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Former Soviet Union: Yeltsin's Health Dominates Year

Editor's Note: Boris Yeltsin, the first democratically elected leader of Russia after more than 1,000 years of iron rule by czars and commissars, won a crucial re-election battle back in June. But the big question facing Russia and all the countries of the former Soviet Union in 1997 is whether Yeltsin will recover sufficiently to allow him to continue to oversee the sweeping transformations occurring across this vast land. We offer two means of putting events in perspective. Read our special package of the latest news and background on

Poll Finds Yeltsin Still Ill Politically

By David Hoffman
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, November 14 1996. Page A27

President Boris Yeltsin's health has been improving since his heart surgery but a Russian nationwide poll published today shows that Yeltsin's political well-being has taken a nose dive since his reelection last summer.

Yeltsin's prolonged absence from public view, his falling out with former security chief Alexander Lebed, and rising complaints about unpaid wages appear to have contributed to his diminished standing among voters, politicians and pollsters said.

Yeltsin, however, never again has to face the electorate. If he recovers enough from recent heart surgery, as he appears to be doing, he may be able to resume all of his Kremlin duties and dampen the raucous contest to succeed him that has been underway for months.

But the public's view of Yeltsin is important if only because he remains the most important and powerful advocate of Russia's transition to free markets and democracy. If he goes into a political tailspin, his second term, to last four years, may well suffer from the same drift and indecision as during the most recent months of his illness. Yeltsin is expected to return to office early next year, his doctors said after the quintuple coronary artery bypass operation Nov. 5.

The poll, by the All-Russian Center for Research on Public Opinion, showed that the number of Russians who say Yeltsin is the politician they trust most has fallen to 10 percent, down from 29 percent in June. Yeltsin's trust among voters has gone back almost to the low levels of last spring, before he shot ahead in the election campaign.

By contrast, Lebed, whom Yeltsin recruited between the election rounds in June and then fired Oct. 17, remains the most trusted politician in the country, the poll showed. Lebed, who brokered a truce in the unpopular war in the breakaway region of Chechnya, was chosen by 24 percent of the respondents in the latest survey. Lebed was at 29 percent in June, and reached a peak of 34 percent in September, after the Chechen truce was announced.

Another of Yeltsin's rivals, Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, was most trusted by 14 percent of the respondents in the latest poll, down seven percentage points from his peak.

The poll was based on 1,600 interviews with Russians between Oct. 30 and Nov. 4. The margin of error is four points, the polling group said. Russian public opinion polls are often flawed by the frequent unwillingness of respondents to answer questions from pollsters but often reflect broad trends.

Two other potential presidential candidates, Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and Grigory Yavlinsky, leader of the centrist Yabloko bloc, both tied Yeltsin, each chosen by 10 percent. The largest vote, 31 percent, chose "No one to trust."