The ruble was in shambles. The government was under siege. Heads were rolling in the cabinet and the British queen was coming to town -- yet the country's prime minister, Victor Chernomyrdin, decided to stay away and extend his vacation.


Next, a report aired on a normally reliable Moscow radio station that Chernomyrdin was resigning, forcing emphatic denials both from the prime minster and President Boris Yeltsin.


What has been going on?


According to some observers, the evidence is overwhelming that Chernomyrdin's tenure is in extremis, and that he spent his vacation contemplating his resignation.


The most obvious blow to the prime minister came from the ruble crash, which appeared to undermine the single, generally accepted success of the Chernomyrdin government -- the achievement of relative financial stability.


But there were also less obvious signs of Chernomyrdin's plight. Yeltsin on Wednesday asked the Duma's various factions to suggest candidates for the cabinet and Central Bank -- a task that normally belongs to the prime minister. Even U.S. Vice President Al Gore checked on Chernomyrdin's political health Tuesday.


"None of this is an accident," said Sergei Tsekhmistrenko, a political observer for the newspaper Kommersant. "You can never say for certain what is going to happen in this country, but it appears he is getting ready to resign."


Tsekhmistrenko even suggested Chernomyrdin might be contemplating a return to Gazprom, the national gas monopoly he once ran.


Others insist that there is no deeper meaning to be gleaned from Chernomyrdin's puzzling itinerary. Yeltsin's chief spokesman, Vyacheslav Kostikov, flatly denied any rumor of a resignation, and trumpeted the "reliability" of the Prime Minister's relationship with Yeltsin.


"The two have nothing but the warmest personal relationship," Kostikov said. During and after the ruble crisis, Yeltsin and Chernomyrdin spoke on the phone "when it was necessary," he said, adding: "It wasn't a question of wanting to call him back from vacation or not. He was on vacation, and that was completely normal." Chernomyrdin's side also denied that any mystery lies in his whereabouts. "Every person has the right to his vacation, and he took advantage of it," said Sergei Surov, second in charge of media relations for the prime minister. When circumstances demanded his presence, Chernomyrdin returned, but "once it became obvious that the ruble would be stable, he left."


Governance, Surov said, was never sacrificed. "People took events under control, so his presence wasn't necessary." The mechanisms of government worked as they should, as the rest of the country's ministers took care of business, he said.


As strange as Chernomyrdin's absence might have seemed, Western observers say he also ran the risk of sparking a panic by cancelling his vacation. "Either way, he would have been criticized on one ground or another," said one Western diplomat, who spoke only on condition of anonymity.


In the meantime, Yeltsin rushed in and steamrolled the Duma. After making a brief nod to their authority to dismiss the Central Bank chairman, he did it himself.


"The Duma didn't appoint Gerashchenko, so the Duma didn't have the authority to dismiss him," Kostikov said. "If it had gone to the Duma, it would have dragged on. This was an emergency situation, and something had to be done."


Yet the decision to dismiss Gerashchenko -- another blow to Chernomyrdin's status as the head of the government -- may have thrown the prime minister off balance.


"He's lost and he's upset," said Mstislav Afanasyev, the deputy director of the government Center for Economic Reform. "He was sure Gerashchenko was professional among professionals. And then the ruble crisis happened."


Ultimately, Chernomyrdin was forced to confront his colleague's role in the Black Tuesday disaster. "He ran the Central Bank at the time, and Chernomyrdin acknowledges Gerashchenko is in part responsible," Afanasyev said.


Tuesday night, the prime minister returned to Moscow from the sunny shores of the Black Sea and most agreed that he would face some tough behind-the-scenes battles to recoup and solidify his position.


"Chernomyrdin has quite a lot to do to recover his government's standing, and to a certain extent, his own authority," one Western diplomat said. "There is only a certain amount Yeltsin can do."