Leading Article: A sick Russia is dangerous for us all

Four months after Boris Yeltsin's re-election, Russia presents a disturbing picture of political paralysis, economic mismanagement and increasing social disorder and violence. The fresh boost to the reform process that Mr Yeltsin's decisive election victory was supposed to provide has yet to materialise. In fact, on a range of fronts, from the chaotic condition of the armed forces to random street crime and the plight of millions of unpaid workers, matters have almost certainly grown worse.

The problems began with the president's prolonged absence from his desk, which culminated two weeks ago in a quintuple heart bypass operation. It no doubt came as a relief to western governments to learn yesterday that Mr Yeltsin, in his first interview since the operation, had declared himself "fighting fit" and ready to resume work after a spell in his favourite sanatorium. Yet even those who most fervently welcomed Mr Yeltsin's victory in July over his Communist challenger, Gennady Zyuganov, must wonder how badly the president's illness has disrupted the course of Russian reform.

Under Russia's constitution, tailor-made for Mr Yeltsin after he crushed an armed uprising in Moscow in October 1993, power is concentrated to an extraordinary degree in the president's hands. If he is incapacitated, his subordinates are inevitably tempted to intrigue against each other. The consequences for efficient government are predictably debilitating.

Before his re-election, Mr Yeltsin aggravated this inherent weakness of his presidential system by bringing the ambitious Alexander Lebed into his administration. A torrid struggle quickly ensued between the retired general and a faction led by the president's chief of staff, Anatoly Chubais. It took almost four months for Mr Chubais to drum General Lebed out of office, a time that should have been devoted to pressing issues such as tax reform and purging Russian business life of corruption and crime.

Yet no sooner had Mr Chubais dealt with General Lebed than he injected a quite unnecessary controversy into Russian politics by appointing Boris Berezovsky, a financial and media tycoon who bankrolled Mr Yeltsin's re- election campaign, as deputy secretary of the influential Security Council. Mr Berezovsky had no obvious qualifications for this sensitive position. All that Mr Chubais achieved was to reinforce the Russian parliament's determination to obstruct the Yeltsin administration's policies, and to confirm the impression among the Russian public that government under Mr Yeltsin equals government by cabal.

While Mr Chubais schemed and Mr Yeltsin prepared to go under the surgeon's knife, problems for the Russian economy were rapidly mounting. It had been known since January that Russia would plunge into a budgetary crisis later in the year unless the government took decisive action against corporate tax evasion. Some of Russia's largest, newly privatised companies contribute only trivial amounts of tax revenue to the state, and this is one reason for the delays, sometimes lasting several months, that millions of public- sector workers (not to mention soldiers) endure before they receive their wages.

Yet it was not until last month that the administration set up an emergency tax commission to tackle the problem. The commission, which unfortunately bears the same initials in Russian as Lenin's infamous Cheka political police, is already said to be cracking down hard on tax-dodgers. Yet the measure came too late for the International Monetary Fund, which was compelled to suspend the latest $340m (pounds 205m) tranche of its three-year, $10.2bn loan for Russia on the grounds that the government was breaking the terms of the agreement signed last February. The loan is vital to Russia's market reforms because, if properly used, it will guarantee medium- term economic stability, facilitate Russian access to world capital markets and encourage foreign investment. No doubt the IMF will eventually release the money. Yet it is a measure of the confusion inside Mr Yeltsin's administration that his hand-picked officials allowed the crisis to blow up in the first place.

The same criticism applies to the administration's treatment of military reform. Both General Lebed and Igor Rodionov, the man whom he selected as defence minister, have warned that the armed forces are on the brink of a catastrophe unless emergency measures are taken. For the moment, this means mainly payment of overdue wages and restoration of discipline in disintegrating units where soldiers either fail to report for service or steal weapons for sale on the black market.

The problems may soon go much deeper. According to a recent CIA report, the control of the government and military leadership over Russia's thousands of nuclear weapons is weakening. Add to this such startling events as the crash last weekend of Russia's $300m Mars probe, and the killing of 68 people in an explosion at a military base in the southern republic of Dagestan, and the impression of chaos in Russia grows stronger.

Far from hailing Mr Yeltsin's apparent return to health as a sign that all will soon be well, the West should understand that matters could easily get worse before they improve. Yet in certain fields, such as modernising tax administration and strengthening control over nuclear weapons, the West can and should offer quick and practical help. True, the West will never have more than a limited influence over events in Russia. But that is no excuse for turning into passive spectators of disorder, or for behaving like naive cheer-leaders of poorly executed reform. We, and our political leaders, should worry about Russia.