The latest upheaval among Russia's nervous ruling class, it became clear yesterday, had nothing to do with ideology or ability. It was all about weight.
For the anxious new boyars of business and politics, the literal contrast between the diminutive frame of the outgoing Prime Minister, Mr Sergei Kiriyenko, and the hefty paunch of the incoming Mr Victor Chernomyrdin was match ed by the lightweight credibility of the youngster: when it came to the crunch, they feared, no one would obey him. And the crunch is now.
Whoever becomes Russia's next supreme leader, the message from the echelons of power went, must have weight - authority, experience, ruthlessness. And since Sunday, Mr Chernomyrdin is the heaviest of them all.
"What we need today are heavyweights," said President Yeltsin. A radio commentator responded: "The President's weight has been diminished." Mr Yelt sin's press spokesman intoned sadly: "In crisis conditions, there was no time to increase Kiriyenko's weight."
Out in Siberia, ex-general Alexander Lebed, a regional governor and presidential hopeful who might have been expected to oppose the elevation of his rival, Mr Chernomyrdin, admitted: "The situation is such that only a political heavyweight can be the country's prime minister. Someone else, even the most talented and intelligent, cannot tackle the situation because they need time to gain political weight."
What does it mean to have weight in Russia? In quiet times, it means the ability to squeeze concessions out of the country's increasingly oligarchic ruling layer of governors, party leaders and businessmen. In times of crisis, such as now, it means the ability to protect them.
One well-informed source, newspaper editor Vitaly Tret yakov, said yesterday that the decision to sack Mr Kiriyenko was taken in principle last month, and that the choice of Mr Chernomyrdin to succeed him was made at the beginning of last week after a political sumo bout between him and another "weighty" candidate, Mr Anatoly Chubais.
Mr Tretyakov, editor of Nezavisimaya Gazeta, whose proprietor, Mr Boris Berezovsky, is close to Mr Yeltsin's inner councils, said he believed the final catalyst for Mr Kiriyenko's dismissal was the US missile strike against Afghanistan and Sudan.
"It forced the people at the top to think about what would happen if they needed someone apart from Yeltsin to take the kind of responsible decision made by Clinton," said Mr Tretyakov.
"What generals would obey Kiriyenko? He was too young. It was necessary to get someone the security structures would listen to. Those bomb strikes were a blow against Kiriyenko personally."
The question now is where Mr Chernomyrdin is going to throw his weight. As Mr Yeltsin's newly-anointed successor, with carte blanche from the Kremlin to form his own government and a serious bid in progress to win a permanent parliamentary majority in support of his policies, he is in a powerful position.
From a rank outsider in the year 2000 presidential election stakes, he now vaults ahead of Gen Lebed and the Mayor of Moscow, Mr Yuri Luzhkov. The three main nationwide TV channels support him.
Yet so far all the manoeuvring has been within the elite. But it is the people who will have to bear the brunt of a financial crisis which has barely begun. Even while the country's stock market was booming in 1996 and early 1997, tens of millions of Russians were living in ever-worsening poverty.
Mr Chernomyrdin's weight is less likely to be brought to bear in defence of Russia than in defence of the ruling class - the tycoons, the politicians and Mr Yeltsin's entourage - against the people.
"Bear in mind that Chernomyrdin hasn't been appointed at the moment when the crisis has been overcome, but at the point when it's only really begun in earnest," said one political commentator, Mr Alexei Venediktov.
"There's no sign of the financial situation improving, and the consequences of some of the mistakes Chernomyrdin made when he was first in office are far from exhausted. In the next two months, the banking crisis will get worse, prices will rise and inflation will set in."
Like most of Russia's newspaper editors, Mr Tretyakov, a disillusioned liberal, has to live with the assumption by many of his readers that his once-independent newspaper has become no more than a mouthpiece for its oligarchic owner.
Mr Berezovsky, the oligarch's oligarch, is close to Mr Chernomyrdin. Since his sacking five months ago, the newspaper has campaigned to bring him back.
Mr Tretyakov defended these powerful businessmen, saying it was in their own interests to protect the Russian people - "or, at least, the state". He made the distinction.
"I know them all personally, and I can say that the oligarchs understood in 1996 that to build a pile of gold on top of a pile of gunpowder and sit on it with a match in your hand would be dangerous," he said.