Yeltsin Job Picks Raise Eyebrows

Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin named the director of a struggling car-making monopoly as his top minister for economics Thursday and chose a little-known government bureaucrat to direct privatization.

Although the two men who will succeed fired liberal economist Anatoly B. Chubais are likely to fuel fears that Russia is retreating on market reforms, Yeltsin suggested that his latest Cabinet shake-up was for the sake of appearance.

“One should not judge lightly and prematurely on personnel shifts and conclude from them some radical change of priorities,” Yeltsin said.

But even as the president said he is remaining on the path of economic reform and fiscal austerity, he issued decrees boosting government pensions and raising state stipends for all students.

Those spending increases, though sure to be popular, added to growing concerns of another approaching cycle of inflation.

Yeltsin’s political alliance fared poorly against Communists and Nationalists in last month’s parliamentary election, prompting the president to fire key reform figures and replace them with Soviet-era industry bosses.

Yeltsin’s selection of Vladimir V. Kadannikov as first deputy prime minister in charge of economic matters raised eyebrows among analysts because he has little experience outside the AvtoVAZ car plant where he has worked since 1967. He is also an outspoken advocate of government bailouts for struggling industries.

“He understands nothing about macroeconomic problems,” said Mikhail L. Berger, economics columnist for the newspaper Izvestia. “He practically destroyed AvtoVAZ.”

Kadannikov, 55, was appointed general director of the car plant in 1988 and has since overseen a period of quality decline and price increases.

Berger said he fears that Kadannikov might try to tamper with the officially imposed “ruble corridor” controlling the currency’s exchange rate with the dollar. The dollar has helped to curb inflation but at the expense of major exporters, such as AvtoVAZ.

Kadannikov is “certainly no liberal economist, but neither will he have the responsibility and clout of Chubais,” said Alexander O. Filonik, an economist and head of the Russian Center for Strategic and International Research.

Yeltsin named government economist Alexander I. Kazakov to take over the country’s troubled State Property Committee, the privatization agency initially headed by Chubais.