In the wake of the firing by President Boris Yeltsin of the government of Prime Minister Evgeny Primakov, the failed attempt to impeach Yeltsin, and the appointment of a new prime minister, Sergei Stepashin, the U.S. print and electronic media have fed the public a large dose of thin and stale Krem-linology, which passed for analysis during the Communist dictatorship. As in the bad old days, the explanations focused on the "jealousy," "unpredictability," and "erratic behavior" of the Kremlin’s occupant-as if Yeltsin acted in a vacuum, like an all-powerful General Secretary, rather than in an imperfect but real and boisterous democracy, in which his actions were shaped and rigidly circumscribed by public opinion, unconstrained political opposition, and free mass media. This unthinking reversion to the old stereotypes distorted and trivialized an interesting and important story.

Following the financial crisis of last August, President Boris Yeltsin entered into an unprecedented power-sharing arrangement with the Communist plurality of the lower house of the Russian legislature, the Duma. For the first time, a new government, headed by Prime Minister Evgeny Primakov, was not of the president’s choosing but of the Duma’s. A leading member of the Communist faction, Yuri Maslyukov, became the first deputy prime minister in charge of economic policy.

Until the second week of May, there were good reasons to believe that, after almost eight years of dramatic change and unbridgeable ideological and political schisms, the Russian pro-reform Center-Right and the Left opposition were finally approaching consensus on the most fundamental economic and political arrangements for Russia. The August 1991 revolution seemed at last to have matured to the point where most of the Russian political class appeared to agree on the meaning of its main achievements, recognized their permanence, and started cooperating within a generally accepted political and economic framework.

Together with the political truce, such hopes were dashed by the Communist-initiated impeachment drive in the Duma and by Yeltsin’s dismissal of the Primakov cabinet in response to the legislature’s action. The short history of post-Communist Russia’s first coalition government and the reasons for its collapse illuminate key aspects of the Russian political scene and have significant implications for Russian economic reforms and the prospects for overcoming the current crisis.

The Conditions of the Political Truce

Forged in September 1998, the Primakov government rested on two agreements, tacit but well understood by the Kremlin and the Left opposition alike. First, now that the Communist-led plurality in the Duma shared in power, it would also share in the responsibility for the country’s economic well-being. The "popular-patriotic" deputies were expected to abandon their "the-worse-the-better" strategy and, after years of resistance, adopt at least some reform measures vital to economic recovery. The left-of-center government of the Duma was to succeed where the previous right-of-center governments of the president had failed and to overcome the parliament’s truculence, which, in large measure, was responsible for last August's financial meltdown.

The other condition was the observance of a political cease-fire. Yeltsin was to refrain from steps that could lead to the dissolution of the Duma and an early election, while the Duma’s daily castigation of Yeltsin, no matter how crude and incendiary, was to stop short of attempts to destabilize the regime.

Like most truces, this one was not a happy arrangement for either side. In a political culture that defines a leader’s stature, or even relevance, in terms of his ability to attack and disrupt, conciliation is synonymous with weakness. Beset by increasingly serious and embarrassingly visible physical and mental ailments, Yeltsin grew restless, frustrated, and undoubtedly jealous of Primakov’s image as Russia’s most trusted politi cian—at a time when the president’s own popularity, which never recovered from the August 1997 financial disaster, remained in low single digits. The Communist leadership, meanwhile, was being pressured by its critical militant constituency, for whom any and all deals with the Kremlin, referred to as the "fifth column" and the "colonial and antinational regime," were bargains with the Devil.

Still, the political truce held, as both the Kremlin and the Communist-led opposition continued to resist the temptation of open political warfare. Both the reformers and the Left appeared to be increasingly preoccupied with preparation for the critical legislative elections in December and the presidential election six months later.¹

Primakov’s Record

A few months into Primakov’s tenure, the economic clause of the September 1998 unwritten peace accord—recovery from crisis—appeared destined to remain unfulfilled. Regarding vital but unpopular structural reforms (first and foremost, taxation, bankruptcy, and foreign banks), the Duma’s leftist majority proved no more receptive to the proposals of Primakov’s government than to the pleas of his predecessors. Although the government succeeded in negotiating an International Monetary Fund loan (primarily to make payments on previous loans and to avoid default), the passage of laws demanded by the IMF as a condition for the actual disbursement was just as uncertain as in July 1998, when the chamber’s resistance precipitated the financial collapse.

