Russian presidential poll: Will voters allow painful reforms process to continue or choose to re-embrace communism?

Boris Yeltsin represents the status quo to voters, like here in Omsk, SiberiaBarely five years after President Boris Yeltsin dissolved the Soviet Union and triumphantly disbanded the vilified Communist Party which had ruled it with an iron hand for over seven decades, an anguished and impoverished nation reeling from painful economic reforms is clamouring to turn the clock back.Embittered Russians, many of them pensioners, who have been stung by the high inflation and economic instability of the post-Soviet era, voted in the communists in last December's parliamentary elections.The communist-led Duma (Parliament), which denounces the last leader of the Soviet Communist Party Mikhail Gorbachev as a traitor and rejects his bold reforms or perestroika, resolved last March to restore the Soviet Union and has threatened to re-nationalise privatised industries upon attaining power.With some polls giving communist leader Gennady Zyuganov a lead over Yeltsin in the first round of the crucial presidential elections, set for June 16, they just might be able to take Russia back to the Brezhnev era. The Russian presidential election, with 11 contenders in the fray, including Gorbachev, ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky and liberal democrat Grigory Yavlinsky, will be held in two rounds. If no candidate among them gains a clear majority in the first round, which is highly likely, the top two contestants from the first round will battle it out in a second election to be tentatively held on July 7.Public opinion polls conducted recently differ widely on whether Yeltsin or Zyuganov leads the pack, but agree that both of them will easily sail into the second round with between a quarter and third of the vote. All agree that Gorbachev, who is still widely respected in the West but disliked here, will not capture more than 1 or 2 per cent of the vote. And that the high-profile Zhirinovsky - whose solution for the war in Chechnya is to drop napalm bombs over its inhabitants - will attract not more than 10 per cent of the votes.The uninspiring Gennady Zyuganov, greeting supporters in Bryansk, symbolises the resentment against reformsThe communist leader Zyuganov, a stodgy and uninspiring apparatchik who toiled for years as a second-tier propagandist in the Soviet Communist Party's Ideology Department, does not have the flair or charisma of Yeltsin. Still, at 52, he is in better health than the ailing President and is to be credited with riding the tide of popular resentment against the present regime and galvanising his once-demoralised party.Zyuganov has raised eyebrows in the West and created panic among Russia's nascent business community by threatening to stage an upset against Yeltsin. Support for Yeltsin, Russia's first post-communist leader, has plunged after the disastrous and unresolved conflict in separatist Chechnya which has claimed more than 30,000 Russian lives so far.He has also been widely blamed for launching the country on a path of controversial market reform, which has left most people worse off than under communism, and for a policy of unpopular rapprochement with the West.The communists, who captured almost 30 per cent of the vote in December's Duma elections, have capitalised on the frustration of the impoverished Russians and their nostalgia for the security and Superpower status of the former Soviet Union. "Russians have seen their country go overnight from a Superpower that commanded fear if not respect across the world to an impoverished Third World nation. How do you expect them to react?" asks Sergei Markov, an analyst at Carnegie Institute, a Moscow-based political think tank.Vladimir Zhirinovsky's ultra-nationalist rhetoric has not clicked with voters (in Moscow, top), neither has Gorbachev's moral posturings.Russia's economy has taken a severe beating after the fall of communism. Yeltsin's shock therapy like economic reforms have not had the desired effect, benefiting instead only a very small segment of society while creating a vast underclass in its wake.Large state enterprises, which have been hastily privatised, are reeling from a lack of subsidies and shrinking demand from former countries of the Soviet Union where customs barriers have restricted trade. Military-industrial complexes, which employed almost a quarter of the population, have been downsized and are languishing from falling orders as Russia has scaled down its once massive defence expenditure.A good example of this trend is the Moscow-based ZiL, a flagship of Russian industry, which produced armoured limousines for the Kremlin elite, still used by Yeltsin and his presidential staff. With privatisation, tapering state subsidies and a sharp drop in orders, it has seen its fabled truck production free fall from a high of two lakh in the late '80s to just over 10,000 last year. The factory has been hit by constant strikes, its 60,000 workers have not been paid since last November, and the directors of the board have begged the state to intervene, calling privatisation a "senseless and meaningless experiment".Vladimir Zhirinovsky's ultra-nationalist rhetoric has not clicked with voters (in Moscow, top), neither has Gorbachev's moral posturings.Such incidents have poisoned people's minds against the free-market system and created a suspicion about capitalism, making them easy targets for communist rhetoric. "Yeltsin and his team destroyed our once-proud industries and sold them off for a song so that they could make quick money. Why should I cast my vote for them? I'm voting for the communists," says Anatoly Ivanov, a former factory worker at ZiL, who now drives a cab for a livelihood.Although other contenders, including Gorbachev, have thrown their hats into the ring, the elections have quickly boiled down to a contest between Yeltsin, who represents the status quo, and the communists, who analysts believe are dedicated ideologues, unlike their social democrat-like colleagues in the rest of Europe.Although Gorbachev's entrance raised hopes for a united "Third Force" of democrats to fight both, the increasingly Czarist Yeltsin and the reprobate communists, his claims of a moral high ground have received little support from the population at large. "Gorbachev is disliked by almost everyone. The liberals dislike him because they still associate him with the Communist Party, the communists blame him for the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the young see him as a remnant of the past and not a symbol of the future," says Victor Kremenyuk, a political analyst at the Moscow-based USA-Canada Institute.At this stage, it seems that only Yeltsin - Gorbachev's archrival - can stop the communist