Cabinet Shuffle Signals Yeltsin’s Choice of an Heir

President Boris N. Yeltsin for the first time on Monday identified his preferred political heir, the colorless and little-known head of the main successor to the KGB, signaling the end of an internal Kremlin struggle and the apparent start of a campaign by Yeltsin loyalists to keep power after next year’s election.

The ailing and erratic Yeltsin shocked Russians by firing his entire Cabinet for the fourth time in 17 months. He announced that Vladimir V. Putin, a former spy who is chief of the Federal Security Service and secretary of the Security Council, would replace outgoing Prime Minister Sergei V. Stepashin.

Yeltsin also urged Russians to support Putin in the presidential election. The announcement of a chosen successor one year before the election signals the determination of Yeltsin’s inner circle to hold on to power.

The post of prime minister has been a revolving door in Yeltsin’s later years as president. He ousted Yevgeny M. Primakov in May.

The difference this time is Yeltsin’s backing of Putin for president, in effect marking the end of a behind-the-scenes struggle over who would be the Kremlin’s presidential candidate. Yeltsin, 68, is barred from running for a third term but has never before clearly designated a successor.

In a televised address, Yeltsin also set the date for parliamentary elections, Dec. 19, and pledged a clean, fair vote.

“Next year, for the first time in the country’s history, the first president of Russia will hand over power to a newly elected president,” he vowed.

Yeltsin, reading slowly from a prepared script, expressed his hope Monday that Russians would back Putin.

“I have decided to name a man who, in my opinion, is able to consolidate society. Relying on the broadest of political forces, he will ensure the continuation of reforms in Russia,” Yeltsin said.

But his decision to dump Stepashin’s government only three months after appointing it caused shock waves.

“It’s hard to explain madness. The people have grown tired of watching a sick leader who is not capable of doing his job,” Boris Y. Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister who was himself sacked by Yeltsin in March 1997, told Radio Echo of Moscow.

Putin, 46, confirmed Monday that he will run for the presidency. But he seems an odd choice.

His shadowy career as an intelligence officer in Germany in Soviet times and his low political profile mean he is little known to Russians. The chief rationale for his selection seems to have been his loyalty to Yeltsin and the president’s entourage, known here as The Family.

Key figures in Yeltsin’s inner circle are his daughter Tatyana Dyachenko; his chief of staff, Alexander S. Voloshin; and tycoon Boris A. Berezovsky. There had been speculation that they might try to find a way to allow Yeltsin to run again, and Stepashin’s name also had surfaced briefly as a possible candidate.

Yeltsin’s selection of Putin came after a powerful new political alliance, Fatherland-All Russia, emerged last week. Led by Moscow Mayor Yuri M. Luzhkov, the group poses a stark threat to Yeltsin’s entourage.

Luzhkov has been trying to entice the popular Primakov to take the leading position in the new coalition. But Primakov, whose popular support could swing the election, has been coy about his plans.

Stepashin, a Yeltsin loyalist who apparently imagined he had the president’s blessing, was visibly upset after his dismissal, saying he had opposed it in a meeting with Yeltsin.

In an emotional address to the outgoing Cabinet, Stepashin said that his government had been civilized and free of corruption and that it won the respect of the West during its brief tenure. Yeltsin gave no reasons for firing Stepashin and even praised his work.

“Yeltsin and The Family just chose another guy, and Yeltsin put it quite bluntly before the camera,” said analyst Andrei A. Piontkovsky, director of the Independent Institute for Strategic Studies.

In Washington, the Clinton administration shrugged off the Russian reshuffle, asserting that it expects few changes in matters of concern to the United States.

“I don’t think we should blow this out of proportion,” State Department spokesman James P. Rubin said in the administration’s official response to the changes.

“We do have some experience with Mr. Putin and have a constructive relationship with him,” Rubin said.

He said Vice President Al Gore’s periodic meetings with Russia’s prime ministers will continue.

