Yeltsin Firings Shaping Up as a Boost to Reform

Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin hinted Tuesday that he will reappoint key ministers despite an across-the-board sacking of his Cabinet a day earlier, suggesting that the startling move was really a parting shot by the Kremlin’s chief economic strategist to eliminate the last obstacles to reform.

Like a suicide bomber, departing First Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly B. Chubais left Yeltsin’s team in a blast that both relieved him of the poorly paid obligation of government service and took out the surviving stalwarts of Communist cronyism along with him.

The strategy behind Monday’s firing of Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin and the rest of the Cabinet became clearer with the first subtle indications by Yeltsin that key officials, such as Foreign Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov and Defense Minister Igor D. Sergeyev, will be returned to their jobs.

Those two powerful ministers and “the lion’s share of the rest” are likely to be reappointed, presidential spokesman Sergei V. Yastrzhembsky told journalists after Yeltsin praised the work of Russia’s Foreign and Defense ministries.

That observation made clear that the real target of Yeltsin’s sweep was Chernomyrdin, a dour Soviet-era bureaucrat who had become increasingly beholden to the powerful new industrialists running Russia’s raw market economy.

Russia’s Constitution dictates that all Cabinet members must resign with the prime minister to give the new head of government a clean slate to build his own team. But, in reality, the president makes all important personnel decisions and has tended to use the prime minister’s post as a figurehead position.

Chernomyrdin, who will turn 60 next month and like Yeltsin has recently undergone heart surgery, was allowed to remain prime minister for more than five years because he was viewed by the president, until recently, as a harmless, loyal ally, acceptable to the Communist-dominated opposition and the bankers and businesspeople whom he helped make rich during the conversion of state assets to private property.

Chubais, 42, and fellow former First Deputy Prime Minister Boris Y. Nemtsov, 38, have been considerably more influential and supportive of reforms than Chernomyrdin in the year since Yeltsin appointed them to reinvigorate the leadership.

But Chernomyrdin had lately emerged as the industrialists’ preferred candidate to succeed Yeltsin in the next presidential election, in 2000, or in the event the sickly current head of state fails to serve out his term.

With almost zero public support, Chernomyrdin’s chances of winning a fair election were dim, and both Yeltsin and Chubais probably calculated that removing him now would give them time to groom a more democratic acceptable successor.

Nemtsov remains more popular than any other viable candidate for the presidency. But Yeltsin is probably reluctant to elevate him to prime minister and heir apparent because, with more than two years remaining until the election, that would make him a target for the opposition.

Analysts speculate that Yeltsin will appoint a capable regional governor with no national profile to replace Chernomyrdin or that Sergei V. Kiriyenko, the little-known acting prime minister, will be nominated and given a trial run as head of government.

Kiriyenko is a close Nemtsov ally and like-thinker but is less likely to incite a Communist revolt against his leadership than if Yeltsin was to appoint Nemtsov to head the Cabinet.

Both Nemtsov and Kiriyenko carry the Chubais reform mantle and could be expected to continue pressing for a bigger role for the private business sector and for a much-needed cleanup of the corrupt federal government.

Chubais had said for months that he longed for the chance to be a private player in the new market economy he was instrumental in crafting for Russia. But he hesitated to leave the Kremlin while reforms were still fragile and while Russian markets are being buffeted by the economic turmoil sweeping Asia.

Because Chubais was the lightning rod for popular frustration with the slow pace of measurable improvement in Russian life, his “ouster” has been welcomed by Communists and other Yeltsin opponents in the Duma, the lower house of parliament.

The Duma will now be under pressure to approve the president’s choice for a replacement for Chernomyrdin, probably a figure closer to Chubais’ uncompromising views of how the new market economy should function.

With the departure of Chernomyrdin and hawkish Interior Minister Anatoly S. Kulikov, the reformers, most of whom are expected to return to the Kremlin, will now have a freer hand in managing the transition’s endgame.

The respected daily Sevodnya ranked 30 Cabinet members by likelihood of reappointment, listing all but four as having even or better chances. The evening newspaper Izvestia also predicted that all but Chernomyrdin, Kulikov and a handful of no-names will return to the new leadership.

“We can pronounce the once all-powerful prime minister politically dead,” the business daily Kommersant declared Tuesday, reinforcing the impression left with most analysts that Yeltsin’s axing of Chernomyrdin was final and probably part of a political survival strategy bequeathed by the departing Chubais.