President Boris Yeltsin signed a decree Friday that launched the government's critical post-voucher privatization program, effectively bypassing hardline opponents in parliament who had blocked the bill's passage a day earlier.


The program, according to which remaining state enterprises will be sold off for money rather than vouchers, will come into effect immediately, regardless of the State Duma's decision Thursday to reject it.


For the government, which is relying on the privatization plan to draw sorely needed private investment into the country's ailing state industries, Yeltsin's decision represents a significant victory.


Signature of the decree confirmed predictions by First Deputy Prime Minister for Privatization Anatoly Chubais that the president would enact the plan without waiting for parliamentary approval that might never come.


The Duma will get another chance to consider the program in October, but until then there is little that the deputies can do, as their summer recess started Friday.


Presidential spokesman Vyacheslav Kostikov had indicated in a statement that the decree would include a number of compromises aimed at appeasing moderates in the Duma.


The decree "takes into account some of the serious constructive amendments by the State Duma, which came up during the discussion of the privatization question by the legislature," Kostikov's statement said.


A text of the decree published by Itar-Tass late Friday also specified that the decree had been "elaborated taking into consideration the suggestions of the State Duma." However the text did not appear to address directly any of the key concessions agreed between Chubais and deputies during a grueling session of the Duma's conciliatory commission Thursday night.


The session followed a vote by the Duma to reject the government's first proposed post-voucher privatization bill last week, because it allowed land on which factories are built to be sold off along with the enterprises themselves. The deputies also wanted more control over privatization.


Chubais agreed to hold off on land privatization until parliament passed a land code containing land-ownership rules. He also conceded that enterprises with assets worth over 200 billion rubles in 1992, or those employing over 50,000 people, would be privatized only with the Duma's approval.


Though moderate Duma economists, who had opposed the original plan, were satisfied with the compromise, Communist and nationalist deputies succeeded in blocking the bill when it was put to a vote Thursday.


"We have not approved the anti-popular privatization, and if Yeltsin passes a decree, then in the fall we will vote against it again," Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov told The Moscow Times hours before it was revealed Yeltsin had signed the decree.


Ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who carried the day Thursday when support for the privatization bill dwindled after his emotional speech, was even more outspoken.


"The only thing we should privatize is one big private jail where we can put reformists for 500 days so they can see what privatization and reforms are really like," he told a press conference Friday.


After Chubais failed to win deputies' support by backing down from his original plan, he told reporters Thursday that not all the concessions would be reflected in Yeltsin's decree.


"Land privatization will proceed on a full scale, including the sale of land on which factories are built," he said.


Though it was unclear whether any concessions in the decree would appease deputies, Kostikov's statement showed that the president was hoping to avoid alienating the entire Duma by passing unamended a plan the legislature had voted down five times in the past two weeks.


Kostikov said Yeltsin had met with Duma speaker Ivan Rybkin before signing the decree.


"The signing of the decree of which the legislative branch has been appraised is evidence that Russian society ... is in the mood for dialogue and a search for compromises goes on," Kostikov's statement read.


But Rybkin's apparent approval may not be enough to carry the bill through when the Duma considers it again in the fall.


Rybkin had been eager to get the bill approved Thursday without causing a confrontation with Yeltsin, holding four ballots on it while fewer and fewer deputies voted for the privatization plan.





-- David Filipov contributed to this report.