MOSCOW -- As Russian President Boris Yeltsin works to remake his impoverished country, he is relying on a small group of advisers who, like him, became disillusioned with the communist system that nurtured them and now want to democratize Russia swiftly and preserve its status as a superpower.
So far, despite fierce attacks on Yeltsin's economic reform program and conservative hopes of a backlash against it, this inner circle is holding together. And the Russian president, for now, appears to have lost none of his confidence in these democratic "Young Turks," whom Yeltsin's estranged Vice President Alexander Rutskoi derided as "young boys in pink shorts."
{Rutskoi kept up his criticism of Yeltsin's policies yesterday, calling for a one-year economic state of emergency to save the country from ruin. Page A18}
Most of Yeltsin's advisers are in their thirties and forties, and of the generation that lost its faith in the communist system when the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968 to crush a fledgling democracy movement there. They are newcomers to power, untainted by past association with the Communist leadership, but also untested in the sort of crises that Russia is now facing.
Some old-timers, stylistically more similar to the burly, gregarious Yeltsin than the younger, cooler intellectuals, also remain in the Russian president's inner circle and are less supportive of the radical reform agenda. Many were opposed to dissolving the Soviet Union and are fighting to preserve for themselves and their supporters the privileges of the old regime, cabinet members said.
However, at least for now, it is the Young Turks who are ascendant, advising Yeltsin on everything from economic and political reform to foreign policy.
Almost all were with Yeltsin at various pivotal moments: when Yeltsin was cast into official disgrace for criticizing the slow pace of reform in 1987; when he came under harsh attack by party propagandists during his 1989 campaign for the Soviet parliament; especially, when he stood atop a tank in front of the Russian Parliament last August and faced down the Communist hard-liners' coup against Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev.
Foremost among the Young Turks is Gennadi Burbulis, 46, a former professor of Marxism-Leninism, who, as deputy prime minister, operates like an assertive White House chief of staff. Burbulis recruited much of the cabinet, many of whom Yeltsin met for the first time just before he appointed them. When Yeltsin travels, he leaves behind Burbulis -- not the distrusted Rutskoi -- to run the government, sign decrees and make decisions in his absence.
"He is a very clever politician who knows how to play the inside game," said a top official who is no fan of Burbulis.
The "gray cardinal," as Burbulis has been called, in deference to his serious, intellectual demeanor, grew up in Yeltsin's home town of Sverdlovsk. He studied and taught political philosophy there. In 1988, motivated by the democracy movement then sweeping the country, he helped establish the "Discussion Tribune," one of the first political clubs supporting Gorbachev's policies of glasnost and perestroika.
Burbulis and Yeltsin did not meet until 1989, according to Burbulis, when both were members of the Soviet legislature. Burbulis became a member of the legislature's first opposition group and began serving as Yeltsin's spokesman and representative. He managed Yeltsin's campaign for the Russian presidency and stayed with Yeltsin in the Russian "White House," or parliament building, throughout the days of the August coup.
Burbulis, who often speaks in the stilted style of Marxist intellectuals, has made clear that he favors a complete break with the past. He strongly, and successfully, opposed continuation of the centralized union government in any form, against the advice of some of Yeltsin's older associates.
Burbulis also has warned members of Yeltsin's cabinet against falling into the excesses of the past, encouraging them to be "chaste" in their dealings. In a recent interview with Nezvisimaya Gazeta, he drew a clear distinction between the Yeltsin government and Communist regimes, which, he said, regarded people as mere pawns "in the fulfillment of somebody else's political ambitions."
One of Burbulis's first recruits was Yegor Gaidar, 35, the economist entrusted by Yeltsin to swiftly transform Russia's moribund, centralized economy into a free-market system. The cherubic Gaidar, in daily contact with Burbulis and Yeltsin, has been the brains behind Yeltsin's "shock therapy" program, organizing the move to liberalize prices, eliminate many subsidies, free the ruble and, soon, privatize farms and businesses.
While widely thought of as "brilliant," Gaidar also is criticized by some as having no understanding of how the system works and, therefore, no idea of how to eliminate roadblocks, human or bureaucratic, to his reforms.
In many ways, Gaidar is emblematic of the changes that have swept this society and government. The grandson of a Red Army fighter and writer of patriotic children's stories, son of a vice admiral and Pravda military correspondent, Gaidar was a devoted Young Pioneer as a child, a proud believer in communism and his country's destiny.
