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Time - Man of the Year
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1992-09-10
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THE WEEK, Page 16WORLDYeltsin's "Boys and Girls" Win a Big One
A clever ploy thwarts efforts to reverse his economic reforms
"A catastrophic decline in living standards, famine, social
upheavals and chaos." To some Russians that might sound like a
description of what has happened since President Boris
Yeltsin's government began a crash program of free-market
reforms at the start of the year. In fact, it was what Yeltsin's
Cabinet predicted would happen if the shock treatment were
reversed.
On April 11, the 1,046-member Russian Congress of People's
Deputies voted to do just that -- and in effect end Yeltsin's
power to rule by decree. Two days later, the 35-member Cabinet,
led by Deputy Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar, resigned en masse.
Besides being genuinely alarmed, the Cabinet ministers -- many
in their 30s and 40s -- felt insulted because Congress Speaker
Ruslan Khasbulatov suggested that they were a bunch of
disoriented youngsters. Protested Gaidar: "This is not a
government of capricious boys and girls."
Gaidar warned that any retreat from the free market would
imperil the desperately needed $24 billion in economic aid that
Russia is due to receive from the West this year, a foreboding
promptly confirmed by Washington. That fear probably helped turn
the tide; so did a hint that Yeltsin might try to force a new
election -- one that many Congress members, former communists
chosen in 1990 when Russia was still part of the Soviet Union,
might not survive. In any case, the legislature backed down. It
did not formally repudiate its earlier resolution calling for
tax cuts, wage increases and subsidies to declining industries;
Yeltsinites charged that those measures would lead to ruinously
inflationary deficits as well as undermine the whole spirit of
free-market reform. But the legislature did approve a so-called
compromise that is likely to leave Gaidar free to continue
shock treatment as before.
The body also backed down from a demand that Yeltsin, who
is his own Prime Minister, revamp the government in three
months; he was given until December to do so. Gaidar and the
other Cabinet members withdrew their resignations, and the
crisis was over -- for the moment. But the ruckus was a warning
that if the economy's downward spiral does not halt by year's
end, Yeltsin could find himself in serious trouble.
Though the Congress is an unwieldy as well as
unrepresentative body, it is legally the highest authority in
the state, and is trying again to reduce presidential power in
a new constitution that it approved on Saturday in "general
concept." Yeltsin could probably defeat it in a test of popular
strength right now. But that could change if the economy
continues to slump and public discontent to grow.