Yeltsin might have happily complied–but he faced opposition within his own camp. Chernomyrdin, the go-slow apparatchik who had taken Gaidar’s place as prime minister, balked. The standoff lasted for three days. Finally, a beaming and robust Chernomyrdin announced the shape of the new government: a pro-industry team all but stripped of reformers. Said the triumphant prime minister, “The period of market romanticism is in the past.”
So were Yeltsin’s dreams for a new Russia. Yeltsin had set out to break the Soviet powers that be–collective-farm directors, factory bosses and party apparatchiks–with a program of radical economic reform. Instead, perhaps inevitably, they broke him. The victory of communists and archnationalists in last month’s Russian election shook Yeltsin’s confidence–and his power base. Hardly had Clinton left the Kremlin when Yeltsin walked away from his own program. “Yeltsin is finally getting to be a Russian,” gloated Nikolai Travkin, a longtime political foe.
That’s not exactly good news for those, like Clinton, who have embraced Yeltsin as the best hope for reform. American officials tried to sound upbeat despite the departure of their favored free marketeers; thev even praised Chernomyrdin as “tough” and “a good politician.” But the West’s confidence in Moscow won’t be what it was. Two of the Russian government’s high-profile Western economic advisers. Jeffrey Sachs and Anders Aslund, quit in frustration last week. And within the Russian government, Fyodorov had been the bankers’ man: he had worked at the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and, as finance minister, labored to control spending. At the summit Clinton promised Yeltsin that he would pressure the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to ease up on Russia. But international lenders may not be willing to throw money at Russia if it will be used just to keep the ruble-printing presses busy. The markets’ verdict on the reformers’ loss of control is already in: last week the ruble tumbled by more than 15 percent against the dollar.
Yeltsin’s vow to make policy more “socially oriented” doesn’t mean a return to communism. It’s clear, though, that the very presence of supernationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky on the political scene has been enough to convince the government that it has to change course. At the same time, Russian foreign policy seems to be taking a new and perhaps more dangerous turn. In a speech to Russian diplomats last week, Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev made some startling comments about the defense of Russia’s vital interest in the countries of the old Soviet Union, including the Baltic states. This. too, seemed to be a backtrack. Only davs earlier, Yeltsin had assured Clinton that Russia had no “neoimperial” ambitions.
Yeltsin himself seems shaky and disengaged at times. U.S. officials say the Russian president gave an impressive performance during Clinton’s visit, but at a recent press conference he seemed to have trouble understanding questions asked by Russian reporters. “Yeltsin is a bit like a Siberian bear,” says one senior diplomat. “He throws himself into something when he’s excited by it, but then he goes into hibernation.” Chernomyrdin, in contrast, is energetically building up a network of allies, probably for an eventual bid for the presidency. His style is Soviet and hierarchical. At a government meeting shortly before the Parliament crisis last fall, Chernomyrdin abruptly commanded the minister of communications to stand and explain why he allowed antigovernment programs to appear on television. The minister replied that programming was really up to the TV station. According to Mikhail Poltoranin, a close Yeltsin ally who was there, Chernomyrdin shouted, “What kind of minister are you? If the programming is no good, just shut it down! If you can’t control such things, you’re fired.” Chernomyrdin retracted the dismissal but demanded an explanation in writing the next morning.
Both Yeltsin and Chernomyrdin assured Washington that reforms will “expand.” That’s just rhetoric. The new government, which includes only one radical reformer, is packed with Soviet-style bosses: a former factory director, a collective-farm director, a central-bank chief who believes in state subsidies for industry. They are what one Western diplomat in Moscow calls “the large-bottomed people” men for whom support of Russia’s inefficient industry and agriculture is second nature.
The large-bottomed people have promised to put Russia’s collapsed industry back on its feet. Chernomyrdin plans to shift the government’s focus from preventing hyperinflation to preventing a “hyperrecession.” Last week he pledged to pay back government debts to the military and agricultural industries more than $5 billion. Western economists worry that such increased spending will lead to runaway inflation and further political instability. The radicals still remaining in the Russian Parliament share those fears. If America backs the prime minister’s version of reform, it will be sorry, says Sergei Yushenkov, a democrat in Parliament. “In five or 10 years,” he says, “they will reap the fruits of their mistaken policy–increased social tensions, which will help the nationalist forces and lead to increased military-industrial spending.”
And what might the foreign policy of such a Russia be? Kozyrev may be agreeably small-bottomed, but his speech last week was a masterpiece of double-talk. It was hard-line enough to convince Russia’s nationalists that he was one of them, but careful to avoid a complete break with his chums in the State Department.
In reassessing their policies toward Moscow, Western governments must keep in mind that the Russian people, in a democratic election, voted against radical economic reform. The public’s response was caused partly by a failure of communication: the reformers didn’t let the public know what they were doing, and why the cost in economic suffering had to be so high. But Yeltsin’s radical team–and Western economists and advisers, too–also ignored a more fundamental obstacle. Lacking Western institutions and traditions of individualism (not to mention laws and taxes that encourage entrepreneurship), how could Russia transform itself? It is still true that most Russians view business–the backbone of reform–as dirty. Yeltsin’s fleeting dream of a capitalist Russia was no more realistic than most other dreams. For him, his people and his Western supporters, the question now is no longer how to keep moving forward, but how to keep from slipping backward.
