Aleksandr Lebed, governor of the vast Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia, shrugged off rumors circulating in late September that an ailing Boris Yeltsin would appoint the populist “combat general” as premier and then resign, leaving Lebed as acting president. The Krasnoyarsk governor claimed that the time may come when he will be “needed” to “clean up” Yeltsin’s “mess,” and he did agree that ex-presidents should be guaranteed a quiet retirement (otherwise they “cling to power tooth and nail”), but the “governor general” doubts that even the persuasive Tatvana Dvachenko—Yeltsin’s daughter and de facto chief of staff, widely believed to favor such a scenario—could persuade “Boris I” that it is time to go. Yeltsin, Lebed claimed, would hang on to power “as long as he has two brain cells to rub together. The game,” Lebed intoned in his unmistakable bass growl, “will go on.”

That may be, but a sick and incoherent Yeltsin (at summer’s end, Moscow was rife with rumors that his health had taken a turn for the worse) just might be forced to step down, either by members of his entourage (“the Family”) hoping to save their own skins or by the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house of parliament composed of regional leaders, who are flexing their growing political muscle. The question on the minds of Moscow’s elites is just who will step in if the “guarantor of democracy,” duplicated in the recent spate of corruption scandals, should be forced out. “Plan B” (for Berezovsky, the Yeltsin Kremlin’s answer to Rasputin), which under the rash of terrorist attacks in September and the deepening crisis in the North Caucasus, where Russian troops are combating the Islamic hordes of Chechen “field commander” Shamil Basayev, could be used as pretexts for imposing a state of emergency and calling off upcoming elections, has not been implemented. Meanwhile, the Kremlin’s worst fears have been realized.

First, Yevgeni Primakov, perhaps the only public figure apart from Lebed who has not been tainted by credible corruption charges, agreed to re-enter politics, forming an uneasy political alliance with Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov. The Primakov-Luzhkov block, “Fatherland-All Russia” (OVR), appears poised to challenge the Communists for the dominant position in the third post-communist Duma, slated for election in December. Primakov, whose ties to the “special services” are common knowledge within the Moscow ring road, is also the likely source of kompromat (“compromising material”) circulating in reports both East and West on Kremlin corruption. The “family” is justifiably concerned about its post-Yeltsin future.

The second monkeywrench thrown into the Kremlin’s plan was Lebed’s refusal to sign up with “Unity,” (also known as medved, “Bear”), a newly minted political movement made up overwhelmingly of governors from “have not” regions resentful of the capital—and its mayor—and equally resentful of the “national republics,” those Russian Federation components based on non-Russian (mostly Muslim) nationalities, who are not too enthusiastic about ongoing punitive strikes on terrorist camps within the rebel Chechen republic. It just so happens that most of the “national republics” have lined up with OVR. Berezovsky, displaying the political insight he is justly known for, has been quietly—make that very quietly, since any public role in Unity’s formation would scuttle the plan at the outset—lining up governors with a reputation as earthy muzhiky (“peasants”; in this context, the word conveys the image of a hardheaded “man of the soil” or “man’s man”) to form an effective counterweight to OVR, a counterweight that would harness the anger of Russia’s vast number of disenchanted “protest voters.” Berezovsky could then make a deal with Unity leaders to save the Kremlin court’s hash in return for megabucks and media coverage to boost Unity into the political driver’s scat. Very clever. But the plan hinged on muzhik number one, Aleksandr Lebed, signing on as the movement’s leader. No dice. Lebed, a solitary man of action who is the very essence of earthy Russianness, will go it alone, building his political reputation on the numerous cracked heads of Krasnoyarsk thugs. Thus the talk of Dyachenko fishing for a limited deal to save papa, perhaps involving Lebed, if Primakov will not come to terms. The deal may yet come off—if the Federation Council, that is, does not pre-empt it by forcing Yeltsin out. Russia could do much worse than a Lebed-headed junta dedicated to crushing the Russian mafia, stabilizing the Caucasus, and making Russia semi-safe for business.