Move Over, Yeltsin

By Kevin Fedarko

When Boris Yeltsin's 63rd birthday rolled around last Tuesday, a reporter was unable to resist asking Victor Chernomyrdin whether he had sprung any special surprises on his boss. "We presented him with a huge bouquet of flowers," Chernomyrdin solemnly intoned. "We doubt if he received a bigger one from anyone else. We knew we couldn't allow this. Ours was the best."

It was a statement of seemingly needless obsequiousness for the man who is, at the moment, the second most powerful leader in Russia and the main link between an increasingly lethargic and isolated President and an ever more . fractured and cantankerous parliament. The Prime Minister is also a man who provokes deep ambivalence as Russians -- and the West -- struggle to figure out where he really stands on the issue of economic reform. Engaged in a high- wire act between the proponents of radical therapy and those who wish to dismantle it, he has emerged as a Prime Minister some revere but others fear may be steering his nation perilously close to the black hole of hyperinflation.

To many Russians, Victor Chernomyrdin, 55, is the only politician besides Yeltsin with the toughness, stability and integrity of character needed to pull the post-Soviet economy out of its tailspin. To Moscow's radical democrats, however, he personifies what former Finance Minister Boris Fyodorov calls the "lifeless and illiterate state-planning ideology of the red managers." To the West, Chernomyrdin appears little better than a dark horseman of Russia's impending apocalypse -- a flashback to Brezhnevite stagnation whose disdain for the most basic prescriptions of capitalism threatens to destroy reform.

For the doomsday predictions he inspires, Chernomyrdin has both his rhetoric and behavior to thank. Since taking office in December 1992, he has dismissed the "improvisations" of free-enterprise thinkers like Yegor Gaidar as "poorly thought-out experiments," taken a verbal slap at "market romanticism" and disparaged privatization by comparing it to Stalin's forced collectivization, which killed more than 10 million peasants during the 1930s. As for the Prime Minister's policy initiatives, International Monetary Fund officials weighing whether to unlock $1.5 billion in aid to Russia are most disturbed by his willingness to pump increasingly worthless rubles into inefficient state enterprises. Only last week, Chernomyrdin's new team hammered out a bailout plan that could hand the faltering agricultural sector more than 25 trillion rubles.

Equally worrying is his habit of moving back the goalposts on Russia's runaway inflation rate, which experts fear may soon roar to more than 50% a month. In November, Chernomyrdin promised to hold price rises down to 5% a month; in January, after inflation shot to 12%, he began talking in terms of 8% to 9%. Then two weeks ago, while attending the annual World Economic Forum at the Swiss resort of Davos, his pledge of 18% prompted an exasperated Fyodorov to quip that "after the three-hour flight back to Moscow, there will probably be a different figure."

! Aware that Western governments could shut off the aid taps, Chernomyrdin has attempted to assuage concern with carefully crafted assurances of his commitment to reform. But such moves tend to jar as much as the loud black- and-green houndstooth jacket he sported in Davos -- presumably as a fashionable alternative to the boxlike suits that formerly made him look like a stock figure from Central Committee Casting. Whether he is reciting scripted nostrums for European bankers -- "Fighting inflation remains our top priority" -- or chatting up Pope John Paul II in the Vatican, few in the West seem reassured by the hastily polished facade.

After reeling off lines like this, the Prime Minister often seems unable to resist the impulse to revert to what he really is: a blustery, bullying, no- nonsense shop boss who talks tough, demands absolute obedience from subordinates and bristles like a hedgehog if criticized. At a press conference, a reporter inquired whether Chernomyrdin was bothered by the fact that one of the most important players on his economic team, Victor Gerashchenko, is being called "the world's worst central banker." If the reporter would simply bother to meet Gerashchenko, Chernomyrdin barked -- using a Russian colloquialism more appropriate for addressing an unruly factory worker -- he would discover a competent banker and a thoroughly likable human being.

Chernomyrdin is handicapped by a biography that reads like a classic Politburo life story from the communist period: a proletarian turned technocrat from the Russian hinterlands works his way to the top in Moscow through strategic postings in the state and party bureaucracy. Chernomyrdin won great respect -- and met Yeltsin -- during his years in the Soviet oil and gas industries but seemed lost in the shuffle of faceless bureaucrats who moved in and out of the Moscow power structure. In 1989 he brightened his resume by turning the Ministries of Oil and Gas into Gazprom, a highly successful state-owned business that negotiated favorable deals with the West.

Contrary to the worst predictions, the former industrial ideologue has demonstrated a surprising willingness to depart from dogma and embrace pragmatism. Like the pipefitter he once was, he seems eager to try any angle or approach as long as it achieves results. For the Prime Minister, says one of his aides, "the main criterion is 'Can you or can't you?' " Ordinary Russians seem taken with his forthright, no-frills style. Fond of dropping unvarnished -- and often unprintable -- comments, Chernomyrdin strikes Russians as far more accessible than the refined and snobbishly aloof Gaidar team. To the delight of his compatriots, he seems genuinely devoid of pretense and has a reputed fondness for saccharine verse, brass bands and accordion music -- as well as the bread and salt traditionally offered at welcoming ceremonies, which he samples with the artless gusto of a peasant.

Chernomyrdin was pulled into the political spotlight late in 1992, when Yeltsin was forced to replace Gaidar with a Prime Minister more to the liking of parliamentary hard-liners fed up with the government's self-important young eggheads, who had learned their economics from textbooks rather than on the shop floor. Once in office, the new Prime Minister lost no time attempting to institute price and profit controls on basic items like bread, milk and vodka. He also increased cheap state credits to the energy industry and liquidated the 2.6 billion-ruble debt of a major Moscow bank run by an old gas-industry crony. After this ominous start, however, he did nothing more to sidetrack the radical reformers' tough monetary policies and even brought Gaidar back into the government.

The Prime Minister's present ascendancy owes much to his loyalty to Yeltsin, but his biggest boost came with the humiliating performance of the splintered and ego-driven reformers in Russia's first parliamentary elections two months ago. The ballot-box debacle strengthened Chernomyrdin's hand against ministers like Fyodorov who support the shock therapy that Russians find so difficult to absorb. As reformers resign from his Cabinet in frustration, he appears free to run things his way. And that makes him the man of the hour for the Clinton Administration, which has been assiduously cultivating a working relationship with the Prime Minister. "Chernomyrdin's the key player right now," says a Clinton aide. "He's very reliable, he's a man of his word, and he's loyal to Yeltsin."

As for the renovation taking place within the Russian government, no metaphor captures the spirit of this process better than Chernomyrdin's offices, which have been moved to the fifth floor of the White House -- the target of several dozen tank salvos during October's parliamentary revolt. As the sound of hammers and drills reverberates through the corridors, the Prime Minister's opulent new headquarters is swiftly taking shape. And so too is the edifice of his power -- still half built but rapidly nearing formidable completion.

With reporting by David Aikman and James Carney/Washington, Jay Branegan/Davos and John Kohan/Moscow