WITH President Yeltsin's longawaited heart surgery likely to take place next Wednesday or Thursday, the political commotion of the past month is beginning to ease in preparation for what the Kremlin is billing as "one of the most fundamental and important moments in this country's history".
According to independent medical experts, including the US specialist Mr Michael De Bakey who is acting as consultant, the operation will not be a particularly dangerous one, with no more than a 4 per cent chance of failure.
Mr De Bakey has diagnosed Mr Yeltsin as needing at least a triple, and most probably a quadruple bypass operation to restore normal blood flow. This is likely to be followed by a recuperation period of two months or more.
Mr Yeltsin suffered a third heart attack on the eve of the second round of the presidential elections this summer and speculation continues that his condition is worse than the Kremlin or his doctors are admitting.
There appears to be no ground for such rumours other than the fact that the credibility of Kremlin officials has taken a bad beating since last summer. What was a heart attack in July was described at the time as a "sore throat" and when finally Mr Yeltsin's new spokesman, Mr Sergei Yastrzhembsky, brought an element of glasnost into the situation, people particularly those in the media - had become too entrenched in their scepticism to believe anything he said.
Mr Yeltsin's latest heart attack, which took place in late June or early July, and his absence from the Kremlin led to an intense power struggle culminating in the dismissal of the security chief, Gen Alexander Lebed, two weeks ago.
Gen Lebed was replaced by an anodyne former communist Mr Ivan Rybkin. But the appointment on Wednesday of a businessman, Mr Boris Berezovsky, as Mr Rybkin's replacement is still causing turbulence in political circles.
Generally believed to be close to the group known here as "the party of war", those who opposed the Chechen peace settlement, Mr Berezovsky will play a major role in dealing with the Chechen rebels.
In the meantime, Russia's economy is on the brink of major crisis with most workers in the state sector not having been paid for months. This tactic has, up to now, kept inflation under control but the October figures, announced yesterday, show the monthly rate at 1.2 per cent, four times greater than September.
The economic problems were tragically highlighted yesterday by the suicide of a leading nuclear scientist, Mr Vladimir Nechai. Workers in his institute in the Urals had not been paid since May and the survival of the scientific centre was in doubt.
