Rumblings in Russia - Russian government

Progressive, The, July, 1999 by Boris Kagarlitsky

`The time of Yeltsin and his cronies is coming to an end'

The war in the Balkans has succeeded in one respect: It has revealed the scale of anti-American feeling in Russian society, especially among younger people. The reason does not lie in solidarity with "brother Slavs" and still less in the Orthodox faith--most young people in Russia do not even know how to cross themselves properly. The war in Yugoslavia simply gave them the chance to express what they had already been thinking for a long time.

For young people, the free market reforms dictated by Washington have meant a shortage of good jobs, expensive but nevertheless third-rate education, and the lack of career prospects. Since the end of the Soviet Union, Russia has been making one-sided concessions to Washington in exchange for promises that we would be accepted into the "civilized world" (as though we had previously been savages and barbarians). But instead we received only poverty, humiliation, and economic collapse.

After NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia began, Russians splattered the American consulate in Moscow with rotten eggs and paint bombs. A turning point had been reached. People had grown tired of feeling helpless, of being humiliated, of being ashamed of themselves. They wanted to act.

The failure of the Americans in the Balkans became the subject of jokes, and Russian computer hackers began assaults on official sites in the United States to the accompaniment of sympathetic reports in the press. One tabloid devoted a front page to portraits of Clinton and Milosevic, with the caption A PRISON CELL IS HUNGRY FOR THEM. Another published a puzzle in which readers were required to determine, on the basis of egg stains, which of the windows of the U.S. Embassy were in the cross-hairs of a gun-sight. A correspondent in the Balkans for the liberal Novaya Gazeta admitted that he dreamed of the Russian Black Sea Fleet sailing to the Adriatic, even though he acknowledged that this would mean war.

Yevgeny Primakov, Russia's prime minister for eight months until Boris Yeltsin dismissed him on May 12, caught the change of mood expertly. He won massive support for his decision to turn his aircraft around over the Atlantic and return to Moscow rather than meet with the Clinton Administration as it began its war against Yugoslavia.

He also departed from the absolute devotion to the free market, which has so marked the Yeltsin period. His power rested on the managers of military-industrial enterprises that had remained within the state sector, and which therefore had not collapsed like privatized industry. In conducting negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on writing off part of Russia's debt, the Primakov government created an important precedent for debtor countries.

Yeltsin appointed Primakov under duress as a crisis gripped the country last August when the economy crashed. The political problem was not simply that no free market politician had sufficient support to take over the running of the government. The main thing was that no one wanted to take on the job. Ministerial candidates were regarded as political suicide cases.

The Primakov government managed to limit the acuteness of the crisis. The threatened catastrophe did not occur; hunger was avoided; the ruble was stabilized; and the economy even began to record a little growth. Wages began to be paid more promptly. Though the government was systematically slandered in the press, its popularity increased steadily.

Precisely because of this, the determination in the Kremlin to be rid of the premier began to grow. Primakov's popularity was posing a threat to the Kremlin, which was losing control of the levers of political power. And he was gaining momentum to take more decisive steps. Talk began to be heard of nationalizing part of the oil industry, and a number of large enterprises themselves asked to be reabsorbed into the state sector. At the same time, Primakov took measures to halt the plunder of the country's resources by the oligarchs who controlled most of the private sector.

Every success recorded by the Primakov government meant increased fears for the oligarchs. In the Kremlin, leading officials of the presidential apparatus understood perfectly that the existing situation could not continue. The situation of dual power had to be brought to an end. The government of the left-center had done what it was charged with doing; now the time had come for it to depart.

It was at precisely this moment that Victor Chernomyrdin reappeared on the political scene as President Yeltsin's special representative on Yugoslavia. Why such a representative should be needed is not altogether clear. The entire foreign ministry is now occupied almost exclusively with the Balkan crisis. Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, like Primakov, is an experienced diplomat with an intimate knowledge of the situation. By contrast, Chernomyrdin has never had anything to do with the Balkans, and has no diplomatic experience. Even when prime minister, he showed little interest in foreign policy, which was handled by the president's team. Meanwhile, Chernomyrdin has a solid reputation in Russia as someone who invariably brings ruin to any enterprise in which he becomes involved--though not, it is true, without benefits for himself.