WINNER TAKES ALL.

Last week’s biggest winner seemed to be presidential Chief-of-Staff Anatoly Chubais. First, Chubais took over from Ilyushin the power to control access to the president; in future, no document will land on Yeltsin’s desk and no presidential decree will leave it unless it has been vetted by Chubais. (Segodnya, August 14) Chubais has spent the past month purging the Kremlin administration of holdovers from the previous administration of Aleksandr Korzhakov and Nikolai Yegorov and bringing in his own associates, many of them, like himself, forty-something economists who cut their political teeth in Leningrad in the late perestroika period. The Russian media have called Chubais’ new team a "parallel government," but this seems an exaggeration. With a team of economic reformers installed in the government, Chubais can follow through on his promise not to interfere in the economy and concentrate the immediate efforts of his team on what he has identified as the number one priority: the upcoming regional elections.

Regional Elections Focus of Kremlin Attention.