Hair apparent

THREE centuries ago, Peter the Great ruled that high office in Russia should not be given to red-haired men. Plenty of present-day Russians would agree--at least in the case of carroty Anatoly Chubais, a man distinguished both by his capacity to get things done and by the fierce unpopularity attaching to him since he pioneered Russian privatisation in 1992-95. This week Mr Chubais ended nine months as President Boris Yeltsin's chief of staff by rejoining the government as first deputy prime minister. His new job will be to make himself even more unpopular by making sure that taxes are collected, reforming the pensions system to link benefits to contributions, and cutting subsidies to householders. Mr Chubais's post at the Kremlin, meanwhile, has gone to Valentin Yumashev, a little-known journalist and friend of the Yeltsin family who ghost-wrote the president's memoirs.