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By Russell Working
When Tatiana Nikulina got home from selling clothes in the Vtoraya Rechka Market on Monday, she did a slow burn. Typhoon rains were pouring outside, but Nikulina's apartment didn't have water. The faucets had offered nothing but gurgling noises, in fact, for four months. Nikulina is one of thousands of residents here -- officials don't know the exact number -- whose homes are without water much or all of the time. Despite the recent rains, Vladivostok, a Pacific port of 700,000 and Tacoma's sister city, has been suffering from a drought compounded by squabbling city bureaucracies that can't work out a rationing plan. Ambulances are on strike, and the Mayor's Office has cut off funds to children's hospitals and orphanages while launching a road-building campaign. Doctors and miners alike go for months without pay. So when you ask people what they think about President Boris Yeltsin's new Cabinet, few see it as relevant to their daily lives. There is only irritation at the president's endless reshuffling of ministers. "Yeltsin is such a goat," Nikulina said, employing a scathing Russian insult. "I used to support him -- he was our first president -- but now I can't say anything good about him. It's very bad and scary. Our country is just like a feverish patient." After Yeltsin on Sunday fired his entire government for the second time in five months, many said in a series of interviews that the president is losing his grip, incapable of dealing with Russia's depression except by lashing out at his own appointees. The announcement that Viktor Chernomyrdin will return as acting prime minister only added to the dismay many express. Five months ago, Yeltsin had dismissed Chernomyrdin and appointed the 35-year-old reformer Sergei Kiriyenko in his place. Alexander Latkin, director of Vladivostok's Institute for Economic Environment and Forecasting, had little patience for Yeltsin's latest dismissal. "This only confirms that our president is out of touch," he said. Olga Shvilnis, a former economist for a Vladivostok factory, also was critical of Yeltsin's flip-flop but pleased with the return of Chernomyrdin. Shvilnis can't make ends meet on her pension, so she earns 400 to 500 rubles a month (between $57.22 and $71.53) working in a newsstand. She didn't see any improvement under Kiriyenko. "It was a waste of time to appoint him," Shvilnis said. "Yeltsin put a kindergarten boy to control the country. He was too young to handle the economy properly, and now he just made things worse. Our salaries are very small anyway." Vitaly Malyushkin, 24, a security guard with a Makarov pistol holstered at his side, paused while buying cigarettes at a kiosk to reflect on the nature of power. Like many, he sees Yeltsin as a man who has outlasted his time. He has noticed Yeltsin's slurred, halting speech, reminiscent of the ailing Soviet leaders of old. "I just wish Yeltsin would go," he said. "He is like a dinosaur, like a mummy. He can't even speak properly, yet he is ruling the country." Igor Klyuchnikov, a 40-year-old worker who earns a monthly salary of about $70 remodeling apartments, said the firing of Kiriyenko is vintage Yeltsin. "He did this to (former aide Alexander) Lebed," Klyuchnikov said. "He says, 'Oh, I'm sorry, I made a mistake.' Slaps his own hand. Brezhnev never did this. Before Yeltsin, our leaders were strong." Yeltsin "is a clown and an alcoholic," added Yevgeny Shumov, 33, owner of a Second River corner market. "Things will change only if the Duma impeaches the president." He is already getting his wish. The State Duma has started impeachment proceedings, but the process is so convoluted it is unclear whether it will succeed. (Russians tend to be astounded at America's low impeachment threshold, as may be demonstrated in the Monica Lewinsky case.) The dumping of Kiriyenko and the return of Chernomyrdin was particularly puzzling to many because of the bitter fight Yeltsin had waged to get Kiriyenko confirmed in the first place. The Kiriyenko appointment nearly created a constitutional crisis as the Communist-dominated federal Duma twice rejected him. The Duma finally approved Kiriyenko in a third vote, rather than face dismissal by Yeltsin. So why did Yeltsin go through all that, everyone is asking, only to fire Kiriyenko and reinstate Chernomyrdin? Part of the answer lies in the unpopularity of the austerity plan Kiriyenko tried to carry out. At the insistence of the International Monetary Fund, which bailed out Russia this year, Kiriyenko raised taxes and stepped up debt collection. But Russia is already overburdened by taxes that cripple businesses and hinder the growth of a market economy. Everywhere you turn in Vladivostok, the signs of economic stagnation have set in. The daily Vladivostok, the city's largest newspaper, announced layoffs of 50 people last week and handed notices to the remaining employees warning that their salaries may be cut in half in October. Even before those cuts, the average reporter earns only about $5,000 a year. Last week the government announced a de facto devaluation of the ruble, leading to fears of the hyperinflation that wiped out savings in Vladivostok and the rest of the country in the early 1990s. People don't trust banks, and they quickly exchange their savings for U.S. dollars. Vasily Kostenko, 69, a retired boatswain whose hands are covered with tattoos of anchors, said life is harder now than it was during World War II, and he sees no sign of improvement. Kostenko longed for a ruler of the old Soviet style. "Just look at Stalin," he said. "He took us from Lenin to 1953, and there was never this mess. That's exactly what we need now." But despite its current depression, Vladivostok is a city of immense potential. It sits at the eastern end of the Trans-Siberian Railway, and has easy access to the ports of China, Japan and South Korea. Nearby Sakhalin Island has oil reserves thought to rival the North Sea's, and foreign companies are planning to invest $40 billion to get at the petroleum. Shipyards, construction firms and concrete makers throughout the Russian Far East could benefit. Besides, in some ways, life has improved -- at least for those who actually receive their pay. Shops are now filled with food, and a small kiosk economy has emerged throughout the city. South Koreans, who are convinced their country will be unified within a decade, are planning for an enormous rail traffic with Russia through Vladivostok. The Korean industrial giant Hyundai last year opened a $90 million hotel in the city center, and another Korean firm is producing clothing in the nearby town of Partizansk for the Gap in San Francisco. But all that is small comfort to someone like Nikulina, who must fill buckets of water at a tap and haul it up to her fourth-floor apartment. "We are sitting on a time bomb here, a nuclear time bomb," she said.
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