By Boris Kagarlitsky
MOSCOW — On the morning of March 23, no-one in Moscow was expecting anything special to happen. But at 11 o'clock, radio and television reported that President Boris Yeltsin, after meeting with Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin, had sacked the entire government from the PM down.
That evening it was announced that the little-known fuel and energy minister, Sergey Kiriyenko, whom vice-premier Boris Nemtsov had brought from Nizhny Novgorod a few months earlier, would form the new government.
Only 35 years old, Kiriyenko in Soviet times had worked in the Communist Party's youth apparatus. Later, as befitting a young member of the nomenklatura, he became a banker. Like many bankers, he then joined the state service. As part of Nemtsov's entourage, Kiriyenko became a favourite of
powerful industrial magnate Boris Berezovsky.
Berezovsky has for several months been trying to secure the sacking of Chubais and Nemtsov, the patrons of his competitors. Berezovsky seems to have been the only person in the country to foresee the sacking of the cabinet. The day before Yeltsin's announcement, Berezovsky had given a strange interview to the television program Itogi full of obscure hints, the meaning of which was only revealed later.
It is amusing to note that, just a few weeks earlier, western commentators and Yeltsin himself had been hailing the achievements of the Russian government, which in Chernomyrdin's inimitable phrase, had managed to "slow the rate of growth of the decline". Yeltsin had promised that Chubais and Nemtsov would remain in the government at least until the year 2000.
While Yeltsin seems to have decided to sack the government on impulse and without preparation, one still has to give the president credit for his political instincts. Throughout the preceding months, the government has been split into rival groups which no longer concealed their hostility toward one another.
The Chernomyrdin group had been waging war all but openly on the people around Chubais. Yeltsin acted like the ancient Persian ruler who, on learning of the enmity between two of his courtiers, had both of them executed. With Yeltsin the events passed without bloodshed, but the political positions of both groups were extensively undermined.
On March 23, Yeltsin also sacked another of the regime's strongmen, interior minister General Anatoly Kulikov, who had served Yeltsin loyally during the events of October 1993 and during the Chechen war. Yeltsin evidently took the view that the general had concentrated too much power in his hands and had become dangerous.
Although both Chubais and Chernomyrdin have lost their jobs, the scale of the setbacks they have suffered is quite different to that of ordinary Russians in the last few years. Neither is in financial straits as a result of being sacked; Chubais has boasted to journalists of receiving a large number of job offers, while Chernomyrdin is among the largest shareholder in the natural gas monopoly Gazprom.
Chubais, unlike Chernomyrdin, can expect to retain most of his political influence. Chubais has behind him Russia's most powerful bankers and the International Monetary Fund. He also has exceptional experience in behind-the-scenes political manipulation, and will remain an important political figure even outside the government. Chernomyrdin, by contrast, will find it hard to retain much political weight. He is a professional bureaucrat, not a politician.
Another favourite of the bourgeois press, Boris Nemtsov, will find that his political future depends mainly on his former subordinate Sergey Kiriyenko. For a former top minister, this is a humiliating come-down.
Few people in Russia will regret Chernomyrdin's sacking, with the exception of the leaders of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. The KPRF chiefs repeatedly helped the prime minister steer his budgets through the Duma, suppressing opposition within their party and its parliamentary fraction. They insisted that Chernomyrdin had to be defended, arguing that if he were removed Chubais would come to power. Chernomyrdin gave discreet aid to the Communist Party. With his help, the KPRF acquired an impressive building to house its apparatus, and from mid-1997 business people close to the government began to provide generous financial support to the KPRF.
Now that Chernomyrdin has gone, the KPRF has not only lost its source of funds, but its political perspectives have vanished as well. Earlier, party leaders had calculated that when Yeltsin left the scene his successor would be Chernomyrdin, who would be unable to maintain himself in power without their help. Even after Yeltsin's March 23 announcement, the KPRF leaders continued without much conviction to call for a "government of popular trust". At the time of Yeltsin's bombshell, party chief Gennady Zyuganov seemed relatively confident, but his colleagues in the Duma in Moscow were gloomy and anxious.
Liberal opposition leader Grigory Yavlinsky, who broke off a foreign trip to return to Moscow, immediately declared he was waiting for an invitation to head a new cabinet. In the parliament, rumours began to circulate that the upper house speaker, Yegor Stroyev, might be appointed prime minister. Meanwhile, the leaders of the Duma majority let it be understood that they would not support Kiriyenko for the premier's post. In the current circumstances not even a threat from Yeltsin to dissolve the Duma would be particularly effective, since the next elections are drawing near.
Although the composition of the next government remains a mystery, there is little doubt as to its general orientation. The stock exchange has already digested the changes: immediately after the sackings share prices fell, but by evening they had regained their former level. As one of the brokers told a television news program, the government was "not as important as Yeltsin's health". The neo-liberal policies of the Russian state are not under threat. At any rate, not until the workers themselves start fighting for changes.