Survival Of The Fittest

By PAUL QUINN-JUDGE/MOSCOW

When Boris Yeltsin was baptized, a tipsy priest dropped the baby in the font and left him there, struggling for air, until his terrified parents persuaded the priest to fish him out. The priest was not fazed, Yeltsin recalled in his autobiography. "The boy's a fighter [borets in Russian]," he said. "We'll call him Boris." Yeltsin is still a fighter, and still has luck on his side, as the collapse of an attempt to impeach him last weekend shows. He also has cunning, and a formidable state patronage system that works for him, as well as a constitution that he had made to measure. But his vision these days is not of a Russian renaissance. Instead, he is a man obsessed with simple survival. As a frustrated member of parliament, Vladimir Semago, said after Saturday's impeachment vote, "He's like a bear protecting his lair--he's defending himself and his family."

Yeltsin's fate and that of Russia have in some ways come to resemble each other. Seven years ago, Russians pinned hopes for a peaceful, prosperous future on Yeltsin. As his turbulent and sometimes bloody presidency draws to a close, both the President and his people are sunk in depression, their dreams in tatters. Millions live on the poverty line. The country has neither the confidence of investors abroad nor self-confidence at home. Life is a struggle, and there seems little prospect it will improve soon.

Last week even Yeltsin seemed to have taken on too much in the war with his old enemies in the Duma, Russia's lower parliamentary body. The day before impeachment discussions opened, Yeltsin fired his popular Prime Minister, Yevgeni Primakov. Primakov was officially dismissed because of the President's concern about the slow pace of economic change. In fact he was dropped because he broke all the rules in his relations with Yeltsin. He was independent, he answered back, he even interrupted the President in public. This smacked of disloyalty. And in the twilight of his career, Yeltsin values loyalty above everything else.

The communist-dominated opposition in the Duma was infuriated by Primakov's dismissal--he enjoyed good relations with the communists--but was certain that it would guarantee the 300 votes needed to impeach Yeltsin on at least one of the five counts leveled against him. The motion with the best chance of success accused Yeltsin of starting a violent civil war in the breakaway Russian province of Chechnya in 1994. But once again Yeltsin thwarted his opponents. Last Saturday one-third of the Duma failed to turn up for the most important vote in their careers. Opposition deputies claimed, without offering evidence, that the Kremlin had offered members $30,000 each to stay away.

Most peculiarly, firebrand nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky and his faction--who usually denounce the President in flamboyant and colorful terms--suddenly became passionate supporters of the government. Zhirinovsky denied that he had been bought off but made it clear he would like a high post in the next government. From the background, Yeltsin aides put out the word that the Duma could be dissolved and a state of emergency declared if the vote went against him. When the results were announced, Chechnya gained the highest number of votes in favor of impeachment, 283--still 17 short of the two-thirds needed.

But in Russia these days, one battle just leads to another. The Duma presents Yeltsin with a similarly complex enigma. The very machinations he used to wriggle out of impeachment--everything from firing Primakov to making promises to the opposition--now present him with a new maze to negotiate.

The first challenge will be winning approval for his choice to replace Primakov, a colorless former political commissar named Sergei Stepashin. Unlike Primakov, Stepashin is largely unknown outside Russia. In the corridors of power he is recognized as a capable bureaucrat, and someone who in recent months has quietly become a presidential favorite. As head of the Federal Security Service, the successor to the kgb, he was a hawk during the war in Chechnya. And he remains deeply unpopular among Russian officers for the way he sent a covert force into Chechnya at the start of the war and disowned the troops when they were captured. His most recent jobs--first as Interior Minister, then as Deputy Prime Minister--have clearly labeled him as one of the few men Yeltsin trusts with power.

What Stepashin does, and does very well, is protect Yeltsin. And his appointment more than anything is a sign that Yeltsin has now morphed from a man who wanted to change Russia into a man who simply wants to hold on to power. As his nation starves, Yeltsin reached not for an economist or a diplomat who might be able to help Russians figure a way forward. Instead he called on a security man. After its humiliation over the impeachment, the Duma may decide to save face by rejecting Stepashin. But it may be hard for them to summon up the organization and courage to turn Stepashin down. Parliamentary leaders like communist leader Gennadi Zyuganov sounded winded after the impeachment debate wound down, exhausted by Yeltsin's apparent political immortality.

