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Primakov's Outta Here...and so am I

© Jeffrey Deutsch

On Wednesday, May 11, Russian President Boris Yeltsin sacked Premier Yevgeny Primakov. This is the third change of premier in just over a year.

The first time was late March 1998, when Yeltsin fired Victor Chernomyrdin (now Russia's special envoy for the Kosovo crisis), and replaced him with political newcomer Sergei Kiriyenko. Yeltsin had to shove Kiriyenko down the Duma's throat.

The Duma has to approve the president's choice for premier, but if the Duma refuses the president's choice three times the president has the right to dissolve the Duma and call new (Duma) elections. This is presumably so that the Duma cannot paralyze his government by refusing to approve anyone, or anyone save a particular individual.

Specifically, when the Duma voted down Kiriyenko, Yeltsin simply nominated him again...and still didn't take the hint when the Duma voted him down again. The third nomination passed.

Fast forward about five months. It's late August 1998. Russia has sunk into financial crisis. Inflation has threatened to soar, the ruble is disintegrating like a snowball in Tahiti and the government has all but admitted it can't pay its debts. That is, the ones that really count - the foreign loans. Debts to Russia's own workers and pensioners can be neglected with impunity.

Truth to tell, these are really different aspects of the same situation. Premier Kiriyenko is right in the middle of formulating a marathon plan to try to repay everybody and get the country back on its financial and economic feet. Yeltsin's way of facilitating this process? Firing him...and trying to replace him with Chernomyrdin.

(Why bother sitting around and watching fake soap operas? Read up on Russian politics and enjoy some real ones. Just bring the same kind of scorecard.)

Well, at this point the Duma held, if not the whip hand, then at least a thumb on the whip hand's nerves. It became obvious that the Duma would not stand a return of Chernomyrdin (ostensibly on the grounds that Chernomyrdin represented the "oligarchs," like Vladimir Potanin and Boris Berezovsky, the private tycoons battening on public wealth). Yeltsin had good reason to believe that if he did end up dissolving the Duma this time, the new elections would bring him a more, not less, troublesome Duma. Yeltsin backed down and agreed to the selection of Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov, the Duma's favourite, as well as to the "coalition government" long since called for by the Duma. In particular, he appointed Communist Yuri Maslyukov First Deputy Premier in charge of the economy. And, Yeltsin informally promised Primakov that he would keep his nose out of the day-to-day running of the government (Chernomyrdin, in fact, had extracted the same promise from Yeltsin prior to agreeing to renomination as Premier.)

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