Shaky Economies, Shaky Presidents

The struggle for power in Russia escalated Monday as legislators refused to confirm Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, President Boris N. Yeltsin’s choice for prime minister, despite warnings that the country is on the brink of economic chaos.

The Duma, the lower house of parliament, voted a resounding 253 to 94 to reject the nomination of Chernomyrdin, who previously served for five years as Yeltsin’s prime minister and presided over much of Russia’s post-Soviet transformation.

Within hours, a defiant Yeltsin responded by renominating Chernomyrdin to the post, setting the stage for at least another week of high-stakes negotiations and another showdown in the Duma.

The president, confronted by ever-greater demands from Communists for a major role in a new government, further demonstrated his resolve by refusing to sign a power-sharing agreement that could have formed the basis for a coalition government.

“They voted Chernomyrdin down, and they did it with a bang too, hoping that it might make Yeltsin rethink his choice,” said Igor M. Bunin, director of the Center for Political Technologies. “But it is not in the character of Yeltsin to retreat.”

The inability of Yeltsin and the Communist-dominated Duma to forge a compromise leaves Russia without consensus on a program to revive its currency, the ruble, and to rescue the economy. If their battle continues over the next two weeks, the president could be compelled to dissolve parliament and rule temporarily by decree.

For Yeltsin, the defeat at the hands of parliament was especially embarrassing because it came on the eve of a summit meeting with President Clinton, who arrived in Moscow today for two days of talks.

While officials hold out little hope that a groundbreaking agreement will emerge from the summit, Clinton can offer his fellow president moral support and encouragement for his efforts to build democratic institutions and a market economy.

“What I want to do is go there and tell them that the easy thing to do is not the right thing to do,” Clinton told students at a school in Herndon, Va., before his departure for Moscow. “The easy thing to do would be to try to go back to the way they did it before, and it’s not possible.”

After Russia’s decision two weeks ago to devalue the ruble and freeze some foreign debt payments, Yeltsin appeared politically crippled. Calls for him to resign mounted, and he fired Prime Minister Sergei V. Kiriyenko and his Cabinet after they had served less than five months in office.

With no economic program and few credible candidates to draw from, the president called back Chernomyrdin, the uncharismatic former prime minister who became wealthy during the early days of Russia’s privatization but was credited by Yeltsin with maintaining the country’s stability.

Sensing that the president was seriously weakened, the Communist opposition in the Duma began calling for formation of a coalition government. As the ruble plummeted and banks collapsed, negotiators for Chernomyrdin and the Communists huddled for days behind closed doors, hammering out a power-sharing pact.

The negotiators agreed on a deal that would guarantee Chernomyrdin’s confirmation while giving some of the president’s powers to parliament and the prime minister. But after the pact was sent to the president for his approval, the Communists abruptly backed out of the deal.

On Monday, the Communists suddenly began demanding that the new Cabinet include 10 ministers from opposition parties--including the interior minister, who oversees the country’s police forces. Taking the floor of the Duma, Communist Party leader Gennady A. Zyuganov called on the army and police agencies to prevent any dissolution of parliament. And he warned that if his party’s demands were ignored in the formation of a new government, there could be a popular revolt.

“If they do not agree, then everything may spill out into the streets,” he said.

All of the Communist deputies in the Duma voted against Chernomyrdin. Moments after the balloting, a visibly shaken Kremlin negotiator Alexander Kotenkov stormed out of the Duma chamber and lashed out at the Communists.

“It’s not over yet,” he declared. “It’s far from being over. How can you deal with people who reach a political agreement with you one day and then say they didn’t do it? I call that political prostitution.”

Communists were not the only ones to oppose Chernomyrdin’s appointment. Pro-market deputies who view him as a symbol of the past five years, in which a handful of tycoons built vast empires from the ruins of the Soviet system, also voted against him.

Grigory A. Yavlinsky, leader of the liberal Yabloko faction, charged that Chernomyrdin created “a semi-criminal” economic system during his time as prime minister.

In a speech to the Duma before the vote, Chernomyrdin appealed for support, arguing that time is running out for the economy. As acting prime minister, Chernomyrdin is running the government along with acting ministers held over from Kiriyenko’s Cabinet. But they do not have the authority or the power to force through tough fiscal measures.

“Russia is on the verge of political and economic collapse,” he said. “We can only come out of the crisis by uniting our efforts.”

Chernomyrdin acknowledged that he made mistakes in his first stint as prime minister, but he blamed the devaluation of the ruble and the debt default on Kiriyenko.

He pledged to keep the banking system from collapse, protect citizens’ savings, maintain the ruble’s value, cut taxes, boost agriculture, support industry, and pay overdue wages and pensions--but offered no details of how he would accomplish this economic miracle.

“We must prevent a situation in which Russian citizens must pay with their savings for the mistakes of others,” he said. “This process cannot be dragged out. Russia should not be without a government.”

The battle over Chernomyrdin has strong parallels to the confirmation of Kiriyenko last spring.

Under the Russian Constitution, the president is allowed three attempts to obtain confirmation of a prime minister. If parliament initially rejects his choice, he can nominate a new candidate or the same person. If it rejects the president’s nominee three times, he must dissolve the body and call new parliamentary elections.

After Yeltsin fired Chernomyrdin in March and nominated Kiriyenko, the Duma rejected him twice in open balloting. When Yeltsin nominated him a third time, the lawmakers decided to cast secret ballots, and about two dozen Communists defied party orders and cast their ballots for Kiriyenko--helping him win confirmation and saving their own jobs.

Now, with the economy in deeper trouble, the Communists’ heightened rhetoric suggests that they do not intend to make the same mistake twice but plan to hold firm against Yeltsin’s nominee.

“The possibility of the Duma’s dissolution has seriously grown,” said Vladimir Ryzhkov, deputy chairman of the Duma and a Chernomyrdin backer.

Sergei L. Loiko of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.

KREMLIN SUMMIT: Clinton’s Moscow trip to unfold amid myriad uncertainties. A10