Five years after the collapse of Communism broke their stranglehold over the country's economy, Russia's red barons are fighting back.
Russia's bold mass privatization program weakened many of Russia's stolid Soviet-era factory directors and transferred control of their enterprises to a flashy new breed of Moscow financiers.But, following the Communists' triumph in December's parliamentary elections and the firing of prominent reformers from the government, the rump of old-style red directors have mounted a spirited campaign to roll back the tide.
This national trend has been highlighted by the recent efforts of the old managers of two of Russia's flagship companies to wrest control from the private entrepreneurs who acquired big stakes in them through the country's privatization program.
The manager of Norilsk Nikel, the world's largest producer of nickel and one of Russia's most valuable companies, recently told parliament he would like to buy back the 38 percent stake in his enterprise currently controlled by Oneximbank, one of the most powerful of the financial institutions which have sprung up in Moscow since the collapse of Communism.
The move followed what one observer described as "a mini-coup" at Zil, the Moscow-based car maker which once produced limousines for the Soviet elite but has now fallen on hard times. At a meeting of the board of directors last month, the old Soviet managers ousted the director who had been put in place last year by a group of Moscow financiers, led by Microdean, a young Moscow company which began as an electronics retailer but now has wide-ranging real estate and industrial holdings and a controlling stake in Zil.
These battles are being watched closely by Russia's political and business leaders because they're part of a broader effort to reverse at least partially the bold privatization program, which has transferred 80 percent of the Russian economy into private hands.
"We know that the entire country is watching what is happening at Zil. It is a test case for Russia," said Nikolai Menchukov, a Microdean spokesman.
The growing momentum behind efforts to roll back privatization suggests that Western fears of Gennady Zyuganov's Communist Party may be somewhat misplaced: the challenge to Russian market reforms comes not only from the Communists but also from the hard-line faction which is increasingly powerful within Boris Yeltsin's Kremlin.
The campaign for what Russians coyly describe as "deprivatization" has already enlisted a number of high-level supporters.
Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, whose relationship with the Kremlin has grown closer over the past month, recently called for criminal proceedings to be launched against the architects of Russia's mass privatization program.
At a meeting last week with Moscow city prosecutors, he described Anatoly Chubais, the deputy prime minister who was fired last month after spearheading the country's privatization drive, as "Russia's chief culprit."
"Chubais may not have had any malicious intent, but, nonetheless, the prosecutors' office should consider his performance," Luzhkov said.
But the most serious threat to private property in Russia could be the special committee recently formed by parliament to review the legality of privatization.
The first casualty of the committee is likely to be last autumn's hasty and controversial shares-for-loans privatization program, already ruled invalid by the Ministry of Justice.
For Western investors and Russia's bourgeoisie, these challenges to privatization are one of the biggest threats since the collapse of Communism.
The conflict cannot be reduced to a simple struggle between free market forces and neo-Communists.
Even leading Russian reformers admit that, in many instances, the red directors have a moral and legal point because of the corrupt and uncompetitive way much of Russia's state property was transferred to private hands.
But the messy character of Russia's privatization process means once "deprivatization" begins, it will be very difficult for courts and investors to determine where it ends.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)