The best Primakov could do was to prevent the worst by restraining the "controlled emis sion" zeal of his Communist associates, and thus to keep inflation from skyrocketing. Nevertheless, "soft" credits flowed freely to the Communists’ core constituencies: defense industry enterprises and collective farms. The sponsors of the transfers were Yuri Maslyukov and Deputy Prime Minister Gennady Kulik, the leader of the Communists’ rural allies, the Agrarians.

The ruble, which Primakov had pledged to keep above the 21.5 per dollar rate throughout 1999, fell below the 25.0 mark in the first week of April. Because prices rose by 20 percent in the first four months of this year, the government’s promise of an inflation rate no higher than 30 percent for 1999 became untenable. Reflecting continuing market fears, the yield on Russia’s best debt, the Eurobonds, continued to hover around an astronomically high 50 percent. By the beginning of May, economic stabilization, with which Primakov had been justly credited, turned into drift and inaction, which Grigory Yavlinsky, leader of the opposition liberal Yabloko faction in the Duma, compared with the "era of stagnation" under the Communist Party’s General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev (1964–1982).

What initiatives there were disturbingly resembled solutions of Primakov’s mentor, Yuri Andropov, the longtime KGB chairman and the General Secretary (1982–1984): the forced sales to the state by Russian exporters of 50 percent of their hard-currency revenues at the fixed rate of exchange; the order requiring state distilleries to sell vodka at the same price throughout the country; the restriction on the amount of cash that a person can take out of the country; the ban on resident foreign firms’ exchange of earned rubles for hard currency; and the much-advertised criminal "investigations" of the financial and industrial moguls, the so-called oligarchs. Primakov’s sole political initiative was a suggestion that the regional governors be appointed by Moscow—a giant step backward from the current choice in free elections and from the gradual evolution toward a genuinely federated and self-governing Russian state.

The Kosovo Factor

Along with market reforms, a friendly—or, at a minimum, constructive—relationship with the West, and with the United States in particular, was the cornerstone of Yeltsin’s regime. In the solidly pro-Serbian sentiment in Russian public opinion, the "popular patriots" saw a chance to bring the regime to its knees and proceeded to whip up anti-NATO and anti-U.S. hysteria.

After Primakov unequivocally sided with the Duma majority in its rigidly pro-Milosevic stance, Yeltsin personally took charge of Russia’s Kosovo policy by appointing former prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin as the special envoy to Yugoslavia. This was a brilliant move. As Russia gradually began to repair bridges to the West, the Chernomyrdin mission threatened to deprive the "popular patriots" of the political trump card of the anti-Western frenzy.

The Russian mass media, at first shamelessly pro-Serbian, began to provide more balanced coverage (and were duly denounced in a Duma resolution for using "materials prepared jointly with Western psychological operations services"). Russian public opinion started to reflect a better-informed and nuanced picture of the conflict. While still against the bombing, Russians solidly opposed military intervention by Moscow, despite the Duma’s many resolutions calling for the dispatch of Russian arms and troops to "fraternal" Yugoslavia and the "invitation" to Yugoslavia to join Russia in a single state. The May Day demonstration in Moscow, which in the Communist designs was to become a mass pro-Serbian, anti-NATO, and anti-Yeltsin rally, attracted only a few thousand leftist nationalist diehards.

The last straw came May 6, when Russia joined other G-8 member-states in signing the Bonn res olution, which spelled out several critical conditions for the restoration of peace in Kosovo, including the introduction of an armed multinational peacekeeping force. The chairman of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Gennady Zyuganov responded by calling Chernomyrdin "not . . . a special envoy but a special demolisher, a special agent, a kind of political screen" for a secret deal between Moscow and Washington.² Three days later, on May 9, Zyuganov called for the beginning of impeachment proceedings to "remove Yeltsin and his clique" from power.³ Eager to capitalize on the Kosovo crisis before the public opinion advantage dissipated completely, the Communists had rolled the dice.

