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Last week what Berezovsky apparently got was the hide of Sergei Kiriyenko, the earnest young reformer Yeltsin installed in March, whose solutions for salvaging Russia's failing banks, currency and international credibility entailed a well-intentioned assault on the freebooting ways of the oligarchy. Chernomyrdin's return, says Andrei Illarionov, director of the Institute of Economic Analysis, is the result of a "brilliant scheme," under way for months, by the tycoons to return to power the one man they believed could protect their interests. Men in the Chernomyrdin camp acknowledge that Berezovsky played a major role in encouraging the cautious former Prime Minister to come out publicly last summer with his plan to run for President in 2000. They confirm that the two met to discuss the future shortly before Yeltsin fired Kiriyenko and his whole Cabinet. Unlikely to be anything but lackluster on the stump, Chernomyrdin would now gain enormous advantage in a potential electoral struggle with more dynamic campaigners like retired General Alexander Lebed if Yeltsin were to quit and make him acting chief executive. By one account, it was Berezovsky too who unexpectedly called on Vice Prime Minister Anatoli Chubais, the most pugnacious reformer in the Cabinet, the evening before Kiriyenko's dismissal and bluntly told him, "It is time to go quietly."
In the days since Chernomyrdin's re-appointment, Berezovsky has been just as busy. Chernomyrdin's aides say the banker has been negotiating on the PM's behalf with a number of Duma factions, including the communists, whose support is essential to the Prime Minister's confirmation but whose demands clash with the preferences of the tycoons. This time, supporters of Berezovsky say he would like a high post in the government for himself.
Viktor Aksyuchits, an aide to former Vice Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov and one of Berezovsky's most outspoken critics, claims that the banker succeeded, as he has so often done before, by gaining intimate access to Yeltsin's closest advisers, chief of staff Valentin Yumashev and younger daughter Tatyana Dyachenko. Yumashev is a "wholly privatized" Berezovsky subsidiary, says Aksyuchits, and Dyachenko is allegedly beholden to Berezovsky for his handling the family's finances and making generous contributions to her father's re-election. Both advisers have for several months been privately urging Yeltsin to stand down, Aksyuchits tells TIME: "They almost succeeded in July, but Nemtsov and Chubais were able to stop it." Yumashev and Dyachenko argued that Chernomyrdin was the only person who could protect the President and his family from being "torn to pieces" by their enemies after he left office, says Aksyuchits. He predicted that the two advisers would keep up their pressure on Yeltsin.