With one announcement Monday, Russian President Boris Yeltsin fired his entire cabinet, shocking the world and sending politicos everywhere scrambling for answers.

The obvious question is: Why? Did Yeltsin really want to give a nudge to Russia’s fledgling market economy, or, with an eye toward the year 2000’s elections, was he fishing for voters?

In a nationally-televised speech to the Russian people, Yeltsin said he made the move because his advisers were unwilling to take greater strides in making economic and political reforms.

This certainly has some ring of truth to it. Yeltsin, who took office shortly after the failed military coup of 1991 and Mikhail Gorbachev’s subsequent resignation, has seen his once widespread popularity decline after economic reforms have stagnated.

Many Russian citizens have voiced extreme displeasure at the slow pace and ineffectiveness of reforms. Yeltsin stressed this radical move was needed to ensure the success of those changes.

But there is one thing that must be noted here — Yeltsin surprisingly fired Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, who had been a loyal supporter of the president in the past.

Not so surprisingly, Chernomyrdin was considered the Russian business world’s favorite candidate to succeed Yeltsin in 2000, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Whatever the case, it is clear that something is not quite right, and the Russian people are growing impatient.

They have an aging leader who is too frail to run the country at one moment, and then, days later, who comes out of hibernation to proclaim his vitality.

Russia’s economy hasn’t quite made the transition to full-blown capitalism, and the folks in the bread lines have suffered. They expected a streets of gold and an ATM on every corner within a year, but — surprise! — it didn’t happen.

It’s taken the United States 200-plus years to fine-tune our system, and we’re still working on it, so don’t expect a miracle.

Yeltsin should, regardless of the voters’ sway, stay focused on what’s best for Mother Russia.

And, as totally contradictory as that may seem for Americans, so should the government of the United States.