World

Meet Russia's No. 2 Man

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

August 27, 1998 / 3:41 PM EDT / CBS

Russia's new prime minister-designate is a traditional Soviet bureaucrat who reached the pinnacle of Kremlin power with a combination of managerial skill, pragmatism and ability as a consensus-builder.

Viktor Chernomyrdin, 60, served six years as Boris Yeltsin's colorless right-hand man before the boss dumped him as prime minister last March for 36-year-old Sergei Kiriyenko. Yeltsin said the Kremlin leadership needed youth and "fresh ideas."

But a scant five months after his fall, Chernomyrdin was back in power as prime minister. Economic chaos prompted Yeltsin to dismiss his government and again embrace Chernomyrdin as the "heavyweight" needed to run his government.

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In doing so, Yeltsin hinted that Chernomyrdin might succeed him as president, something that can't happen soon enough for Russia's power elites, who want Yeltsin to step down. (Yeltsin has vowed to serve out has term as president, which ends in 2000.)

The dour, stocky Chernomyrdin first became prime minister in 1992 as a compromise candidate who took the "middle way" between those who favored the old Soviet command economy and those who wanted a total free enterprise system in Russia. Chernomyrdin had achieved acclaim as the head of the old Soviet Union's gas and energy monopoly before entering the government.

Chernomyrdin backed price controls and heavy government subsidies for state industries when he took office, but he soon moved to the right. By 1994, he was backing a tight-money, low-inflation economic policy that won him friends and admirers in the West.

All the while, Chernomyrdin stayed in the background, content to remain in Yeltsin's shadow. The high point of his stint as Yeltsin's No. 2 man came in 1995, when he intervened to save the lives of hundreds of Russian hostages seized by Chechen rebels. Chernomyrdin won high marks for skillfully negotiating a peaceful end to the crisis.

Chernomyrdin is a self-made man. He was born in the southern Urals city of Orenburg in 1938. As a young man, he worked as compressor operator while taking correspondence courses from a technical school. He next became a machine operator at an oil refinery and began a slow, steady climb through the ranks of the ruling Communist Party.

He moved into the natural gas industry in the 1970s and became deputy minister of the industry in 1982. Mikhail Gorbachev made Chernomyrdin boss of the industry when he assumed power in 1985. In 1989, he turned the gas ministry into a company called Gazprom.

Within three years, Chernomyrdin made Gazprom was one of the world's largest corporations. His management skill won praise in Russia and the West. That set the stage for him tbecome Russia's No. 2 man.