IN A last minute effort to appease millions of workers and pensioners, who are to take to the streets today, the government announced it would pay out 2.1 billion in back wages and pensions. President Yeltsin issued a decree banning members of the government from driving foreign cars.
It was not clear if the foreign car decree, due to come into effect on April 1st, would apply to Mr Yeltsin himself who travels in a stretched Mercedes rather than the traditional Zil limousine favoured by his predecessors.
Foreign cars are symbols of wealth in Russia and to the average Russian wealth is the symbol of corruption. The new move was initiated by Mr Boris Nemtsov the governor of Russia's third city Nizhny Novgorod, who was appointed deputy prime minister on March 17th. Nizhny Novgorod is a major centre for the production of Russia's Volga automobile.
The payment of back wages illustrates the priorities of the new government in which the power of the Prime Minister, Mr Viktor Chernomyrdin, has been squeezed by Mr Nemtsov and the powerful former presidential chief of staff, Mr Anatoly Chubais. Of the $2.1 billion to be paid out, more than half will be given to miners and the revamping of the coal industry.
Trade union sources put the debts to workers in unpaid wages at more than $9 billion and claim that non payment of wages and salaries has been a key to the government's fight against inflation.
More than 20 million Russians are expected to take to the streets today. They are backed by the independent trade unions, the communist parties, the reformist economist Mr Grigory Yavlinsky and even by Mr Yeltsin himself who has adopted the tactic of placing all the blame for the current situation on members of his government.
Mr Chernomyrdin, reputed to one of the wealthiest men in Russia, attacked the idea of the protests saying they made the situation in Russia worse.
Mr Yavlinsky, on the other hand, who is a friend and close collaborator of Mr Nemtsov, has supported the demonstrations as the "act of a desperate people who want to highlight their grievances.
Mr Nemtsov, he said, might he used in government simply as a temporary ornament.
Mr Yeltsin has a record of bringing popular figures such as Mr Nemtsov into his cabinet to ease public disquiet and then ditch them at a later stage. The most prominent example was his appointment of Gen Alexander Lebed as the national security chief. Gen Lebed managed to bring the disastrous Chechen war to an end and was then dismissed for "lack of team work".
Completing his cabinet reshuffle yesterday, Mr Yeltsin approved the appointment of neoliberal Mr Alexei Kudrin as deputy to Mr Chubais in the finance ministry.
Mr Chubais was given additional responsibility for relations with the media and particularly the state controlled TV services while the outgoing economics minister, Mr Yevgeny Yasin, remained in the cabinet to oversee the government's economic reform programme.
. The Belarus President, Mr Alexander Lukashenko, yesterday "promised" the people of his former Soviet republic that he will rule in the manner of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. In a television broadcast the hardline leader claimed: "People are saying Mr President, give us dictatorship. Give us Stalin's times."
Having already restored Soviet symbols such as the hammer and sickle, Mr Lukashenko promised to revive the Soviet tradition of suhbotniks - compulsory unpaid weekend work doing such things as street cleaning. He called for a suhbotnik on April 22nd - Lenin's birthday.
Mr Lukashenko is a former Soviet farm director.
