomyrdin serves at Yeltsin’s pleasure. If the prime minister tries his statist approach and it fails, the president has a constitutional right to fire him.

But Russian politics is more complex. As Yeltsin has retreated from the details of government, Chernomyrdin has spread his influence throughout the Russian bureaucracy. He is far more confident, and much less malleable, today than the awkward, mumbling, seemingly transitional figure who became prime minister 13 months ago.

“Before our very eyes, power is shifting from Yeltsin to Chernomyrdin,” said Mikhail Berger, a columnist for the newspaper Izvestia. “Maybe with the president’s consent or maybe without it, but that is what’s happening.”

People who know Chernomyrdin say two life experiences define him.

First, he’s a consummate apparatchik. A street-fighting village kid from Russia’s Orenburg region, he finished high school with a C-minus average and flunked math in a technical institute entrance exam. But thanks to army and party connections, he got a degree and moved up the Communist ladder, rising from machine operator at an oil refinery to a Central Committee post.

Second, that career ladder passed through the gas industry, still the most regulated sector of the Russian economy. He became Soviet gas minister in 1985 and turned the ministry into a profitable state corporation, earning a third of Russia’s export revenue. The experience gave him only a narrow understanding of economics and a strong bias toward state control.

A gruff, heavy-set man prone to wisecracks and foul language, Chernomyrdin shares Yeltsin’s earthy, muzhik image and Communist background. He won Yeltsin’s admiration--and a post in the Cabinet--by giving a better speech at a 1992 gas seminar than the pro-reform government economist in charge of that sector.

In December, 1992, with living standards falling and reformers in retreat, Yeltsin named him prime minister, replacing acting premier Yegor T. Gaidar, the brains behind the reforms. At Yeltsin’s insistence, Chernomyrdin kept most of Gaidar’s team around him and brought in Fyodorov to control the money supply.

Gradually, however, Chernomyrdin became his own man. His ministry ballooned to more than 1,000 bureaucrats, taking from other agencies such powers as export licensing. He boosted his own political standing by touring the country with pork-barrel promises, then dumping on Fyodorov for refusing to pay for them.

“Chernomyrdin has a keen sense of power, but no sense for policy,” said Swedish economist Anders Aslund, an adviser to Fyodorov.

A Western official who meets with the prime minister added: “He doesn’t understand that ruling the country means making some people unhappy. He wants to please everyone.”

As Russia slid toward violent civil conflict last fall, Chernomyrdin wisely chose to back Yeltsin against the Soviet-era Parliament, then stayed out of the fractious Dec. 12 elections of a new one. With his nod, the state gas company helped finance two centrist parties--Future of Russia-New Names and the Russian Party of Unity and Concord. Together they got 9% of the vote.

Luckily for Chernomyrdin, no party gained a majority. In part because Yeltsin didn’t want a fight with Parliament over a new nominee, Chernomyrdin kept his post as a compromise between Gaidar’s Russia’s Choice on one side and the Communists and Zhirinovsky’s ultranationalists on the other.

Reading the vote as a mandate against reformers, Chernomyrdin muscled out Gaidar, who had rejoined the Cabinet in September, and stripped Fyodorov of his deputy prime minister rank. He brought in two ex-Soviet economic advisers, Nikolai Petrakov and Leonid Abalkin, to modify the plan they wrote for Civic Union, a centrist party led by factory bosses with little voter support.

“The return of these men means the return of administer-by-command economy,” economist and Yeltsin adviser Pavel G. Bunich said. “The Civic Union lost the elections, but they have won the government.”

Chernomyrdin told reporters last week that he will make good on $5 billion worth of promised credits to money-losing farms and defense plants, doubling the first-quarter budget deficit. To hold down inflation, he offered to try such “non-monetary” methods as wage and price controls. He also expressed support for a currency union with Belarus, which critics say will cost Russia $1.4 billion.

Many economists believe that Chernomyrdin simply doesn’t understand the inflationary consequences of such mega-spending and may be leading Yeltsin, who also has little grasp of economics, toward disaster.

A cartoon in Izvestia illustrates that view. It shows Chernomyrdin piggyback on Yeltsin, cupping his hands like horse blinders to narrow the president’s vision. Yeltsin is staggering in circles, declaring, “We will not stray from the path of reforms!”

Andrei Ostroukh, a reporter in The Times’ Moscow Bureau, contributed to this report.