Leading Article: Yeltsin rearranges the deckchairs once again

IT IS hard to know whether to laugh or cry at the latest political sensation in Moscow. At the stroke of a presidential pen, Boris Yeltsin yesterday sacked Sergei Stepashin and promoted the unknown Vladimir Putin, head of the security services, to be Russia's fifth prime minister in 17 months. For the benefit of the international financial community, Mr Putin is being touted as a firm believer in market reform. Frankly, however, it makes not a fig's worth of difference, since - according to the political actuarial tables of the Yeltsin era, now mercifully about to end - he can expect his marching orders around Christmas.

The dismissal of Mr Stepashin, for which no reason was given, is to be read wholly as a function of next year's presidential elections. Mr Yeltsin, who is constitutionally barred from a third term, even if he were fit enough to seek one, wants to choose his heir, not least to shield himself from possible prosecution for corruption once he leaves office. Instead he has seen Moscow's ambitious mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, put together an alliance of regional barons that might be extended to embrace Yevgeny Primakov, Russia's most popular politician and no friend of Mr Yeltsin.

Thus the summons to Mr Putin, the latest crown prince of an ever feebler monarch. Leave aside the matter of whether the blessing of Mr Yeltsin may prove more hindrance than help. The episode only shows how abnormal a state Russia remains, utterly unschooled in the orderly democratic transfer of constitutional power. In the meantime, life goes on much as usual: a struggling economy, a state unable to provide many of the most elementary services, a brutal war that beckons, this time in Dagestan. And the endlessly suffering, endlessly patient Russian people go about their business, scornful and uncaring of this new farce acted out in their midst.