Reformers Offer Yeltsin Expression of Support
By Lee Hockstader
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, June 22 1996; Page A19
MOSCOW, June 21 -- President Boris Yeltsin, who has already strengthened his political position heading into a runoff presidential vote set for July 3, earned a carefully worded expression of support today from reformists who have been disenchanted with his administration for the last two years.
The latest major figure who seemed to be leaning toward Yeltsin in the second-round balloting was Grigory Yavlinsky, 44, the reform-minded economist who picked up 7.3 percent of the ballots in the first round of voting last Sunday.
Yavlinsky already has made clear that he will not endorse Communist candidate Gennady Zyuganov, and leading members of Yavlinsky's Yabloko bloc, who will gather to chart strategy Saturday, said today that they must endorse Yeltsin. "Under no conditions can we support Zyuganov, and that means voting for Yeltsin," said Vladimir Lukin, the No. 2 man in Yabloko and a former Russian ambassador to Washington.
Yeltsin, 65, has won praise in the liberal Moscow media for firing three Kremlin hard-liners Thursday: Lt. Gen. Alexander Korzhakov, his security chief, closest aide and drinking buddy; First Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Soskovets, an enemy of economic reform who was the No. 3 man in government; and Gen. Mikhail Barsukov, the hawkish head of the Federal Security Service, successor agency to the KGB.
There was further rejoicing over Yeltsin's earlier firing of Defense Minister Pavel Grachev and applause for the ascension of retired Lt. Gen. Alexander Lebed, whom Yeltsin named as his national security chief two days after Lebed placed third in Sunday's vote.
"Instead of three dumb generals, Yeltsin got one normal one," the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets said in a front-page commentary. "And we like to believe [the votes of] several million people."
That was less clear. Political observers in Moscow say the dismissals of the hard-liners will play well in the cities, where Yeltsin has been seen in the past as surrounded by an unsavory bunch of intriguers -- the "Kremlin mafia," as many Russians call it.
They reckon that the 11 million Russians who voted for Lebed will be all the more likely to cast their ballots for Yeltsin in the runoff now that the retired general has been shown to have real clout in the new government team. But other voices cautioned that the whole affair may not be so keenly perceived in the heartland, where any Kremlin shuffle is regarded with cynical distaste.
"The personnel changes are understood in extremely politicized Moscow, but in other regions of the country, for the Russian rural population, this all looks like muddled infighting," Yavlinsky said.
Liberal columnist Otto Latsis, a former Yeltsin adviser, wrote in today's Izvestia newspaper: "Any intrigue around the throne is very dangerous. The whole country might easily slip on it like a watermelon rind."
Despite what is widely regarded as Yeltsin's adroit political maneuvering this week, his campaign team still says a large turnout in the runoff is crucial to their hopes for victory. Turnout in Sunday's election was about 70 percent of Russia's 106 million registered voters, somewhat less than had been forecast. In a field of 10 candidates, Yeltsin edged Zyuganov by 2.4 million votes out of 75.6 million cast -- a margin of about 3 percentage points.
Kremlin strategists say anything below a 65 percent turnout for the second round would be dangerous for Yeltsin, as the Communists generally enjoy a more reliable core of elderly supporters. By contrast, Yeltsin's partisans tend to be younger and more affluent, but also somewhat less likely to go to the polls.
To ensure the largest possible turnout, and minimize the chances of his supporters opting for their country cottages over the voting booth, Yeltsin pressed successfully for a weekday runoff date.
In another move to dampen the potential for trouble, Yeltsin vetoed legislation that would have allowed a president to take the oath of office outside Moscow. The Kremlin feared that the Communists would allege they had been robbed of victory by vote-rigging at the polls and would swear in Zyuganov as president outside the capital.
Yeltsin vetoed the bill "so as not to permit double sovereignty in this country," Alexander Kotenkov, the president's representative to parliament, told the Interfax news agency. "In Russia, double sovereignty has always ended in blood."
The legislation was part of a package aimed at setting procedures for the transfer of power, for which democratic, post-Soviet Russia has no precedent. But the Russian Tass news agency quoted Central Election Commission Chairman Nikolai Ryabov as saying the second round of voting would go ahead as planned July 3. "There is not a shadow of doubt about this," he said.
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