Rasputins at Home and Abroadrnby Denis PetrovrnBefore his trip to Rome in February, Boris Yeltsin promisedrneveryone who would listen that he would personally inviternthe Pope to visit Russia. Yeltsin frequently rattled on in front ofrnreporters, like a football player still sprinting after he is out ofrnbounds. For example, he claimed that the youngster Clintonrnwas pushing the world toward World War III by threatening tornbomb Iraq, a claim not even the most hard-line commie-nationalistrnDuma deputies had made, seeming to mix up in hisrnobviously confused mind the threats themselves with vaguernapocalyptic visions of his country remaining a major player inrnthe great game of nations. Sergei Yaztrzhembsky, his long sufferingrnpress secretary, frequently stepped in to explain what thernpresident really meant (he didn’t mean to say that Russia wouldrnlaunch a nuclear strike if the United States bombed Baghdad),rndodging any questions about how Mr. Yeltsin is feeling or aboutrnwho, if anybody, is in charge in the Kremlin. The Russian pressrnbegan publishing Kremlin leaks about Yeltsin losing his grip,rnabout the “Father of Russian democracy” working only a fewrnhours a day if at all, and about how power had fallen into thernhands of Yeltsin’s ambitious daughter, Tatyana Dyachenkorn(named a presidential advisor last year), and Yeltsin’s wife,rnNaina. Naina and Tatyana themselves are reputedly under thernsway of a charismatic family advisor, a banker-media-oil magnaternwith a shady past, onetime Security Council Deputy Secretary,rnand unofficial Russian envoy to Chechnya—Boris Berezovskyrn(named by Forbes magazine as one of the world’s richestrnmen and portrayed in the same magazine in 1996 as the Codfatherrnof the fused Russian Mafia-government-business structures).rnCut to Davos, Switzerland, in January of this year: the annu-rnDenis Petrov frequently visits Russia and always readsrnMoskovsky Komsomolets.rnal “World Economic Forum” at the Alpine ski resort was a conspiracyrntheorist’s nightmare come true. Here, the rich and powerfulrnfrom government, media, and big business gather to planrnthe next stage of globalization. George Soros hobnobs withrnWilliam Safire, and European bigwigs mingle with Russian semi-rngangster predprinimateli (“entrepreneurs”). Boris Berezovskyrnattracts the most attention of any member of the Russianrncontingent, as he has in recent years. Eclipsing his ally (thenrnPrime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, whom Yeltsin fired inrnMarch) as well as his enemies (First Deputy Prime MinisterrnAnatoly Chubays and banking mogul Vladimir Potanin), Berezovskyrnbasks in the glow of the media limelight. The forum isrnexcited by rumors that Berezovsky intends to gather the Russianrnfinancial oligarchs for a conference on peace (since last summer,rnthe oligarchs have been warring over the privatization ofrnthe remaining tasty morsels of the Russian economy) and onrnthe future of Russia. Berezovsky himself declares that the oligarchyrnshould unite ahead of the 1999 parliamentary eleefionsrnand the 2000 presidential campaign as they did in 1996, whenrnhe forged a fleefing alliance behind Yeltsin’s re-elechon and,rnwith all the tools (both legal and illegal) available, saved Russiarn—and the oligarchic clans—from the communists. “Werncame,” intones the banker-curn-kingmaker, “to rest and negofiate.”rnHe is clearly enjoying the role of internafional celebrity.rnUnspoken, but clearly on the minds of the elites, wasrnYeltsin’s obvious physical and mental deterioration (evidencedrnmost dramatically at his meeting with Jacques Chirac and HelmutrnKohl on March 26, when Kohl had to coach Yeltsin onrnwhat to do next) and its implications for the clans themselves.rnWithout Yeltsin as a buffer, the clan chieftains might breakrntheir unwritten code and shed each other’s blood. The possibilityrnof Yeltsin’s senility or, worse, his demise, had greatly concentratedrnthe oligarchic mind. The old man’s deteriorationrn26/CHRONICLESrnrnrn