Russian Adjusts to the Executive Sweet : Economics: Director of Moscow chocolate factory struggles to reconcile his capitalist duty with his Communist values.

By JAMES GERSTENZANG

Jan. 15, 1994 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

MOSCOW — For Americans struggling to understand the agonies of Russia’s conversion to free-market economics, meet Anatoly Nikolaevich Daursky.

Outwardly, he would have been perfectly at home standing, grim-faced, atop a Kremlin wall with his fellow Communists reviewing Red Army tanks in a May Day parade. But here he is, talking like the 59-year-old capitalist he has become.

Daursky is general director of a chocolate factory called Red October--a name imposed by the Bolsheviks after the 1917 Revolution. And on his shoulders, more than broad enough to fill out his double-breasted suit, rest the problems and potential of capitalism in Russia.

Red October is now a privately held company turning out 240 tons of chocolate daily and, of all things, a profit each month. In the company’s lobby, a plaster statue of V. I. Lenin, seemingly coated with shiny white icing, is largely ignored by workers scurrying to and fro.

Daursky has survived an ouster attempt by shareholders, but he still struggles daily with the last vestiges of state control and his own lingering uncertainty about how to reconcile capitalist duty with the Communist values ingrained in his apparatchik soul.

He fights to hold costs down and productivity up, for example. But ignoring strict capitalist discipline, he still ships some candy to the far north, despite the higher transportation costs and lower profits. Why? Because the people there, including soldiers, “are still Russians” and deserve their sweets.

The old factory on the banks of the Moscow River is a favored stop for visiting politicians touting capitalism’s advantages. Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen toured the plant floor Friday as ribbons of chocolate poured out of vats and turned into candy bars. Removing a $20 bill from his pocket, he bought a share of stock valued at 100 rubles, worth roughly 7 cents.

Daursky, who would not disclose his own salary, pays his workers an average of $140 a month and managers roughly $260. The plant employs more than 3,000 people, an increase of 600 over the past two years.

The increase in workers reflects the complex pressures facing management in the transition to a profit-based operation. A marketing department has been created to help sell the product, for example. There is also a new financial department to manage costs and investment.

But, in line with the Communist pattern of factory-based social services, the company payroll also includes a medical department for the employees. And inside the factory near the entrance, the company cobbler works.

“He is an artist. He can do anything,” Daursky said. “Why do we keep him? To make life easier for our lady employees.” The shoemaker’s presence allows them to drop off shoes needing repair each morning and pick them up at the day’s end without having to take time off to stand in line at a private repair shop.

No longer must Daursky turn over 10% of his product to the state. But, questioned whether he is truly free to manage his company--which he joined as an engineer fresh out of college in 1958--he said: “You cannot say there is no government control. There is control. There is taxation.”

Has his life changed? He paused, smiled, and said yes, it has.

“My blood pressure is all right, thank God,” he said. But now there are worries. And the Communist Party membership that he maintained as he rose in the company hierarchy--”I wouldn’t have been a director otherwise,” he said with no apology--offers him no protection today.

He must keep up with new legislation affecting businesses. He must plot the next moves of the company. He must set prices. He must report to a chairman of the board. And the shareholders can fire him. In short, he said, “everything has to be rethought.”