Other officials said Yeltsin makes changes in his government so often that the United States has learned to take them in stride.

In his first interview as acting prime minister, Putin said that Stepashin’s government was not dismissed for poor performance but because “it was expedient to change the political configuration in Russia on the eve of Duma [lower house of parliament] elections, in view of the presidential elections and considering the developments in the Caucasus.”

He was referring to Russia’s current battle against a group of about 1,000 fighters who crossed from separatist Chechnya into the neighboring southern republic of Dagestan on Saturday and seized several villages, triggering the worst fighting in the region since the Chechen war ended three years ago.

The naming of Putin as preferred successor indicates that the presidential circle recognizes that Yeltsin, unpopular and often unsteady in public, is now unelectable--even if he could get around the constitutional rules barring him from seeking a third term.

But if Putin proves difficult to sell to the Russian electorate and the plan to install him as the next president looks doomed, it is not at all clear that Yeltsin’s circle will relinquish power.

Analyst Vyacheslav A. Nikonov, Yeltsin’s former campaign manager, said the presidential circle had launched its last battle for power but was losing control of events.

Interviewed on Russia’s NTV television after being appointed, Putin seemed formal and stiff and rarely smiled. He said Yeltsin told him and Stepashin of his plans to switch prime ministers Thursday--just days after the emergence of Luzhkov’s new coalition with regional leaders.

Nikonov said Stepashin was let go because of his failure to stop the rise of those viewed by Yeltsin’s entourage as enemies, and particularly for failing to prevent the formation of the Fatherland-All Russia movement.

“Since the Kremlin will have fewer and fewer levers to control the situation and to influence parliamentary and presidential elections, force will finally become the Kremlin’s last and only reserve to maintain its grasp on power,” he said.

However, Piontkovsky said the country’s leadership could use media it controls to build Putin’s power and get him elected.

“The most important thing today is that Yeltsin is ready to go legitimately and is not planning to look for exotic ways to extend his term,” Piontkovsky said.

Yeltsin said that as prime minister, Putin will have time to prove himself.

“I have confidence in him. But I also want all those who come to the polling stations in July 2000 to have similar confidence in him,” the president said.

Putin needs to be confirmed by the Duma, but with parliamentary elections set for December, deputies are seen as unlikely to block his candidacy because of the threat that Yeltsin could dissolve the parliament, taking away the perks of office they will rely on in the campaign.

The Duma is due to discuss the matter Monday, and Chairman Gennady N. Seleznyov said Putin is likely to be approved.

Putin’s first challenge will be to resolve the crisis in Dagestan and drive the insurgents back across the border. The complexity of that task was underlined Monday by reports that Russian forces killed four Dagestani police Sunday, mistaking them for Chechen fighters, and also accidentally bombed a village in nearby Georgia.

Putin said he will make few Cabinet changes and will pursue policies similar to Stepashin’s.

Times staff writer Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this report.

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Vladimir V. Putin

* Age: 46

* Born: Oct. 7, 1952, in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg

* Rank: Lieutenant colonel in the Federal Security Service, the main successor agency to the Soviet KGB.

* Education: Graduated in 1975 with a law degree from Leningrad State University.

* Family: Married, with two children.

* Career: Joined the KGB immediately after graduation in 1975 and worked in the Main Intelligence Directorate and Foreign Intelligence Service. Spent most of the next 15 years working as an intelligence agent in Germany. Starting in 1990, built a political career in his hometown as an advisor to Mayor Anatoly A. Sobchak, first deputy mayor and the head of the St. Petersburg branch of the pro-Yeltsin Our Home Is Russia political party. In 1997, appointed Yeltsin’s deputy chief of staff, and, in July 1998, director of the Federal Security Service. Named acting prime minister and Yeltsin’s preferred successor as president on Aug. 9, 1999.

IG Vladimi V. Putin, REBECCA PERRY / Los Angeles Times