Dissenter Resigns Kremlin Position

President Vladimir V. Putin accepted the resignation of a once-influential economic advisor turned Kremlin critic Tuesday, hours after the maverick aide said he could no longer work in a government that had done away with political freedoms.

Andrei Illarionov had clashed bitterly with other members of Putin’s administration for more than a year, and most of his duties were taken away from him nearly a year ago. But he had been kept in his position in what many observers viewed as an effort by the Kremlin to show that different opinions were tolerated even at the highest political levels.

Illarionov issued a bitter blast at his rivals as he quit Tuesday.

“It is one thing to work in a partly free country, which Russia was six years ago. It is quite another when the country has ceased to be politically free,” he said Tuesday, according to the Itar-Tass news agency. “I did not sign a contract with such a state, and therefore it is absolutely impossible to remain in this post.”

The Kremlin press service later said Putin had agreed to let his advisor step down.

Illarionov’s split with Putin broke into the open at the advisor’s annual year-end news conference a year ago, when he harshly criticized the takeover of Yukos Oil Co.’s main production unit by a state-owned company and warned of far-reaching repercussions for Russia’s economy.

“The sale of the main oil-producing asset of the best Russian oil company ... and its purchase by Rosneft company, 100% owned by the state, has undoubtedly become the scam of the year,” Illarionov said at the 2004 news conference, days after Putin praised the deal and called it legal.

In early January, Illarionov was stripped of his duties as envoy to the Group of 8 leading industrialized nations. Since then, he has lacked influence while remaining the lone dissenter in a Kremlin dominated by Putin’s fellow KGB veterans.

Sergei Ivanenko, deputy leader of the liberal Yabloko party, told the Russian news agency Interfax: “This resignation is quite symbolic. It shows clearly the line that the government has pursued in the past two or three years -- a line toward building state capitalism and restricting democratic freedoms, including in the economic area.”

Illarionov fiercely criticized Kremlin policy last week, saying that political freedom in Russia had steadily declined and that government-controlled corporations had stifled competition and ignored public interests.

Illarionov, 44, has repeatedly criticized what he says is a return to inefficient state control of the economy.

He had become a vocal critic of moves to restore state control over the energy sector. In particular, he lambasted the virtual nationalization of the Yukos Oil empire formerly run by jailed tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, a longtime Russian prime minister who is now ambassador to Ukraine, said Illarionov’s criticism of the government was unfounded.

“It was a mistake to keep him in the Kremlin for so long,” Chernomyrdin said, according to Interfax. “I have always been stunned by how much anger and negative emotions he harbored.”

Illarionov said Tuesday that he had a number of reasons for resigning but his main concern was an increasingly state-controlled economy.

Among the latest examples, Russia’s biggest car maker, Avtovaz, elected a new board last week with top managers representing the state.