5th Minister in as Many Months Quits in Russia

Sergei M. Shakhrai, the deputy prime minister who first heard from reporters that he was being stripped of one of his posts, resigned on Tuesday from a Russian Cabinet that seems to be reshuffled almost as often as Italy’s governments.

Only 11 of the 25 ministers as of April, 1992, still hold Cabinet-level posts today. If Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin accepts his resignation, Shakhrai will become the fifth minister to depart in the past five months.

But some saw Shakhrai’s being fired as minister of nationalities as a sign that Yeltsin, in fact, is unhappy with Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin.

Evidence for this view was found in an unusual, late-night statement by Yeltsin’s press service, which said that “Yeltsin urged Viktor Chernomyrdin on Tuesday to improve the work of his staff.” Chernomyrdin immediately called a meeting of his deputies and the heads of the economic ministries and reprimanded them for poor performance, the statement said.

No slouches were singled out by name. But Yeltsin faulted their work style, their lack of control over the implementation of government decisions and their delays.

He may be trying to distance himself from the disastrous Russian economy. Production dropped almost 25% in the first quarter of this year compared with the same period in 1993, and plunged a further 3.3% in April, the state statistics committee said Monday. By April, 5,000 factories had closed, and more than 8 million Russians are now unemployed or on unpaid leave.

Shakhrai left with a warning that, unless the ailing economy improves, Chernomyrdin may be the next to go. Shakhrai warned of a possible renewal of violent political strife.

Shakhrai, a 38-year-old lawyer who wrote the 1991 presidential decree that banned the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, had been in charge of Russia’s sensitive nationalities and regional policy until Yeltsin abruptly stripped him of the post Monday. He is also the leader of a small centrist party with 19 seats in the Duma, or lower house of Parliament, and is a possible presidential contender for 1996.

Yeltsin has already fired all but one of the reformers associated with the “shock therapy” policies blamed for the disastrous showing in December elections. The Kremlin rumor mill is now predicting an attempt to oust Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly B. Chubais, whose controversial privatization program expires June 30.