A Modern Romanov Eyes Presidency

The newest pretender to the Russian presidency runs one of the largest factories in Siberia and bears the same name as Peter the Great.


Pyotr Romanov, the opposition's rising star, broke new ground this week when he became the first factory director in Russia to sue the government and the Finance Ministry. He is demanding 112 billion rubles ($35.6 million) for the alleged ruin of his immense military factory, Yenisei, in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk.


For the government, Romanov's d?marche smells of the opportunism of a man building a rapid political career.


"If you ask 10 people who Pyotr Romanov is, I think only one will have heard of him," said an official at the Finance Ministry who declined to be named. "The lawsuit goes with his political position. I don't think he has any hope of receiving the money, he just wants to attract attention to his factory in Krasnoyarsk and to himself."


But for Romanov, it is the latest step in his bid to fill the role which has so far eluded the opposition -- that of a common agreed candidate in the 1996 presidential elections.


"My main task is to unite left, right and center around one idea, the unification of Russia in creating a strong Russian nationalist state," Romanov said in an interview this week.


Romanov denied reports in the Russian press that the opposition had agreed on him as their consensus presidential candidate at their meeting in Kaliningrad in September. But he confirmed that he intended to run in 1996.


In recent weeks his stock has risen visibly. On Oct. 27, when the State Duma voted on no confidence in the government, Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov put Romanov's name at the top of a list of people he wanted to be in a "government of national salvation." The Duma opposition then invited Romanov, who is a deputy in parliament's upper house, the Federation Council, to address the debate.


Romanov, 51, has the sleek face of a courtier, silver hair and a sharp tongue. He rose from the production line to become the director of Yenisei, one of the most important positions in Russia's military industrial complex.


The factory, which produces solid rocket fuel, used to be a showcase of Soviet enterprise, Romanov said, visited by Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev and Fidel Castro. The number of its work force is a military secret but it has 463 technical buildings, 37 bath-houses and nine swimming pools.


The factory director said he cannot forgive the Yeltsin government for freeing energy prices, an act he says has crippled his output. That is why he is suing the government and lobbying for state protection for the military sector in industry.


As a major director, Romanov still has the medal of the Order of Socialist Labor pinned to his jacket. But he is also a convinced Russian nationalist who wears a cross under his shirt and says that "Orthodoxy is the heart of Russia."


The kernel of Romanov's proposed nationalist state, he said, should be an authoritarian power structure.


"In the most difficult moments of history, strong authoritarian personalities have always come to power with an authoritarian principle of government," Romanov said.


He listed as examples Alexander Nevsky, Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great and Stalin.


"Everyone says I am a tough leader," Romanov went on. "I think that the leader of a factory -- and even more so the leader of a country -- ought to be a bulwark of strength for his people, for his work force."


Romanov used these arguments against former Vice President Alexander Rutskoi, one of his rivals in the presidential race and a man who Romanov said had not proved he was capable of leadership.


"The time to judge on Rutskoi's role has not yet arrived," he said.


Rutskoi has made himself unpopular with much of the opposition, especially the Communist Party, for his haughty, abrasive style. He has also gone ahead with forming his own political movement called Derzhava, independent of the main opposition alliance, Accord for Russia.


Romanov was also critical of ultranationalist leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a figure distrusted by the mainstream opposition. He called Zhirinovsky "my strongest rival in the 1996 elections."


This is a logical position to take, said Igor Klyamkin, a political analyst with the Public Opinion polling organization. He said that Romanov was attractive to the communist-nationalist opposition as a consensus figure who could unite them. But his big failing is that he has no public profile.


"A search is going on in the opposition for a person who can be an alternative to Zhirinovsky and claim the nationalist electorate," said Klyamkin. "Romanov fits that role and he also represents the industrialists. But it's too early to talk about him before he has performed before a wider public."