But with the approach of the year 2000 and the end of his second term, Yeltsin has become a prisoner of his own nightmares--that he and his family will be persecuted or prosecuted by political enemies once he leaves office, that the sort of slights and humiliations he has inflicted on others will be visited upon him. He has plenty to fear. The sight of deputies accusing an incumbent President of high treason is a worrying reminder of how bad things could be for him when he leaves office. And impeachment was not his first nasty fright. Just two months ago, when his daughter Tatyana's name surfaced publicly in connection with an investigation into alleged corruption in the presidential administration, it looked as if the Yeltsin family shield was cracking. In fact, she was far removed from the investigation, and no charges were ever brought. Discussion of the case has faded from the press in recent weeks. With Stepashin's appointment the investigation may disappear altogether.

Primakov was certainly not a perfect Prime Minister, and it was easy for Yeltsin to find a reason to dismiss him. Officially his crime was nonfeasance: the failure to drag Russia from its spiraling depression. In the days before his dismissal, Yeltsin aides began to prepare for the change by depicting Primakov as a man suffering from lockjaw on the crucial economic issues Russia now faces. But there was also worry inside Yeltsin's circle that the Prime Minister was suffering from a more pernicious disease: ambition. While he had studiously denied any interest in running for President in 2000, Primakov had quietly pursued a strategy of building a base of support so that one day he would be "offered" the job by a desperate public. In the eight months since he came to office, his popularity had been steadily growing in opinion polls while Yeltsin's numbers faded into the low single digits. If Primakov was allowed to become President, Yeltsin aides insisted, he would have imposed on Russia a system that was a cross between the ideas of communist party leader Zyuganov and Joseph Stalin.

Primakov himself departed office with a joke and affectionate applause from his Cabinet. But he could afford to smile: by firing him, Russians say, Yeltsin boosted Primakov's chances of being the next President. Aides say Primakov has not yet made up his mind about the future. Yeltsin, however, does not have the luxury of choice. He has to keep fighting, and that is becoming ever harder for him. Despite claims, more often heard in Washington than in Moscow, that "Boris is back" in the driver's seat, his physical health and mental lucidity are often open to question. After dismissing Primakov last week, he seemed confused. The chairs of both houses of parliament say that when Yeltsin phoned to inform them of Primakov's dismissal, he told them his new nominee would be Nikolai Aksenenko, the Railways Minister. Shortly afterward, Stepashin's name was formally announced. His aides brushed off the gaffe--they have become such masters of explanation that justifying a President who couldn't remember the name of the man he wanted for Prime Minister is now old hat.

The Boris Yeltsin who occupies the Kremlin hardly resembles the man who emerged as the country's preeminent leader in 1991, when he faced down a communist coup aimed at rolling back reform. Then he was Russia's first real politician, and his thick hair and fast smile seemed to evoke a future that made Russians dreamy with hope. But Yeltsin today is an all too familiar Russian archetype. Reclusive and suspicious, the President lives in a tightly sealed world. Most presidential meetings are rigid and formal. Senior Cabinet ministers and aides have an old-fashioned phone next to their desks. Instead of a dial it bears a simple sign reading THE PRESIDENT. It is widely understood, however, that the phone is for answering, not calling.

In an era in which most world leaders are plugged into hundreds of sources of information, from CNN to their own intelligence reports, Yeltsin's worldview is shaped largely by a daily press digest of about 17 pages. Whether he looks at it is another matter: a succession of aides have complained that he is loath to read. It is equally hard to persuade him to watch the TV news. Meanwhile the circle of people who have unfettered access to him is strikingly small. The circle consists of his former chief of staff Valentin Yumashev, who still wields enormous influence from the shadows; Yeltsin's daughter Tatyana; and very few others.

And this, at heart, is how Yeltsin's tragedy has become Russia's. He is no longer a man of the people--certainly not in the political sense. His once broad-reaching vision, for a Russia where all people had a vote and a share in economic prosperity, has been replaced by a narrow and dangerous selfishness. Yeltsin had the political wiles to avoid being impeached this time, but whether he deserved to be impeached or not is still a question many Russians are unhappily discussing.