Russia's new chief of cooperation with the Commonwealth of Independent States came out Tuesday in support of collective farms and massive government projects to combat unemployment.


Alexei Bolshakov, addressing his first press conference as deputy prime minister in charge of CIS relations, also said that member states should pay their debts to Russia.


"I have a firm attitude to debts," he said. "Debts should be paid."


But he did not mention by what means he hoped to get the former republics to repay their enormous debts. Russia's representative in the Interstate Economic Committee, Alexander Smirnov, said Ukraine, which has a multibillion dollar debt to Russia, has failed to pay the scheduled $638 million due this year.


Bolshakov, appointed deputy prime by President Boris Yeltsin on Nov. 10, was at the weekend elected head of the newly created CIS Interstate Economic Committee, which is meant to coordinate economic cooperation within the commonwealth.


The committee, dominated by Russia which has 50 percent of the vote and provides 50 percent of the funding, unanimously elected Bolshakov, who was the only candidate for the job.


The gray-haired, gray-suited former defense-factory manager said that he only had limited experience in promoting cooperation among states of the former Soviet Union, offered no new recipes for strengthening CIS cooperation, and gave few details on initiatives he planned to promote.


As for the Interstate Economic Committee, he said his job will be to work out what exactly it will do.


He repeated Russia's previous calls for a customs and payments union of the former Soviet states and stuck to past Soviet stances in terms of organizing agricultural production. He said collective farms had to be preserved as the "steadiest system that exists now."


Bolshakov was ambiguous on the matter of issuing more credits to CIS nations.


"Like the IMF, we must start making our credits conditional," he said. "It won't do to lend money and not get it back."


But he added that "giving money to cover those nations' budget problems is one thing and giving them money to create jobs is another," implying lenience toward the issue of credits to expand production and protect ethnic Russians living in the former republics from unemployment.


Job creation is a pet idea of Bolshakov's. Before joining the government, he supervised a project to build a high-speed railroad between Moscow and St. Petersburg, which was condemned by environmentalists and failed to obtain funding.


"I think there must be federal construction projects, including highways and railroads, to create jobs," Bolshakov said.


Refuting claims by ecological groups that such projects might be detrimental to the environment, the deputy prime minister declared that "no one can stop technological progress."