The Job Just Got Harder For Boris' Handlers

By Paul Quinn-Judge /Moscow

From the very start of Boris Yeltsin's rule, his doorkeepers have had an outsize importance in running Russia. Despite Yeltsin's early populism, he has always mistrusted others and tended toward reclusiveness. These weaknesses have increased with his growing ill health. And last week's purge of his government has redoubled the importance of the two people closest to the President: chief of staff Valentin Yumashev and Yeltsin's younger daughter, Tatyana Dyachenko.

Of the two, Yumashev seems to be emerging as the more forceful political figure. "His role is enormous," says Boris Berezovsky, banker and power broker with close ties to both the chief of staff and the daughter. "He enjoys the President's total confidence." Another influential figure in the world of business and politics says Yumashev was crucial in modifying Yeltsin's original plans for last week's reshuffle, although exactly what he did remains secret.

Yumashev is an unlikely eminence grise. A rumpled, 40-year-old ex-journalist, he began working for Yeltsin in the late '80s. He avoids cameras and interviews, and those who know him say he is amiable, tough and determined. His relationship with Yeltsin is said to be almost as close as son to father. He works closely with Dyachenko, 38, whom Berezovsky describes as "the genetic copy of her father," quiet but very observant.

The two have their hands full managing the President, but there may well be greater tests. Under the Russian constitution, only one person can declare the President unfit to rule: the President himself. But what if Yeltsin becomes incapable of understanding that it is time to go? Yumashev and Dyachenko will be the first to see if this happens, and they will have to decide what to do. "I want to hope that the President's health will not lead to a political crisis," Berezovsky says diplomatically. But, he adds, the pair "are paying due attention to the situation, and will respond appropriately if the time comes." If Yeltsin does have to step aside, then the responsibility of running the government will fall on the shoulders of the new and untested Acting Prime Minister, Sergei Kiriyenko.

--By Paul Quinn-Judge/Moscow