NEW APPOINTMENTS TO PRESIDENTIAL STAFF.

While speculation and secrecy continue to surround the composition of the new Russian government, President Yeltsin has named three deputy heads of his presidential administration, to work under Anatoly Chubais. They are Yevgeny Savastyanov, Maksim Boiko, and Aleksei Kudrin.

From September 1991 until December 1994, Savastyanov was deputy director of the Federal Security Service and headed the Moscow branch of the KGB successor-organization. He lost his job after tangling with Yeltsin’s closest associate, presidential security boss Aleksandr Korzhakov. Chubais said yesterday that Savastyanov will be responsible for personnel appointments and for establishing the "presidential vertical," that is, the tricky job of ensuring that the president retains control over regional executives even after the upcoming elections, in which governors are to be popularly elected instead of, as before, personally appointed by the president. (NTV, Interfax, August 1)

Aleksei Kudrin is to head the Main Control Administration, responsible for monitoring the federal budget including the now all-important question of salary payments. Chubais said Kudrin would undertake an analysis of the progress of reform and the social and economic situation in the various regions of Russia — a vital matter of at a time when the Communist party is hoping to translate popular discontent over living standards into election victories in the fall. Kudrin is, like Chubais, originally an economist from Leningrad. Until recently, he worked as deputy to the mayor of St. Petersburg, Anatoly Sobchak.

Maksim Boiko, also an economist, is to handle liaison between the presidential apparatus and political parties. Chubais has already set the ball rolling; he met July 31 with Yegor Gaidar and other leaders of his own party, Russia’s Democratic Choice, to discuss ways of uniting the fractious democrats behind single candidates in the fall elections. (Interfax, July 31)

Election Interest Focuses on Saratov Region.