Boris on the brink

Things are getting so in Russia that every time President Boris Yelsin emerges from the ministrations of his personal doctors, he ups and sacks a government and there seems nothing that anybody can do about it. Yevgeny Prima-kov, the fifth prime minister in two years to get his marching orders, brought a measure of political and economic calm to the country in the wake of the disastrous devaluation of the rouble and Russia8217;s default on international debt last August. Unlike his predecessors and indeed the man who succeeds him, interior minister Sergei Stepashin, Primakov had the confidence of both the left wing and reformists in the political establishment. The fact that he enjoyed wide support in the lower House of Parliament, the Duma, played a major part in his successful negotiations with the Intern-ational Monetary Fund for fresh loans of 17 billion and for breathing space with creditors. If any government was capable of steering Russia thr-ough treacherous waters, of meeting desperate domesticsocio-economic needs even while trying to conform to IMF conditions, it was the coalition led by the dismissed prime minister. His going will throw the country into a new and probably protracted round of political and economic turmoil even as poverty and insecurity grow.

Even in terms of the personal political problem that weighs heavily on him 8212; impeachment hearings in the Duma on charges of treason, murder and betraying Russia to the West 8212; Yeltsin8217;s decision is utterly idiosyncratic. Far from being cowed, the Duma, angered by the sacking of the Primakov government, is pushing harder to impeach him. Under the Russian Constitution, however, it is easier to get rid of a government than a president. Yeltsin is counting on the fact that a Duma verdict will have to go to the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court, a process that could take months by which time his term as president will have ended naturally.

But, meanwhile, the Duma in its present mood is sure to block the appointment of the new primeminister. Yeltsin may threaten to dismiss Parlia-ment as he often has in the past but will not be able to do so while impeachment hearings are in pro-gress. The outcome will be a constitutional deadlock and political paralysis.

For Russians this situation may be no more bizarre than other events witnessed in the last decade. They will therefore expect their politicians to ride it out one way or another. But one thing seems certain. Whatever else the Yeltsin era has achieved it has surely paved the way for the rise to power of communists and nationalists. They appear to be the only bulwarks against economic and political prescriptions which have pushed 60 per cent of the population into poverty and raised a new class of robber barons. The decline of Yeltsin8217;s popularity which is now at rock-bottom coincides, unsurprisingly, with an all-time high suspicion of the West. Unsurprisingly because through all his disastrous decisions the West has acted as though he is the only Russian leader it can do businesswith.