By Renfrey Clarke
MOSCOW — Within the administration of Russian President Boris Yeltsin, confusion and arbitrariness are the norm. Kremlin decrees of major significance are liable to be drawn up without the knowledge, let alone consent, of the people responsible for the areas concerned. Often, important decrees never cross Yeltsin's desk at all, but are approved and issued by aides. Lines of authority are tortuous, with people of doubtful competence wielding enormous influence. The constitution and the law are viewed as obstacles to be sidestepped and, at times, as fictions that can safely be ignored.
None of this is news to experienced journalists covering the Moscow political scene. But with the major local and international media painstakingly loyal to Yeltsin and his drive to rebuild capitalism in Russia, it is unusual for more than hints of the chaos in high places to make it through to public notice.
Sometimes, however, the confusion is too gross to be covered up. In this respect, the first half of April was a bad period for Yeltsin and his officials.
On April 6 a presidential order was issued for the establishment of 30 Russian military bases in the CIS countries and Latvia. This was despite assurances from Moscow to the Latvian government that Russia would progressively withdraw its remaining troops from the small Baltic republic.
The Latvian authorities lodged an outraged protest. Then the Russian Foreign Ministry and Defence Ministry denied any knowledge of the scheme. "We don't know where this order came from", foreign minister Andrei Kozyrev told journalists. "Both diplomats and the military are standing with their mouths open."
Presidential spokesperson Vyacheslav Kostikov was left to assure the Latvians that the decree was a "technical error".
Prosecutor speaks out
Unfortunately for Yeltsin, the "techniques" that generated this "error" were spelled out in some detail over the following week as the other main scandal of April reached its climax. On April 8 former prosecutor-general Alexei Kazannik confirmed his earlier resignation from his post, and began making a series of statements bitterly condemning the attitudes and methods of the Yeltsin administration.
Kazannik, a Siberian lawyer known as a committed Yeltsin supporter, had been installed by the president as head of the Russian court system the day after the former parliament was shelled into surrender on October 4. Many of the new prosecutor-general's illusions in the Yeltsin regime seem to have been dispelled during his first days in the job.
In an interview published on April 12 in the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, Kazannik related that presidential aides had immediately instructed him to "investigate the October events for three or four days, charge everyone under articles 102 and 17 — that is, with complicity in murder — and turn the case over to the military bench [of the Supreme Court].
"The case was supposed to last two or three days", Kazannik continued, "and everyone was to have been sentenced to death.
"The president's team put a lot of pressure on us."
Without the stomach for reprisal shootings, Kazannik brought the lesser charge of "provoking mass disorders" against leaders of the October "revolt" — more accurately described as the last major act of resistance to Yeltsin's September 21 coup d'etat.
Kazannik finally broke with Yeltsin on February 26, after the new parliament voted an amnesty to enemies of the president who were facing criminal charges.
Instead of accepting this decision, which was within the parliament's constitutional powers, Yeltsin and his aides worked furiously to thwart it. Kazannik was told by the president to "seek a way" to prevent the release from prison of Alexander Rutskoi, Ruslan Khasbulatov, and other leaders of the October resistance. Although Kazannik personally opposed the amnesty, he realised that he was being instructed to break the law by failing to implement the amnesty legislation. He refused Yeltsin's order and stated his intention to resign.
Even then, the episode was far from played out. On April 6 the upper house of the parliament, exercising its constitutional right, voted not to accept Kazannik's resignation. Yeltsin made clear that he intended to ignore the decision. For several days, Russia had two prosecutors-general. On April 8 Kazannik, anxious to prevent another constitutional crisis, submitted his definitive resignation.
Illegal instructions
Kazannik's loyalty to Yeltsin was finally exhausted. The former prosecutor-general announced his intention to found a new centrist political party, and in a series of press interviews provided a withering account of how the presidential apparatus functioned. On April 9 the Moscow daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta quoted Kazannik as saying:
"... I became convinced that President Boris Yeltsin needed a pocket, puppet prosecutor-general who would carry out any instructions including illegal ones, and not only for the president, but also for certain officials in the administration.
"... The president and his entourage have demonstrated repeatedly that they have no intention of fulfilling the requirements of the constitution, the law or the decisions of the State Duma and the Council of the Federation [the two houses of the parliament]. An open dictatorship is looming."
In a further interview published by Nezavisimaya Gazeta on April 12, Kazannik described how Yeltsin officials meddled extensively in the administration of justice:
"Those who tried to interfere in the activity of the prosecutor-general's office included not only Yeltsin, but also his advisers and assistants, and officials who considered themselves entitled to phone me."
To a large degree, Kazannik indicated, Yeltsin had lost control of his staff. "In the presidential administration there are people who can sign any decree." When aides took up a proposal, consultation with Yeltsin and with responsible officials was erratic or entirely absent, as was shown by the announcement that military bases were to be built in Latvia.
Asked to specify people in Yeltsin's staff to whom the president had handed over special authority, Kazannik named Alexander Korzhakov, the head of Yeltsin's bodyguard. "Korzhakov can solve any problem", Kazannik said.
Towards dictatorship
In Kazannik's view, the Yeltsin administration was evolving toward still greater arbitrariness and authoritarianism. "I think that in the near future, certain political parties could be outlawed and the rights and freedoms of citizens restricted."
Kazannik's description confirms that the real Yeltsin apparatus is nothing like the image usually promoted in the West — that of a democratic administration, energetically carrying through popular reforms after clearing away the debris of the totalitarian past.
In many ways, the Yeltsin Kremlin is strikingly "Soviet", and even Brezhnevite. This is the case with its chief's haphazard work patterns and his weakness, which he has retained from his days as Communist Party boss in provincial Sverdlovsk, for resorting to "telephone law" — that is, trying to cut through problems by high-handedly imposing simple, brutal solutions.
Also reminiscent of earlier Kremlin chiefs is the Russian president's often dismal choice of associates. In choosing aides and advisers, Yeltsin notoriously rates personal loyalty above competence and scruple.
To a certain degree, these factors explain the labyrinthine character of decision-making in the Yeltsin Kremlin. But the administration's contempt for the constitution, the law and democratic processes has deeper roots.
Yeltsin's project of restoring capitalism is not popular in Russia. In the general-list voting in the December elections, the "Russia's Choice" bloc, which most closely reflected the president's views, gained only 16% of the vote. In an opinion poll by Western sociologists reported by the paper Rabochaya Tribuna on March 22, only 31% of Russians questioned considered that their country was "developing in the right direction".
Yeltsin's plans, it follows, cannot be implemented by democratic means, and despite a wildly "presidential" constitution, probably not even by legal ones. However, this has not diverted the president and his aides from their general course.
And as Alexei Kazannik was appalled to find, people who actively resist the administration's vision of the Russian future are in real danger of being shot.