Political Revenge Disguised
as "Impeachment"

Zyuganov, of course, knew that his act was tantamount to a declaration of war on the Kremlin. The charges against Yeltsin had nothing whatsoever to do with "state treason or other high crimes" spelled out by the Russian Constitution. The action was undisguised political revenge. Every single one of Yeltsin’s actions now featured in the articles of impeachment—he was accused of the destruction of the Soviet Union and the Russian military, of "genocide" against the Russian people, of the 1994–1996 war in the breakaway province of Chechnya, and of the dissolution of the Supreme Soviet in September 1993 and the violence that followed-was in full view of the Russian voters during the 1996 presidential election. These same alleged sins were harped on daily by the more than 150 local and national Communist newspapers and magazines, featured in millions of "popular-patriotic" leaflets, denounced by hundreds of thousands of door-to-door Communist propagandists, and reiterated in Gennady Zyuganov’s campaign commercials broadcast free of charge on the state-owned national television and radio networks. In the end, 40 million Russian men and women voted for Yeltsin and gave him a 54 percent to 40 percent victory over the Communist candidate.

To sit in judgment of Yeltsin now was the same Communist-led "popular-patriotic" plurality in the Duma that had refused to repudiate a leading member of the Communist faction, General Albert Makashov, for a series of viciously anti-Semitic statements last fall. ("Vsekh zhidov-v mogilu!" Makashov said, looking straight in the television camera. "All yids should be in the grave!") The Duma overwhelmingly defeated the resolution censuring Makashov (of the 450 members, 107 voted for the measure). When one of the resolution’s sponsors, Galina Starovoitova, was gunned down shortly thereafter, the Communists refused to stand up and observe a moment of silence in her memory.

That the impeachment proceedings would trigger the dismissal of the government had been an open secret in Moscow for months. The Kremlin, and Yeltsin himself, had reiterated that a call for impeachment would nullify the political agreement of last September. On May 7, a leading Russian political observer was quoted by the Financial Times as saying that "Yeltsin would certainly sack his government if the Duma declared war on him next week."⁴ This was, after all, a government whose top officials—Maslyukov and Kulik—were the leading members of the legislative coalition that spearheaded a coup d’etat disguised as impeachment. (Primakov had stated repeatedly that he would resign if his senior Communist ministers were fired.)

On the day after Zyuganov’s call, Yeltsin warned through his aides that he would retaliate if the impeachment debate were put on the Duma’s agenda. On the same day, Primakov pleaded with Duma leaders not to try to dislodge Yeltsin. The prime minister cited the threat to the country’s political stability, not to mention the IMF loan. His "categorical" objections were ignored.

The next day, Yeltsin dismissed the government. None of the five articles of impeachment gathered the required two-thirds majority in the Duma, and Yeltsin’s candidate for prime minister, Sergei Stepashin (the former minister of the interior and the first deputy prime minister in the Primakov government) easily won confirmation by the parliament.

No Consensus and No Reform

The Communists’ attempt at impeachment and Yeltsin’s response were the continuation of the seven-year, bare-knuckle, ideological and political battle-to-the-bitter-end between Yeltsin and Russia’s unreformed, Stalinist, nationalist, and virulently anti-Semitic Left. It is still a struggle over the most fundamental issues of the country’s political, economic, and social makeup: private property, capitalism, freedom of speech and press, demilitarization, the end of the Soviet empire, and relations with the West.

The fall of the Primakov government highlighted the gulf between the right-of-center president and the Communist plurality in the legislature. From now on, cooperation between the two branches of power seems out of the question. Structural economic reforms—and the recovery—will have to wait until the pro-reform forces secure at least a united plurality in the Duma in the parliamentary election next December. Until then, the political stalemate is likely to continue—and, with it, misery for millions of Russians.

Notes

1. The electoral designs of major Russian political players were outlined in the spring 1999 issue of Russian Outlook.

2. RFE/RL Newsline. 3.88, pt. 1 (May 6, 1999): 3.

3. John Thornhill, "Zyuganov Moves against Yeltsin," FT.com, May 10, 1999 (the Web site of the Financial Times).

4. John Thornhill, "Primakov’s Future at Stake," FT.com, May 7, 1999.

Leon Aron is a resident scholar and the director of Russian Studies at AEI.