THE LONG running Punch and Judy show between Yeltsin and the majority of to reach a climax this autumn. The Congress now routinely countermands economic and anti-corruption initiatives. COLIN MEADE reports. ACCORDING to the speaker of the Congress, Ruslan Khasbulator, at issue are two economic models, 'one advocating radical reform, the other socially orien. tated reform under strict state control.
The beavy battalions of the military industrial complex assembled in the Congress are chafing at the restrictions on their freedom of economic and political action imposed by Yeltsin's abject kowtowing to Western interests.
Recently, for example. Yeltsin was ready to bow to American demands to cancel a rocket technokey deal with India which Washington insisted infringed disarmament agreements, while Russian arms exports are at an all time low.
Abolish forum
Yeltsin, meanwhile, is planning to abolish his critics forum; he has announced a new draft constitution, which wout enabicine prestocheto dissole the WORLD NEWS congress ano call cicerons and which does away with the post of vice-presi dent, currently occupied by one of his leading critics, Alexander Rutskoi.
Beneath the grand reform plans and rhetoric about democratic procedures issuing from both sides lies the frustration of the military industrial complex. with their country's loss of status and their ambition to regain control of the territory of the former USSR.
Vice-President Rutskoi for example openly looks forward to tie day when his country will 'again become a superpower that can guarantee peace.
Developments over the past two years in the so-called Dniester Republic, a recion of the newly-independent republic of Moldova are instructive. This region, by the rogue Russian 14th Army under General Alexander Lebed, backed up by Russian and Cossack volekiteers.
Last August Yeltsin sent in some 3,000 Russian 'peacekeeping troops but no attempt had been made to recall Lebed, a vocal proponent of the need to reassert Russian domination throughout the former Soviet Union.
The peacekeeping force is accused of siding with Lebed by the Moldovan govnational force to intervene.
Something similar is happening in Georgia, with reports of freelance Russian involvement on the side of the Abkhazian separatists and a proposal from a Yeltsinite minister for a "three-way Lebed played a key role in the August 1991 coup attempt by military conservatives against Yeltsin - on both sides. He led a paratroop battalion to the Russian president's White House, excury in possession of a plan to storm the building.
However, under orders from General Pavel Grachev, now Yeltsin's defence minister, he joined the defenders. Subsequently he went to join the troops in the Dniester Republic before being appointed to the job by Yeltsin.
Army reform
Gracher, along with his deputy Boris Gromov and Lebed, is a veteran of the volved in there, which included extensive experiences of what is politely described "pacifying the civilian population'. rounded out with conclusions drawn reform of the army, tervention forces with particular attention given to the threat of Islamic fundamentalism' - thereby neatly dovetailing Russian military doctrine with current US As Grachev explains, 'one cannot forget that on the territory of Russia there Nationalist leadership of mass dissatisfaction would threaten remaining social gains live some 20 million inhabitants who profess Islam.
If the flames of war are not put out in Tajikistan (which borders of Afghanistan and where Russian troops are already in action), then there are possible dangerous consequences even in Russia.
Independence
One of the centres of the Rapid Deployment force is to be the North Can. casus region where Chechenia has doclared its independence of the Russian Federation.
As presidential advisor Sergei Stankevich nas expinco Russias mis toric task is now to stabilize itself in its present borders and then conduct a gradthe 'near abroad'.
Tellin is not merely a tool or the militarists. His recent denunciation of the Congress' claim on the Black Sea port of Sevastopol, now part of the Ukraine, for Russia, is a sign of that.
His rise to power was based on a double-sided appeal to anti-bureaucratic sentiment and to Western imperialism. drawing the teeth of the former by promising miracles from the latter.
Why embark on an anti-bureaucratic revolution when Western aid and Western economic models were going to provide US living standards in a matter of a few years?
However it is clear that the military industrial party decided two years ago the time being, owing to their own unpopularity - shown by the confident usc Yeltsin makes of the "threat' of elections and the convenience of laying the blame for the suffering caused by the first round of blows to the welfare system and full employment on the hapless president.
Yeltsin's popular support, however, is fading away under as the emptiness of his extravagant promises becomes apparent. His response is to attempt to combine concessions to the programme of the military industrial party while ruling - or pretending to rule - by decree.
At the same time he rushes from summit to summit, extracting promises from Wester leaders to underpin his position. Indeed, he has now gone so far as to contemplate American involvement in conflicts on the territory of the former USSR. American President Bill Clinton is reported as looking favourably on this sdea Strike wave Recent weeks have seen a brush fire of strikes protesting against the threat of unemployment in mumng and acrens related industries. However, there is evidence of bureaucratic manipulation of these movements.
For example a recent one-hour waring strike of defence workers in the Urals came two days after a joint conference of managers and unions in ine mousty said demanded among other things a 'clear strategic doctrine' Defence of the legacy of the October Revolution - social rights, especially full employment and the national rights which were the basis for the powerful nationalist movements that erupted in the late 1980s requires political independence from the nationalist schemes of Nationalist mobilization against exteral and internal enemies wouk! provide a propitious climate for finishing off egalitarian traditics and worker comSOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 48, September 1993, Page 13
Yeltsin's decrees and has set up parallel constitutional,