MAKING PRIMAKOV PRESIDENTIAL - PLAYING SOON AT A VENUE NEAR YOU: Yevgeny Primakov is undergoing a repackaging process that would make Madonna blush. At stake is the future of investment in Russia - or so you may be led to believe.

Just over a year ago, the former foreign minister hit the big time as the consensus choice for prime minister. Members of the State Duma (lower house of parliament), overjoyed at a viable option to Viktor Chernomyrdin and/or dissolution, wondered aloud where this fine specimen of a prime minister had been hiding.

Conspiracy theories positing that Grigory Yavlinsky - the first to publicly tap Primakov as a viable prime ministerial candidate - was the master puppeteer began to make the rounds.

The West, meanwhile, came to grips with the reality that a lifetime KGB bureaucrat in the true Soviet mold was taking the power seat in Moscow. Investment banks spouted gloom about the imminent rollback of economic reforms (such as they were, and are), and the return of a central planning regime.

Although it had long ceased to be a barometer of investor sentiment toward Russia, the RTS Index plunged to an all-time low just a month into the Primakov administration - some 93 percent lower than its high the previous year, and 61 percent below its starting point in September 1995.

Contrary to expectations, it turned out Primakov wasn't the devil incarnate. He didn't do much of anything, which arguably was the best policy at the time. Talk of a reversion to Soviet-style economic controls, inspired also by the presence of Soviet castaways like Yury Maslyukov in the Primakov cabinet, amounted to no more than so much hot air.

Primakov assumed the not-unattractive sheen of an inoffensive, vanilla-flavored senior citizen, who patiently tolerated those annoying Duma types when he wasn't bouncing grandchildren on his knee.

Nevertheless, the West breathed a loud sigh of relief when President Boris Yeltsin showed Primakov the door. Primakov was too old, too Soviet, too communist, and looked and felt way too much like Leonid Brezhnev. And those old KGB connections gave everyone but Madeleine Albright the willies.

Fast-forward a few months, and a President Primakov is looking increasingly likely. Assuming the Kremlin doesn't try any funny business, Primakov is the clear favorite to become the next president. Uh-oh.

If you have a stake in the future (or recent past) of Russia (think of any journalist in Moscow, every Russian investment bank, Larry Summers and his gang of merry Democrats, etc.), what do you say now? Four years - at least - of utter stagnation isn't much of a selling point.

A drooling Primakov as figurehead for Prime Minister Yury Luzhkov doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

Skating on the edge of massive heavy industry subsidization plans, a controlled economy, runaway inflation and other post-Soviet nightmares doesn't sound like much fun.

So, what do you do? You make Primakov palatable. Lend the "do-nothing" image a "hands-off" tint. Turn "state control" on its head by asserting that a strong hand is needed. "Age" becomes "experience." Borrow a few pages from Ronald Reagan's second-term playbook. Look for it soon - at every media outlet you can imagine.

MORE BANKING RESTRUCTURING MADNESS AT ARCO: Central Bank head Viktor Geraschenko was recently replaced by First Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Khristenko as chairman of ARCO, the agency that pretends to be restructuring Russia's banking sector.

So the government gave the do-nothing Geraschenko a kick in the head, and brought in Khristenko to move the heavy furniture - the man responsible for showing those London Club whiners who's boss. The Kremlin has learned its lesson, taken strong medicine from the banking restructuring wizards at the International Monetary Fund, and is finished with messing about. Right?

Hah. More likely, the government wants its own man in the power seat when it comes to deciding which banks are "restructured" with billions of budget rubles. Geraschenko, though no saint and hardly a paragon of free thinking, is sometimes a bit too independent for the government's taste. The answer, clearly, is to demote him, and put someone more pliable - or just more distracted - at the head of the table.

And that's the view from the inside...

(E-mail The Insider at insider@russiajournal.com)