Yeltsin Blasts Officials on Economy, Stalks Out of Meeting

Heads were about to roll, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin said sternly at the start of a top-level inquiry Thursday into his government’s economic failings.

“By the end of the session we will be down three government ministers,” he declared with a frown, opening the televised, daylong meeting to assess Russia’s patchy economic performance last year.

But the firings never happened.

About 90 minutes later, after scolding ministers for hindering the pace of economic reform, the capricious Yeltsin stalked out of the hall, leaving behind rows of bewildered officials in somber suits who had been meekly listening to his tongue-lashing.

Although aides later said Yeltsin might announce Cabinet changes today--or in a couple of days or early next week--their promises did little to clarify the latest bizarre behavior by a 67-year-old president whose reputation for public eccentricity continues to grow.

Russia’s first economic growth since the Soviet collapse, registered in the last quarter of 1997, has been undermined by the Asian market crisis. With foreign investors suddenly wary of putting money into any emerging market, including Russia, growth forecasts for 1998 have been revised downward.

The government’s budget indiscipline has also been criticized.

Since he first called such a meeting late last year, Yeltsin has reassured the West by saying Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin and First Deputy Prime Ministers Anatoly B. Chubais and Boris Y. Nemtsov will keep their jobs. Chernomyrdin is seen as a guarantee of stability; the latter two are leaders of the government efforts at economic reform.

Investors had been hoping that Thursday’s meeting, delayed repeatedly since Dec. 1, would at last make clear what Yeltsin wants to happen next to his country’s vast, disorganized economy.

But Russian commentators said scathingly that Yeltsin’s real agenda Thursday had been quite different--his unexpected departure, they said, was a purely political move to keep government officials anxious and on edge.

Yeltsin “simply does not know what to do next and how to steer this huge and unwieldy barge called Russia,” said Leonid Radzhikhovsky, political observer at the daily newspaper Sevodnya. “But he is starting to realize that he should at least sham activity and pretend he’s trying to do something.

“Like a king playing with soldiers, Yeltsin’s playing with his toy ministers, reshuffling some, hiring some, firing others. Like this, he creates the illusion of tireless activity and at the same time entertains himself,” he added. “He also manages to puzzle his own people and the rest of the world . . . which rushes headlong to look for some crafty strategic ruse [in his behavior]. There is none. It’s the whim of an aging ex-party boss.”

Yeltsin’s latest cliffhanger left markets as baffled as ministers. The Russian stock market shed most of its early gains.