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12th April 1998

Yeltsin under siege

By Mervyn de Silva

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Is the counter-revolution gaining ground? Will a new alliance of the Workers Party (the communists) and the peasants (the Agrarian party) overthrow the Yeltsin regime? The main issue is the post of Prime Minister, President Boris Yeltsin, apparently the omnipotent resident of Moscow's White House, has made up his mind. He refuses to yield on his choice of Sergei Kiriyenko as Prime Minister.

The appointment was to be officially announced by Friday. No announcement had been made at this writing. The situation has its ironies. Perestroika and Glasnost have "Americanised" Russian politics and political processes. President Clinton, though a popular two-times a clear winner, confronts a hostile G.O.P. dominated Senate and the "reactionary " Reoubkicandex delight in obstructing or at least delaying the President's plans. A persistent obstructionism is the G.O.P.'s main tactic.

In Moscow, it is Nikolai Ryzhkov, the last Prime Minister who now leads the pro-Communist group of the party in the Duma, the parliament. He told the press last week that President Yeltsin had "appealed" to the PEOPLES POWER party to support his candidate Mr. Kiriyenko. As a protest against President Yeltsin, the Communists will not vote for Kiriyenko at Friday's election. (No new developments had been reported at this writing). "The President's pet", the nasty slogan that the Opposition's agit-prop experts had raised, did produce results more than it deserved, observed Moscow-based western correspondents! Democratic politics in Russia, despite its long history of one-party rule and its organised anti-Americanism, have acquired many American habits, says a correspondent of a French newspaper.

The President's pet, a 35 year old banker, was mauled by most parties, ideology notwithstanding... the unrepentant "Reds" to the ultra-nationalists, often introduced by the same correspondents, as "quasi-fascists", and occasionally even "Nazis"!

No comments from Mr. Mikhail Gorbachev, the architect of Perestroika and Glasnost, were reported...not at least by any major American agency

The more crucial question however is how the Communists and the Nationalists will work together..if at all. The most explosive issue is WAGES. The trade union leaders who helped the Opposition told a press conference, (confined to foreign correspondents!) that workers had not been paid for four months. The situation is much worse outside the main urban centres where the workers are not unionised or the unions exist only on paper.

Transition period

It is not the ailing President Yeltsin nor his Cabinet that threaten peace and stability in the 'new' Russia. Ironically, the one-word explanation is quintessentially Marxist-Leninist...economy, or to borrow a slogan from the recent election history of the capitalist colossus, the triumphant United States and its election campaigns, THE ECONOMY STUPID.

But that word must be married to another word "transition" or "period of transition" to use a popular Sri Lankan slogan or battle-cry....

The British correspondent Chrystia Freeland offers a more sensible, realistic rationale; which also strikes one as a more balanced, assessment and fair. "With the grudging consent of the Russian prime minister, Mr. Victor Chernomyrdia, the two new first deputies have outlined an ambitious reform program. More remarkably, in the few weeks since the (President's ) cabinet shake-up (last year) the young reformers have won an impressive list of battles".

What battles and against whom?

"They have forced out corrupt and conservative officials and replaced them with their own allies and have started to chip away at the power of Russia's natural monopolies. They have weakened the ties between the government and its banker friends and defended the rights of minority, western shareholders in Russian companies against attempts to dilute their power. This has been enough to raise hopes that after two years of little economic progress, Russia is on the brink of a new wave of much-needed structural reforms"

In the opinion of a staunchly independent, and objective analyst, Mr. Ander Aslund, a senior associate of the prestigious Carnegie Endowment, and a close student of Russia's bumpy economic trajectory, it is possible that Russia has been treated with the condescension reserved by western experts and advisers for helpless, Third World countries. Take it (the advice) or leave it.

As Third World politicians, economic planners and advisers and of course the media know only too well, the World Bank, the IMF and big-time investors backed by these agencies, have their own (hidden) agenda. Russia is still a superpower, at least militarily. If unipolarity is the ultimate aim, it is necessary to make sure that this "military superpower" is kept economically weak. The Chinese leadership, Communist or not, know this all too well. It is possible that the Indian elite understand this too. Logically, this relationship (co-operative and mutually productive or subordinate and dependent ) is the crucial challenge which confronts post-Gorbachev Russia. And so to foreign policy

Russian Diplomacy

The media, and this columnist in particular, have reason to be especially pleased by President Yeltsin's choice of a new Foreign Minister. Yevegni Primakov, Academician Primakov, who specialised in Middle-east affairs and later the non-aligned movement visited Colombo when Prime Minister Sirima Bandaranaike chaired the NAM summit. Russian foreign policy is in the hands of an expert. Since Prime Minister Bandaranaike had given this columnist the task of assisting the foreign correspondents. I had the pleasure of a long jaw-jaw over lunch with academician Primakov. He is a first-rate professional.


Hulftsdorp Hill

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