"When I was a very young boy, from 6 to 8, I was in Cuba. It was just after the {Cuban} revolution, during the {missile} crisis. It was terribly romantic, terribly exciting -- with tanks, and fighting -- for a young boy. I was absolutely convinced that we were fighting for good against the evil causes of the imperialist," Gaidar recalled during a recent interview.
But then, when he was 12, Soviet-led forces invaded Czechoslovakia, quashing the democracy movement there known as the Prague Spring, as well as Gaidar's faith in the rightness of his country and communism. His disillusionment spread further when, several years later, a Russian-language copy of Paul Samuelson's "Economics" textbook, secretly given to him by an older friend, opened Gaidar's eyes -- and mind -- to the promises of a free market and capitalism.
At Moscow State University, capitalist economic theory was required reading -- to understand the enemy -- pointing him further away from the communist world. "Probably too much reading on world economics in a foreign language is not very healthy for the Marxist dogma," he said, with a laugh.
Privileged in the system and not a dissident by any means, Gaidar kept his beliefs mostly to himself, working as the economics editor of Kommunist. When Gorbachev gingerly allowed such economic discussions to be aired in public, Gaidar worked, with Stanislav Shatalin, on the ill-fated "500 Day Plan," which called for a rapid conversion to a free-market system. But when the Soviet leader, under pressure from Communist conservatives, rejected the plan, Gaidar retreated from politics.
He reemerged last August at the Russian White House to defend Yeltsin and democracy against the Communist hard-liners' coup. Many members of the economic institute he headed also showed up at the White House. Several months later, when Yeltsin was putting together his new government, Burbulis and Yeltsin aides Mikhail Poltaranin and Sergei Shakrai met with Gaidar and quizzed him on his economic beliefs and proposals. In a meeting with Yeltsin, the two talked generally about the need for drastic economic reform. Gaidar said he learned of his appointment only after Yeltsin signed a decree making it official.
Poltaranin and Shakrai also have emerged as key members of the Yeltsin circle, although for very different reasons. Poltaranin, 62, was with Yeltsin through all of the hard times and, unlike many, never abandoned him when the Communist Party sought to make him a pariah. As a result, Yeltsin seems willing to forgive his occasional political blunders.
A former concrete layer, poet and newspaper editor who lost his job under Gorbachev because of his high-profile support of Yeltsin, Poltaranin officially is information minister but remains a close and regular confidant on all matters, according to cabinet members and others. He is involved in most major governmental and political decisions, often in conjunction with Burbulis.
While older than the Young Turks, he holds similar political ideas and is regularly described as being one of the more radical members of Yeltsin's inner circle, eager to pursue swift reforms. While criticized by the media at times, he is also credited with having created an atmosphere here that allows an extremely free press to flourish.
Shakrai, 35, arrived on the scene more recently, but has become the legal brains behind many of Yeltsin's moves. A Communist Party member who headed a university legal research department, Shakrai got involved in politics only in 1990 with his election to the Soviet parliament. There he encountered Yeltsin, and last August ended up inside the White House during the coup.
Yeltsin took Shakrai, Burbulis and another Yeltsin insider, Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev, 41, to the December meeting at which the three Slavic republics agreed to dissolve the Soviet Union and create the Commonwealth of Independent States. It was Shakrai, primarily, who stayed up all night fashioning the agreement with Belarus and Ukraine. Later, he provided Yeltsin with the legal arguments to publicly justify the dissolution and Russia's position that it be declared the Soviet Union's official successor.
Yeltsin also has embraced two other men who sided with him during the coup and whose continued support is considered important to the stability of his government.
Viktor Barannikov, 52, as head of the Russian Interior Ministry during the coup, made sure the police did not participate, depriving the coup leaders of important logistical and psychological support. Yeltsin rewarded Barannikov's loyalty by appointing him head of the Russian KGB, which has since been reorganized and renamed the MBR. The two apparently maintain close contact, according to journalists and others. Barannikov has begun cleaning house in the agency, where many are suspected of involvement in the coup.
Yevgeny Shaposhnikov, 50, as commander of the Soviet air force during the coup, refused to obey orders to mobilize in support of the putsch. For that he became a hero to the young democrats and Yeltsin, who had him appointed Soviet minister of defense.
Now commander-in-chief of the Commonwealth armed forces, Shaposhnikov has, so far, been able to dissipate opposition to Yeltsin in the military, soothing military leaders and mid-level officers concerned about Yeltsin's reforms and the breakup of the Soviet Union's forces.