Yeltsin Fires More Top Officials

Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin fired more top officials in a widening preelection purge Friday and threatened to dismiss the Cabinet unless it halts the practice of diverting money from public payrolls and pension funds.

Facing a strong Communist challenge to his reelection bid and the biggest opposition rally in months, Yeltsin declared that the prime task of government in the final months of his term is to pay workers their meager wages and pensions on time. The treasury is $2.75 billion behind in such payments to millions of miners, teachers and other public servants--a huge political liability as Yeltsin struggles to defend five turbulent years of free-market reform.

“We have come to the edge of that dangerous line beyond which fatigue and mistrust may outweigh people’s fortitude and hope,” the Russian leader warned in his annual address on the state of the nation. “The government will either carry out its duty to protect the social and economic rights of people, or this will be done by another government.”

Hours later, more than 5,000 Communists marched peacefully through the slush of central Moscow to the cadence of Soviet-era patriotic music blaring from loudspeakers. The march, commemorating Army Day, ended amid red Soviet banners with a giant antigovernment rally.

Yeltsin confirmed the dismissals of Russia’s treasury chief and the head of the postal service, who had been “disciplined” earlier this week. He also used his televised speech to castigate the governors of Arkhangelsk and Saratov, another presidential appointee and the head of Russia’s diamond monopoly, all fired Wednesday.

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Except for the diamond official--who faces criminal charges for a shadowy deal with a California company in which $178 million in Russian gems disappeared--the targets of Yeltsin’s wrath are accused of taking money budgeted for wages and pensions and tying it up in savings accounts or spending it on other needs.

One audit, for example, found that Russia’s postal service has spent millions of dollars in pension funds to remodel its offices and buy new vehicles. Another showed that 40% of the funds budgeted last year for teachers’ salaries in Saratov, a region in southern Russia, have not been paid. Some officials are under investigation on suspicion of embezzlement.

Yeltsin repeated his pledge, made last week when he announced his candidacy for the June 16 election, to pay the government’s overdue wage bill by next month without unbalancing its anti-inflation budget. The commitment now seems attainable after Thursday’s agreement by the International Monetary Fund to lend Russia $10.2 billion over three years.

But in his speech before a joint session of the Federal Assembly, the 65-year-old Russian leader declared that underlings, not the Kremlin, will be held accountable for delivering the promised paychecks.

“Let no one try to defend these people; that will not help,” Yeltsin said of the ousted officials. “It is becoming a real hindrance to reform if we tolerate such misdeeds.”

Politicians noted that the two fired governors had drawn Yeltsin’s ire after their regions gave unexpectedly large pluralities to the Communist Party in December’s parliamentary elections.

Officials in Saratov said much of the money diverted from teachers there went to pay the region’s gas and electricity debts to Moscow utilities, which had threatened to cut off service.

People at the Communist rally dismissed Yeltsin’s crackdown as insufficient.

“It is a notorious practice to withhold our salaries and put them in banks for a month or two,” said Maria S. Pashkina, a 49-year-old engineer. “Yeltsin fired those bloodsucking bureaucrats, but will they suffer? They have stolen enough to buy a palace.”

“It turns out that everybody is at fault except for the president,” said Gennady A. Zyuganov, the Communist Party candidate. “You will not find even the tiniest admission of his own fault.”

Zyuganov criticized Russia’s nod to an IMF condition that it abolish oil and gas export tariffs, saying the consequent rise of energy prices inside Russia will cripple entire industries.

Yeltsin’s 50-minute address, a self-critical defense of his reform program and an outline of policy goals for the coming year, did not include an awaited proposal to end the 14-month-old war against separatists in Chechnya. The president said two groups of advisors are still trying to meld eight options into a compromise proposal that will be announced soon.