Russia Needs Dose of Tough Love, Ousted Official Says

MOSCOW — The international financial community should treat Russia with tough love and cut off the narcotic of foreign loans until it carries out specific measures to build a market economy and balance its budget, ousted chief tax collector Boris Fedorov said Wednesday.

“My advice in helping Russia is, don’t give it drugs,” said Fedorov, who also was fired from his post as a deputy prime minister last month. “Demand from Russia drastic economic reforms.”

Fedorov, an outspoken advocate of a Western-style market economy, said lenders such as the International Monetary Fund should recognize that Russia has made little progress in transforming its economy despite more than $20 billion in foreign loans over the past six years.

“The IMF was pretending to see a lot of reforms in Russia,” Fedorov told a group of Western reporters. “Russia was pretending to enact reforms. And the U.S. taxpayers were paying for it.”

Fedorov, who served in the Russian government twice before but lasted only four months this time, said he was forced out by First Deputy Prime Minister Yuri D. Maslyukov, a Communist who is in charge of the economy in the new Cabinet of Prime Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov.

Fedorov predicted that the new government will fail in solving the country’s problems and that the Cabinet will be reshuffled yet again within six months. He noted that Maslyukov was in charge of the Soviet Union’s economy at the time of its collapse and has not served in the government since. “He failed,” Fedorov said. “The shops were empty.”

Fedorov also said that President Boris N. Yeltsin is detached from the country’s economic problems and leaves the handling of the crisis to his Cabinet. The president, who is seen in public only occasionally these days, is concerned with “broader issues,” such as defense and security, he said.

“He’s not interested in detailed economic policy,” Fedorov said.

The economic crisis, which has caused the ruble to plummet and paralyzed commerce, caused huge financial losses for the small group of tycoons known as “financial oligarchs” who control much of the economy and helped reelect Yeltsin president in 1996, he said.

Although their political power has waned, they remain a significant force, he said: “The famous oligarchs, as we call them now, are much weaker. They are regrouping their forces.”

Another force to be reckoned with, the Communists--who have made political gains with the appointment of Primakov’s government--are organizing a nationwide day of protest for next Wednesday that they say will unleash a wave of unrest.

But a series of Moscow rallies billed as a dress rehearsal fizzled Wednesday, drawing what police said were no more than 1,100 people from a metropolitan region of more than 10 million. The plan had been to shut down seven major roadways into the capital, but police said most of the blockades lasted only a few minutes.

At one of the largest, about 200 Communist activists huddled with a few coal miners and science workers in a frigid drizzle for about an hour, blocking two lanes of a four-lane highway. But traffic was detoured around the site, so there were no confrontations with drivers.

Although the demonstration was supposed to feature disgruntled scientists, there were few to be found.

One protester was 59-year-old reserve Col. Pavel Bezik, who described himself as a technician at a nearby research institute.

“If I had the opportunity, I would take up arms and chase all the leaders over the Urals into Siberia,” he said. “Then we would live normally.”