From G-7, Russia Now Looks for Respect, Not Aid : Summit: Yeltsin is still the odd man out as rich countries gather. But he will be an equal partner in political matters.

Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin lands here today with a long-coveted invitation to the World’s Most Important Countries Club, marking a new phase in Russia’s bumpy rapprochement with the West.

For the first time, Yeltsin does not come seeking international aid. Rather, he aims to show the West that Russia, however troubled, is no longer a charity case.

While Yeltsin was not invited to the Group of Seven economic talks that begin today, he will sit as an equal partner at the table Sunday when the world’s richest democracies discuss political problems ranging from Bosnia-Herzegovina to North Korea.

Yeltsin has attended previous G-7 meetings as a second-class visitor.

This year, however, Ukraine is the problem child. Its woes--especially the $1.5 billion in proposed aid to close the Chernobyl nuclear power plant--will get top billing.

The symbolism of Yeltsin’s inclusion is not trivial to Russians.

During the hungry and frightening years of 1991 and 1992, Moscow had to swallow its pride and ask the West for food aid to survive the winter. Even when Yeltsin brought home pledges of $43 billion from the G-7 meeting in Tokyo last July, many of his countrymen felt humiliated by the spectacle of their fallen superpower being reduced to begging crumbs from the table of its rich capitalist rivals.

Much of the promised aid never arrived.

But Russia survived without it.

It has been nine months since tanks rolled through the streets of Moscow to squelch a revolt by hard-line members of Parliament, a putsch that almost toppled the Yeltsin presidency. But to everyone’s amazement, Russia is struggling back onto its feet in an atmosphere of relative economic and political tranquillity.

Inflation fell to 6% in June, down from a peak of 20% per month last year. That performance bettered even the expectations of U.S. Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen, who in February was skeptical that inflation could fall below 9% by the end of 1994.

Unemployment in Russia has increased to roughly 8%. But in Ireland, a European Union member, it is double that.

Meantime, the Russian budget deficit yawns--but not as wide as in some other European countries. And even the battered Russian ruble is stabilizing.

As for Yeltsin, he now is on cordial terms with the leaders of the two houses of the new Russian Parliament. Although the public is outraged by the spectacle of mobsters, bankers and bureaucrats getting rich while most workers grow poorer, the strikes and social unrest forecast for this summer have yet to materialize. And despite a business climate that would drive Horatio Alger to despair, Russian entrepreneurs are somehow holding on.

Russians today are far from upbeat about their future. Many are deeply cynical about what they have seen so far of “democracy.” Most are worn out by the struggle to survive amid the epic chaos of the last five years.

Despite its myriad and thorny problems, the Russia that Yeltsin will present to the G-7 today is a tougher, more independent and more self-reliant nation that insists on being treated as an equal political partner with the West.

“We’re not asking for packages of cheese and sausage,” said Sergei D. Belenkov, a Russian presidential spokesman. Instead, what Russia wants is more trade, more private investment and freer access to world markets that remain closed to its most competitive products.

Yeltsin may remind the G-7 of its many unkept aid promises. But he is unlikely to torment his hosts, lest Russia appear as an “ungrateful beggar” or “a bottomless pit” into which money vanishes--images that officials are eager to dispel.

“We do not believe in the West’s ability to help us anymore,” the Red Star newspaper said Friday. “It is more important for us to have fair access to world markets.”

Russia may be able to win access to up to $4 billion in new International Monetary Fund loans this year, officials said. It would also like to restructure its $80-billion foreign debt and push for more loan guarantees and insurance to lure jittery foreign investors.

Despite its economic accomplishments, the Yeltsin government still fears that Russia will be treated as a feeble Third World power, humored by the West only because of its nuclear arsenal and its potential to bully the Baltic states and the rest of the former Soviet empire.

“They are like a grumpy great aunt,” one Western diplomat said. “On the one hand, we don’t take them seriously. But on the other hand, you can’t ignore them.”

As Russia dismantles its military machine, it seeks membership in Europe’s key financial, political and security structures to maintain its international clout. Moscow has already joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s “Partnership for Peace” program and is courting the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the European Union.

Moscow also dreams of making this session of leading world economies not the G-7 but the G-8.

Last month, Yeltsin acknowledged that Russia cannot be considered an equal economic player with the United States, Japan, Canada, Germany, France, Italy and Britain. But he noted with pride that a political G-8 is already a reality. Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev suggested Friday that perhaps next year both the economic and the political discussions will be conducted by a G-8.