In the torrent of criticism about how the government handled the Chechen hostage situation, only one figure drew any sympathy Tuesday: Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, whose live-TV resolution of the crisis helped elevate him from a colorless figure to a leader in his own right.
But newspapers, political leaders, rights groups and anti-war activists were unanimous in their condemnation of his boss, President Boris Yeltsin.They blasted Yeltsin for the government's slow reaction to the crisis and for authorizing the storm-ing of the hospital where Chechen gunmen were holding hun-dreds of hostages.
Chernomyrdin also was criticized for being too slow and for making concessions to rebel leader Shamil Basayev during his televised hostage negotiations. But even the sharpest critics were sympathetic.
"At times he is splendid - tragically splendid - as he was in his talks with Basayev on Sunday when he had to make up for everything: for stupidity, for primitive thinking, for irresponsibility and for the cruelty of his generals, his government, his president," the influential daily Segodnya wrote.
The rebels seized 2,000 hostages in the southern city of Budyon-novsk last Wednesday after an assault that killed more than 100 people. Scores more died when Russian troops tried to storm the hospital Saturday.
As the crisis unfolded, Yeltsin flew to Canada for a Group of Seven summit. And while Yeltsin was attending state dinners and seeing the circus, Chernomyrdin was managing the emergency in a public fashion unprecedented in this country.
In a series of televised negotiations with the hostage-takers, Cher-no-myr-din blazed into the limelight at the same time Yeltsin's already-tarnished image was deteriorating.
"We are all hostages to the state's impotence," said the headline of a front-page commentary Tuesday in the daily newspaper Izvestia. "A week of national shame," read a headline in Seg-odnya.
Several newspapers compared Yeltsin to Mikhail Gorbachev in the months before the Soviet collapse, calling him weak and indecisive. Others openly mocked Yelt-sin's behavior at the summit in Halifax.
Presidential elections are planned for next year, and there isspeculation that Chernomyrdin would run if Yeltsin cannot or will not.
Although Chernomyrdin's somber manner and conciliatory stance contrasted Yeltsin's bellicose and florid behavior in Halifax, aides to both men insisted the two were in close contact - and agreement - throughout the crisis.
Yeltsin met in the Kremlin Tuesday with Chernomyrdin.
"I see no mistakes on his part," Yeltsin told reporters, according to Russian news agencies. He said he was in contact with the prime minister "if not each half-hour, then every hour."
Chernomyrdin's decision to so publicly take charge has intensified speculation, already running high, about his political ambitions.
The hostage crisis marks the final stage of his transformation from a colorless, if competent, bureaucrat into a political leader.
Chernomyrdin's transformation is risky. A higher profile makes a better target, and several ambitious politicians wasted no time taking aim.
"It's disgusting," former Finance Minister Boris Fyodorov said Monday of the televised negotiations.
He accused Chernomyrdin, 57, of trying to burnish his political image and making a last-ditch bid to avoid a vote of no confidence in parliament on Wednesday.
Fyodorov said his party would support the vote of no confidence over the government's handling of the hostage crisis. Two other party leaders - reformer Grigory Yav-lin-sky and ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky - have said they would, too. The vote will be mostly symbolic; the constitution allows Yeltsin to ignore it.
Yavlinsky, Fyodorov and Zhirinovsky are considered likely contenders in the 1996 presidential election.