On the eve of a visit to Rome last year, Boris Yeltsin chided a group of Italian journalists graced with a Kremlin audience. "It's a pity your Prime Ministers change so often," he said. "It makes things complicated..." Indeed. For a year and a half now, ever since Yeltsin began his ritual of sending his Prime Ministers packing on sudden notice, his rivals have spoken with solemn delight of Yeltsin's diminishing physical and mental state. Last week, however, when he fired his fourth Prime Minister in 17 months, even former loyalists joined Yeltsin's opponents in naming the culprit behind the latest beheading: Agoniya. The Russian word is usually translated as agony. But it means death throes. "This is not just another shake-up," said a former top Kremlin aide. "This is the beginning of the end."
When Yeltsin sacked Sergei Stepashin last week, few in Russia were surprised. True, Stepashin had been in office only 82 days. But in his jealous protection of his waning presidency, Yeltsin has made the unpredictable predictable. His second move of the day, however, created shock waves. In a seven-minute television address that bade Stepashin farewell, in which his tongue and eyes strained to find the words on the TelePrompTer, Yeltsin named Vladimir Putin, a virtual unknown to most Russians, not only his acting Prime Minister but also his heir. Bestowing his trust in Putin, Yeltsin implored voters to do the same: "I want those who go to polls next July to be confident in him as well." Putin, a former head of the Federal Security Service (the successor to the KGB), accepted the call to duty with alacrity. "We are military men," he declared in his remarks. "The decision's been taken, and we will carry it out." It was exactly what Yeltsin wanted to hear.
Russia's embattled President rose early on Monday to greet Stepashin and Putin at Gorki-9, the presidential dacha outside Moscow. The hour--7:30 a.m.--meant Yeltsin was not seeking a casual conclave. Stepashin and Putin knew what was coming; the shake-up had already surfaced in the Moscow press. Anatoli Chubais--an early Yeltsin ally--had even met with Kremlin aides on Sunday to argue that firing another Prime Minister now, with parliamentary elections set for December and a presidential vote next July, was a dangerous move that could discredit the Kremlin, the government and Russia in general. But Chubais was not even granted an audience with Yeltsin. His former place, that of the man closest to the presidential ear, was taken. In it sat Alexander Voloshin, Yeltsin's chief of staff and the public face of the clique of confidantes that now surrounds the President, an inner circle known in the Russian press as "the Family." The other core Family members are Yeltsin's daughter Tatyana Dyachenko and Voloshin's predecessor, Valentin Yumashev, a former journalist who ghostwrote Yeltsin's memoirs. Days before the sacking, the trio drew up a list of candidate-heirs. But in the end, there was only one. Yeltsin wanted Putin.