Yeltsin’s Moves Serve to Remind Foes He’s in Charge

The television cameras were rolling. The Kremlin court was assembled. President Boris N. Yeltsin sat at the head of the table. To his right was Patriarch Alexi II, head of the Russian Orthodox Church; to his left was the soon-to-be-former prime minister, Yevgeny M. Primakov.

Yeltsin began to speak, then paused. Something was wrong. His new first deputy prime minister, Sergei V. Stepashin, was across the room--not in his proper place next to Primakov. Yeltsin glowered at his ministers. “You are seated in the wrong way,” he finally barked. “Do it the right way.” A Kremlin aide hastily moved aside, and Stepashin took his rightful chair.

To some viewers last week it was like a scene from the film “The Madness of King George,” but the message was clear: Yeltsin had resumed his place on the throne and was in no mood to tolerate the slightest challenge to his authority.

After months of illness that left Yeltsin, 68, relegated to a figurehead role, the unpredictable president has emerged in the last seven weeks with renewed energy and a determination to reassert himself in affairs of state.

His resurgence reached a peak Wednesday--a week after the Kremlin meeting--when he abruptly fired Primakov and named Stepashin to take his place.

Like the czars and Soviet dictators before him, Russia’s first democratically elected president appears unwilling to part with power, despite the weakened condition of his body and mind.

“Yeltsin is just as obsessed with staying in power as Stalin was,” said Andrei A. Piontkovsky, director of the Independent Institute for Strategic Studies in Moscow. “Beneath this desire is Yeltsin’s phenomenal Siberian constitution that makes it possible for him to balance on the brink of collapse and then make a remarkable comeback.”

In recent weeks, Yeltsin has increased his visibility and appeared frequently on television, reading speeches in a robust voice and wearing new glasses that give him a professorial air.

His face is often puffy, perhaps from medication. He walks unsteadily and sometimes stumbles. He occasionally slurs his words or blurts out nonsensical comments. Nevertheless, he is proving that the critics who wrote him off last winter were, at best, premature.

Former Yeltsin aides say the president is driven largely by his wish to go down in history as a great leader who brought democracy to the world’s largest country--but he realizes that he may well be remembered better for presiding over Russia’s deterioration after the breakup of the Soviet Union.

“What worries President Yeltsin most of all today is that his last term is not coming to a close the way he wished it would,” said Georgy A. Satarov, who once served on Yeltsin’s Security Council. “He absolutely abhors the idea that people will remember him as an evil character who destroyed Russia’s grandeur and relegated it to the status of a Third World country.”

The impeachment debate that began Thursday in the Duma, the lower house of parliament, has little chance of forcing Yeltsin from office because the Russian Constitution so heavily favors the president. However, a vote to impeach the president could disgrace Yeltsin barely a year before his term is scheduled to end.

To his foes, Yeltsin is like the shatun--the Russian bear awakened prematurely from hibernation that, ravenous and unpredictable, crashes recklessly through the woods, posing a danger to anything in its path.

Exercising power largely through his decisions on whom to hire or fire, Yeltsin has long made it a point to remove any possible rivals, no matter what the cost to the country. Among the casualties have been former national security advisor Alexander I. Lebed, former Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin and now Primakov.

The president was especially eager to wrest power back from Primakov, a compromise prime minister whom the president was forced to accept after Russia’s fiscal collapse last year. During his eight months in office, the low-key Primakov built a strong base of power and became more popular than his boss.

In a recent poll, only 4% of Russians surveyed said they trusted Yeltsin, while 49% said they trusted Primakov--an avalanche of support, by Russian standards. If the presidential election were held today, the same poll by the Public Opinion Foundation showed that Primakov would beat anyone else. Yeltsin would not even get 1% of the vote.

Since Yeltsin won reelection in July 1996, illness has kept him out of action for a total of 11 months--nearly a third of his term. He spent more than five months in the hospital for treatment of a heart attack, double pneumonia and a bleeding ulcer. He spent another six months recovering at a sanatorium and at his estate near Moscow.

His continual health problems and frequently erratic behavior have caused widespread speculation about his mental state. His doctors acknowledge that he suffers from a “loss of concentration.” His critics are much harsher.

“I don’t think Yeltsin is capable of making any decisions at all, rationally or irrationally,” said Vyacheslav A. Nikonov, who was Yeltsin’s image-maker during the 1996 campaign. “It seems to me that he doesn’t understand what he’s doing.”

According to Nikonov and other critics, Yeltsin is propped up by a small circle of Kremlin insiders, including the president’s daughter Tatyana Dyachenko, who make all crucial decisions for the president. Critics say Yeltsin’s schedule is limited to a few hours a day--but carefully designed to take best advantage of his lucid moments and create the public image that he is in charge.

“He does look better than some time ago, but I think it is a purely superficial impression,” said Vyacheslav V. Kostikov, a former Yeltsin spokesman. “What we see on television are small, carefully selected pieces, but even in them you can see that his facial expressions and his gestures are far from being healthy.”

Yeltsin has long been known for his unexpected behavior--misspeaking at diplomatic events and stumbling at public ceremonies. The president has often been accused of drinking excessively. In television appearances over the past year, the president has sometimes seemed confused, pausing for long periods in the middle of an answer as if he had lost his way.

In October, the president canceled a trip to Vienna at the last minute because of what doctors vaguely called an “asthenic” mental state--a weakened condition that Western doctors said could range from depression to dementia.

In a sign that Yeltsin was being put out to pasture, the Kremlin said Primakov would take over the day-to-day running of the government. During the long Russian winter, Yeltsin was in such poor shape that it was news when he showed up at the Kremlin.

In March, however, after undergoing ulcer treatment that kept him from drinking alcohol, Yeltsin was discharged from the hospital looking better than he had in months.

Less than a week later, NATO began bombing Yugoslavia. Often at his best during a crisis, Yeltsin appeared invigorated. He harshly criticized the attack and personally appealed to President Clinton to halt the bombing--while holding back Russian hawks who wanted to join the fight.

Trying to undo some of Primakov’s political gains, he moved to rebuild his support in the higher echelons of government, firing a number of top officials and replacing them with loyalists. Yeltsin’s chief doctor, Sergei P. Mironov, said the president was in good enough shape to serve beyond the end of his term next year.

Mironov said his major concern is Yeltsin’s susceptibility to common ailments that can wear him down and affect his mental state.

With his health always in doubt, some question how well Yeltsin can hold up under the strain of fighting the Duma on two fronts: his impeachment and the confirmation of Stepashin as his new prime minister.

Duma leaders said Wednesday that Yeltsin appeared confused when he first told them who would replace Primakov. The president telephoned the leaders of both houses of parliament and informed them that he had selected Railways Minister Nikolai Y. Aksyonenko. Then the Kremlin submitted Stepashin’s name.

Communist Party leader Gennady A. Zyuganov, who listened in on Yeltsin’s conversation with Duma Speaker Gennady N. Seleznyov, called the president’s detachment a “most amazing thing. . . . I believe he does not remember what he said just 15 minutes earlier.”