Kremlin Aides’ Loss of 2nd Jobs May Not Be End

Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin pared the portfolios of his two top reformers Thursday to appease opposition critics who have been stirring up a storm over a top-level bribery scandal and have been holding vital tax and budget laws hostage to their demands.

But the moves are unlikely to put an end to the political bloodletting that has already cost four other senior members of the Kremlin reform team their jobs.

Yeltsin stripped Anatoly B. Chubais of his post as finance minister but left him in place as first deputy prime minister, presenting the change as more of an administrative restructuring than a reprimand for having accepted a $90,000 “book advance” from a company tied to a key bidder for government shares.

The president also separated fellow First Deputy Prime Minister Boris Y. Nemtsov from the post of fuel and energy ministry chief, apparently with the aim of appearing consistent, as Nemtsov is not known to have been involved in the book-fees scandal.

A day earlier, Yeltsin issued a presidential decree prohibiting deputy Cabinet heads from holding other ministerial posts--a move that seemed only coincidentally to address opposition demands that he fire Chubais.

In announcing the Cabinet changes Thursday, in an oddly informal television appearance from his country dacha 60 miles north of Moscow, Yeltsin made clear he saw the action as a compromise with the opposition-dominated Duma, the lower house of parliament.

“The Duma is asking me--asking me in a nice way, the way we usually talk--to relieve Chubais. But I can’t do that all the way,” Yeltsin said, standing in the entry in a plaid shirt and white sweater, as if caught by the camera en route between two rooms. “Chubais has done a lot for the country, and this is to his credit.”

Chubais has been Yeltsin’s chief executor of privatization and macroeconomic reforms, and until disclosure of his suspect book advance a week ago, remained aloof from frequent but unsubstantiated charges that he favored his friends in selling off state properties.

The book advance was paid by a publishing house that is a subsidiary of Uneximbank, the huge financial-industrial complex headed by Chubais’ friend Vladimir O. Potanin, who has won several controversial asset bids this year.

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Opposition lawmakers from the Communist Party and the liberal Yabloko movement were unimpressed by the president’s half-measure, sacking Chubais from only one of his two senior government posts. Yabloko leader Grigory A. Yavlinsky warned that his group will again seek a no-confidence vote in the leadership--a confrontation Yeltsin only narrowly averted a month ago, long before his adversaries were armed with the book scandal.

The Duma also postponed consideration of the 1998 budget that had been set for today until early December--an indication that the rebellious deputies intend to drag out the political impasse in hopes of forcing more concessions.

Yeltsin made one bow to political opponents in naming former Yabloko deputy Mikhail M. Zadornov as finance minister, to replace Chubais. But Yavlinsky opposed his party’s cooperation with the Kremlin, prompting Zadornov to resign his Yabloko membership.

Communist Party chief Gennady A. Zyuganov said his party would continue to oppose the state budget as written, promising fractious negotiations when--and if--the matter comes up next month.