Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 27, 1994 TAG: 9401270198
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Cox News Service
DATELINE: MOSCOW LENGTH: Medium
By accepting the passionate and prolonged resignation of Western-trained Finance Minister Boris Fyodorov, Yeltsin finished sweeping the Kremlin clean of economic aides committed to extracting Russia from its Communist heritage.
"Boris Nikolaeyvich, the country has had an economic coup; our only hope is you," pleaded 35-year-old Fyodorov in a brooding lament after Yeltsin met with him and chose not to keep him on.
His reformist ally Yegor Gaidar, who left as economics minister 10 days earlier, said, "The period of reforms has ended from the top down."
For 150 years, the lords of the Kremlin have alternated between entrusting governance to Western-influenced modernizers and inward-looking Slavophile conservatives. Now, once again, the modernizers are on the outs - who knows for how long.
"Where's the drama?" insisted Vladimir Shumeiko, a Yeltsin loyalist who is chairman of the upper house of parliament. He contended that the Moscow press was putting too much weight on the departures from the Cabinet of himself, Fyodorov and Gaidar.
Yeltsin did his best on this slushy, leaden day to de-emphasize the import of what happened. He did not appear on state television, thus extending the period of near invisibility that began when he waved goodbye to President Clinton at their recent summit.
Yet not since late 1990 when Yeltsin's predecessor, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, turned sharply away from perestroika reforms to gain Army and KGB support, has Moscow seen such an abrupt turn away from a modernizing course.
This latest reversal began with December elections for parliament, in which Communists and ultranationalists out-polled reform blocs led by Yeltsin's Cabinet officials. Yeltsin gradually abandoned the most extreme pro-capitalist policies, which brought the resignations of his Westward-looking aides and foreign advisers.
Now Yeltsin's Big Three economic advisers are men who rose through the hierarchy of huge Communist-designed industries. They blame Russia's troubles on Western-made tight money policies and believe the answer is to keep ruble-gobbling monster state enterprises running with the help of multi-trillion-ruble public subsidies.
Those operating the main economic levers now will be:
Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, 55, a former executive of the Gasprom energy monopoly who was forced on Yeltsin as his No. 2 man by the pro-Communist Supreme Soviet in December 1992.
First Deputy Minister Oleg Soskovets, 44, former head of the Karaganda metallurgical complex and later minister of metallurgy. He is a leader of the so-called industry lobby.
Deputy Minister Alexander Zaveryukha, 53, a former collective farm boss from the Ural Mountains who was a top leader of the pro-Communist Agrarian Party.
The only senior reformist left is Anatoly Chubais, 38, in charge of the privatization program.
Memo: longer version ran in the State edition