Russian Economic Chief Hints at Renationalizing Some Firms

The Communist put in charge of repairing Russia’s ruined economy said Tuesday that a dose of Soviet-style medicine--nationalization--may be needed to pull the country back from the brink.

After six years of supposed economic reforms, First Deputy Prime Minister Yuri D. Maslyukov said tartly, “We have got a crisis instead of a market, as well as a collapse of the financial system and all the rest.”

For months now, millions of Russians have gone without pay or pensions, and the economy collapsed in August after an earlier government of avowed reformers tacitly allowed the currency, the ruble, to plummet in value.

Maslyukov, a former head of the powerful Soviet state planning agency, Gosplan, rejected as “bosh” widespread speculation that the incoming Cabinet, which is still being assembled, will push for a revival of state socialism.

But two days before new Prime Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov’s team is scheduled to convene in the Kremlin for its maiden session, Maslyukov said that he and the other ministers must intervene far more energetically to salvage what remains of an economy that, by some estimates, has withered by 50% since Soviet days.

“It is necessary to go to a market economy, but very cautiously,” Maslyukov said in remarks reported by the Itar-Tass news agency. “The role of the state should of course be increased, because if the state is not a partner, nobody knows the rules of the game.”

After meeting with a group of factory directors, Maslyukov, a Communist member of the legislature tapped to be Primakov’s lieutenant for economic strategy, insisted that the incoming government has no desire to take control of private businesses.

But, he added, plants that were privatized at bargain-basement prices--often to insiders or criminals--or those not making a profit could be nationalized.

The ruble, which has shed more than half its value since the state stopped propping it up Aug. 17, played a waiting game Tuesday, hovering around the official rate of 16 to the dollar.