Russian PM toes capitalist line down on the farm

IT WAS the kind of dog-dull day expected of a lumpy, middle-aged bureaucrat with Brezhnev eyebrows: a trip to the 60 Years of October collective farm in Nizhny Novgorod province; a pause en route for on-the-spot-guidance and a photo opportunity with peasants; a meeting at a television factory with local captains of industry.

The script, though, was far from orthodox. The farm had split into private plots and was auctioning off its tractors; peasants waiting outside in the snow snarled and refused to smile; 'red directors' assembled at the television plant got a stern lecture on the merits of sink-or-swim capitalism.

The routine is a common one these days as Viktor Chernomyrdin, Russia's Prime Minister, stumps the provinces, takes charge in Moscow and sets about confounding just about everyone, including possibly himself.

A one-time gas-industry apparatchik who only a month ago proudly declared himself a 'red director' and a foe of 'market romanticism,' Mr Chernomyrdin is now among Russia's most dogged cheerleaders of change and, with Boris Yeltsin increasingly hobbled by ill-health, erratic behaviour and a bungling entourage, the unelected cadre provides the most solid anchor in a swamp of shifting alliances, rampant ambitions and incessant verbal fog. A league table of Russia's power elite by Nozavisimaya Gazeta recently put Mr Chernomyrdin ahead of Mr Yeltsin.

He has faced down not only disgruntled peasants but the far more powerful lobbies of state industry and the military. 'We have reached a point beyond which we cannot go,' said the Defence Minister, Pavel Grachev, after Mr Chernomyrdin outlined a budget offering half the cash he demanded.

Michel Camdessus, head of the International Monetary Fund, has declared himself 'impressed by the pragmatism of Russia's government'. But he doubts Mr Chernomyrdin's conversion to austerity is enough. Inflation dipped to a 18-month low of 9.9 per cent last month, but dropping much faster is Russia's output. February production was 24 per cent down on a year ago. As industry seizes up, a noisy clamouring for state cash can only grow more insistent.

Russia's draft budget, providing for a deficit of around 10 per cent of GDP, is as tough as anything devised by Yegor Gaidar or Boris Fyodorov before they stalked out of the government in January, denouncing what they called an 'economic coup' by a resurgent old guard.

'Chernomyrdin is no less a reformer than Gaidar,' says Boris Nemtsov, the dynamic young governor of Nizhny Novgorod and master of ceremonies at 60 Years of October, one of three collectives broken up under a land-reform experiment. Mr Nemtsov's previous guests include John Major and Margaret Thatcher.

At the farm's House of Culture, Mr Chernomyrdin beamed as a bow-tied auctioneer sold off state property from a desk shared by a young American consultant. Mr Nemtsov's only disappointment was the paucity of journalists on hand to watch Mr Chernomyrdin bless the demolition of collective farming: 'If the same scene had happened with Gaidar, America and Britain would shout about a major step to the free market.'

Mr Chernomyrdin has the same complaint: 'Why does everyone think I'm against reform?' The main reason is his past. His first act upon replacing Mr Gaidar as prime minister in December 1992 was an elaborate programme of price controls. He quickly dropped the scheme but stuck with old instincts. He seemed ready to try again when Mr Gaidar quit as economics minister. Economists from the perestroika period - Stanislav Shatalin, Leonid Abalkin and Nikolai Petrakov - were back in favour and claimed to have the prime minister's ear. Western advisers went home in a huff. The real change, though, was perhaps limited to style. Mr Chernomyrdin speaks no English. He even gets mocked for his Russian.

But when he outlined his budget plans to parliament last Thursday he barely deviated from the classic monetarist text: 'Pumping in money may improve the situation for a couple of months but collapse is then inevitable. Russia faces a structural crisis and there are no fast populist solutions. We cannot afford to keep inefficient enterprises afloat.'

Mr Chernomyrdin has been preaching the same message in the provinces. Many one-time friends are flabbergasted. He is playing the hard man, not the sugar-daddy many had expected. 'Many people want to be kind now,' he told parliament. 'But we will never get out of this swamp if we are too kind.'