(2 of 3)
Russian-U.S. agreements, Primakov assured a group of reporters, "do not depend on personalities." It is exactly what one of his famous predecessors, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, used to say. But of course personalities do matter, and Vice President Al Gore had spent four years cultivating friendly working relations with Chernomyrdin in a bilateral Russian-U.S. government commission. Gore believed he was investing in a future in which both of them might be President.
Chernomyrdin was beginning to think so too, which is probably what got him in trouble. He was hinting so plainly that he was considering a run in 2000 that Yeltsin dismissed him. In fact, by week's end Chernomyrdin had confirmed his intention to run for President. Kommersant, a leading daily, concluded, "We can pronounce the once superpowerful Premier politically dead." But Boris Berezovsky, one of Moscow's most influential business tycoons, talked with Chernomyrdin last week and came out a booster. Only a week before, he had declared on television that Chernomyrdin was "unelectable" in 2000. Now Berezovsky says the former Prime Minister is "full of energy to fight for the presidency," a run Berezovsky says he is ready to support "unconditionally." This is puzzling because Berezovsky is also an unpaid adviser to Yeltsin's inner circle.
The message Yeltsin wanted to broadcast loudest last week was, I am still in power. He and a small group of relatives and close advisers that include his daughter Tatyana Dyachenko and his chief of staff Valentin Yumashev--dubbed "the Family" by Muscovites--may intend to keep him there as long as he is breathing. True, the Russian constitution says he cannot serve more than two terms, but Yeltsin expects the courts to rule next fall that his first term didn't count because he was elected under the old Soviet system.
Yeltsin had become suspicious of Chernomyrdin, the most loyal and humble of ministers since 1992, and that sealed his departure. But the Prime Minister had also made powerful enemies recently among some of the ever plotting oligarchs of Moscow's financial world. These powerful capitalists, who have considerable influence with the Family, suspected that Chernomyrdin had begun to favor their rival, Vladimir Potanin of the Oneksim banking group, in deals involving state assets.
Chubais had been constantly under fire and has been booted out of office before. This time his dismissal may have been hastened by his heated public squabble with Berezovsky. After an exchange of personal attacks in press interviews, Berezovsky declared that Chubais' days in government were numbered. The oligarchs followed through, it seems, using their access to the Kremlin's front office. One recent morning, a prominent Moscow businessman says, a report "was placed on the President's desk"--obviously by one of Yeltsin's top aides--and Yeltsin actually read it. The memo warned that Chubais' rosy reports on the economy and payment of salaries to state employees were not only inaccurate but were "disinformation." Says the businessman: "Yeltsin knows nothing about the economy, but he is not an absolute idiot." The President was furious, the businessman says, and Chubais was on his way out.