President Boris Yeltsin on Thursday named the first communist in his government since he took office in 1991. He appointed Valentin Kovalyov his new Justice Minister.


The appointment of Kovalyov, a parliamentary deputy from the Communist Party faction, was apparently a reward for his support for Yeltsin over the Chechen conflict. Like his namesake Sergei Kovalyov, who is Yeltsin's human rights ombudsman, Valentin Kovalyov heads a human rights commission, but his group has taken a diametrically opposite line and backed Yeltsin over Chechnya.


Kovalyov, a professor of law by training, will be 51 next week. He used to work in the Interior Ministry's Law Institute before his election to the Duma. He replaces Yury Kalmykov in the post.


The idea of appointing a communist to the government was floated three months ago, but did not win the approval of Gennady Zyuganov, the leader of the Communist Party. Kovalyov joins the government alongside the recently appointed agriculture minister, Alexander Nazarchuk, and deputy prime minister, Alexander Zaveryukha, who are both from the communist-oriented Agrarian Party.


Yeltsin's government now includes representatives from all the main factions in the State Duma, excepting Vladimir Zhirinovsky's ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party and Grigory Yavlinsky's liberal Yabloko group.


The president's former reformist allies, such as former prime minister Yegor Gaidar, who helped him to power in 1991 and who used to dominate the government, have almost all abandoned him over his military intervention in Chechnya.