Making good on threats issued in his state of the nation address five days earlier, the recently invigorated 66-year-old president promised a major streamlining of the unwieldy Cabinet that has swelled to include 50 ministers, agency chiefs and commissioners - even as debts, tax dodging and corruption have flourished.
Yeltsin named no names on the hit list, but his aides made clear that Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and the increasingly powerful Anatoly Chubais - named first deputy prime minister Friday - would be the only ministers not expected to turn in their resignations.
But in keeping with long-standing Kremlin traditions of illusion and intrigue, titles mean less than the personal clout of those who hold them. Chubais, the most ardent advocate of capitalism in the Yeltsin camp, is likely to emerge as de facto head of both the Kremlin administration and the new Chernomyrdin government, with a mandate to jump-start the stalled economic revolution.
It also will limit the gates through which Internet servers in Vietnam are linked to the world's largest information network.
The new regulations were widely publicized in the country's state-controlled media.