In the aftermath of a mysterious death and amid economic crisis, Yeltsin woos Russia's military

By BRIGID O'HARA-FORSTER

hen Boris Yeltsin in one afternoon praises the Russian military and security forces, promises that they--unlike the rest of the country--will be paid on time, insists that there will be no defense spending cuts and promotes three top security officials, something must be up. Rumors had been swirling around Moscow all week that a coup was in the air. Yeltsin denied this, telling a Kremlin meeting of the top brass of the armed forces, Interior Ministry and his personal security service, "We have sufficient forces to nip in the bud any plans to seize power." Which of course really fueled the rumors.

The sense of a government in growing danger and fears of either a coup or the declaration of a state of emergency had been further fueled by the murder two weeks ago of General Lev Rokhlin. His death came on top of looming economic disaster and growing public dissent, such as miners blockading the Trans-Siberian railroad and thousands of defense industry workers protesting across the country.

In Friday's surprise Kremlin meeting Yeltsin promoted Interior Minister Sergei Stepashin, Federal Protection Service commander Yuri Krapivin and the head of the Presidential Security Service, Anatoli Kuznetsov. The moves to bolster his military support come as Russia desperately awaits an imf multi-billion dollar loan. But the Fund seems disinclined to cough up before the fractious parliament approves a tough economic stabilization package.

After the first very modest growth of last year, the economy has shrunk again by 0.2% so far this year while the stock market has fallen by more than half. "The financial market has practically ceased to exist," Prime Minister Sergei Kiriyenko told parliament's upper house last week, and "social tension is growing." The workers who have taken to the streets and railroads are increasingly adding demands for Yeltsin's resignation to their pleas for payment of wage arrears. Those demands are suddenly receiving blanket coverage in the media, which had until recently squelched anti-Yeltsin stories at the behest of their oligarch owners.

In the midst of all this came the shocking news of the killing of Lev Rokhlin, a vocal opposition politician with a wide following in the military. Rokhlin had been an outstanding general in a dying army, a would-be populist who never managed to arouse the masses. But since he was shot dead at his dacha after a family birthday party, he has become an opposition martyr. Rokhlin's wife, Tamara, was immediately taken into custody after investigators said she had confessed to killing him as he slept. But the couple's daughter and son-in-law, Yelena and Sergei Abakumov, claimed that Tamara had called them to say that the real killers had threatened to shoot the entire family if she didn't take the blame.

After serving in Afghanistan and Chechnya, Rokhlin entered parliament in 1995 as part of a pro-Yeltsin bloc, but with his disheveled appearance and lack of finesse he never really became part of the establishment. He eventually emerged as one of Yeltsin's fiercest critics and the most popular politician among the Russian armed forces.

Rokhlin, whose funeral was attended by some 10,000 people, including leading opposition politicians, had sought to organize servicemen into a political force to topple Yeltsin. He had also been forging links to Moscow's powerful Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, a would-be contender for the presidency. Just two days before his death, Rokhlin called on his supporters to endorse Luzhkov. But the rough-and-tumble serviceman was interested in more than electoral politics. The general was on the record as saying that the military would resist if the government used police forces against the people.

The popular unrest and government paralysis, some normally cautious observers believe, finally provided Rokhlin with a chance to test his theories. Miners were picketing the Prime Minister's office in Moscow. Defense workers demonstrated outside the Chief of Staff's building nearby. The dissident general called for his Movement to Support the Armed Forces to join in the protest. "Rokhlin had become incredibly dangerous to the Yeltsin administration," says Otto Latsis, a distinguished columnist for New Izvestia. "He was the link between miners and military."

Given the potential impact of such an alliance, it is little wonder that Russia's myriad conspiracy buffs favor the theory that--despite the fact that Rokhlin's wife was charged with the murder last week--elements of the government were somehow involved

Regardless of how unlikely that is, Yeltsin's public moves to shore up support in the military show that he has learnt the lesson of 1991, when Mikhail Gorbachev faced an attempted coup after letting the military and security services slide out of his control. A few months later both Gorbachev and the Soviet Union were gone. Yeltsin's sudden ardor for the men in uniform indicates he is desperate to avoid a similar fate.

--Reported by Paul Quinn-Judge and Yuri Zarakhovich /Moscow