revanche. However, even Yeltsin has been caught off-guard by the rate at which communists have attracted support in recent months.They have gained many votes by promising to increase pensions for the disenfranchised elderly and to crack down on widespread corruption and the mafia, which appear to have become the hallmark of the post-communist era. "The Communist Party knows how to tackle the mafia. We've done it successfully for 70 years after all," boasted Zyuganov during a recent campaign speech.Bereft of the safety net of the welfare state, many elderly Russians, like here in Moscow, eke out a living by selling food and cigarettesMost Russians feel resentful of the new criminalbusiness class, widely dubbed "Novy Russkies" or New Russians, who have set heads turning in the world's capitals with their ostentatious displays of wealth. Moscow buys more BMWs than any other city in Europe, and while the flashily dressed Novy Russkies tote cellular phones, party in private clubs with a $100 cover and buy up houses on Regent Row in London, pensioners eke out a living on a mere $70 a month."Tell me, how do they have so much money? How? Where is it coming from when we have nothing?" asks an old woman in Pereshino, an industrial settlement outside Moscow, where residents have lived through the Russian winter without heat after the one factory in town which supplied parts for space shuttles was closed down.While the communist functionaries always lived a better life than the average citizen with access to well-stocked shops, private dachas and numerous perks, the vast economic disparities of post-communist Russia are unprecedented, and invite comparisons with the Czarist era, which witnessed the rise of Bolshevism. "The battle between Yeltsin and Zyuganov is nothing more than a fight between the haves and the have-nots, with the have-nots having the upper hand because they happen to be in greater numbers," says Markov.However, despite the vast wellspring of support for the Communist Party, analysts say that Zyuganov might still not poll enough votes to defeat Yeltsin in a run-off. Too many Russians have memories of Stalin's Gulag and the widespread repression of the Soviet era. Despite reassurances from the communists, the stains of the past have been hard to wash off and Zyuganov's camp has been dogged by allegations that they have a secret "maximum" plan to restore the Soviet Union by force and drag Russia backwards to the Stalinist era.Yeltsin, who is fighting an uphill battle for survival, has been quick to pounce on these allegations, using scare tactics to dissuade people from casting their vote for the communists. He has repeatedly warned that a communist government would be a "tragic step backwards" and could "plunge Russia into chaos". At the same time, Yeltsin, who understands the reasons for communist support, has been steadily distancing himself from unpopular economic reforms and co-opting the communists' platform.Keen to woo waffling communist sympathisers, Yeltsin has also adopted some of the symbolism of the past: reintroducing the red Soviet flag and standing atop the Lenin mausoleum on Red Square - like communist leaders of the past - during the recent May Day parade in Moscow; the first time he has done so since the fall of communism. Yeltsin also has one advantage over other candidates: he can use the powerful state machinery for his own purpose. "While other candidates can only promise what they would do if they came to power, Yeltsin is able to act," says Victor Verschagin, an analyst with Institute of Russian Industrialists.The fear that a communist government would mean a return to a repressive regime has swung many Russians, like these teenagers, in Boris Yeltsin's favourYeltsin has used his position of incumbent to beat the communists to their own promises by acting the munificent Czar of old and doling out largesse, despite the passionate and almost weepy pleas of his finance minister to stick to the austere IMF-mandated budget. In recent weeks, he has unilaterally increased pensions to the old, ordered back payment of wages from the state coffers and granted big handouts to local officials during his hectic electioneering.Despite enjoying the full support of the West in his fight against communism (the IMF on Bill Clinton's backing recently approved a $10 billion loan to Russia in order to boost his re-election chances), Yeltsin has felt it necessary to embrace the popular anti-western rhetoric of his nationalistic and communist rivals.In January this year, he fired the soft-spoken, conciliatory foreign minister Andrei Kozyrev, replacing him with former KGB chief and hardliner Yevgeny Primakov who has taken a tougher stance against NATO expansion.Although big business and almost all the mainstream media supports Yeltsin, a recent survey conducted by the All Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion has not been encouraging. It has found out that over 62 per cent of Russians "basically distrust Yeltsin", with 36 per cent saying that they would not like him to be the President in any scenario. Given these discouraging statistics, the President has been trying hard to broaden his political base by forming a coalition with the splintered democratic opposition, who enjoy modest support among the populace. Key among their leaders is Grigory Yavlinsky, the liberal democrat and head of the Yabloko (Apple) Party, who, with a following of between 7 and 10 per cent, could swing the elections Yeltsin's way. While the two leaders have flirted with the prospect of combining forces, a coalition has so far proved elusive.With Russia lurching towards an uncertain future, and business virtually ground to a halt as nervous investors await the election results, Muscovites, enjoying an unusually warm spring, seem to have nothing better to do than sit around exercising their hard-won freedom of speech, which could soon become a thing of the past. The city has become one big gossip mill, with rumours and conspiracies swirling around the Kremlin, which has once more become inscrutable in the harsh glare of the pre-election media.One theory in circulation in Moscow is that Yeltsin will find a way to postpone or even cancel the second round of the elections if he fares badly in the first, thus facilitating his continuance in power. A recent plea for the postponement of the elections by General Alexander Korzhakov, head of the Presidential Security Service and one of the most influential members of Yeltsin's inner circle, has only lent credence to such speculation. Others fear that Yeltsin would misuse his power to tamper with the balloting process, thus ensuring a victory for himself. "Anything is possible in this uncertain scenario. Yeltsin is certainly preparing the ground to cancel the elections if he chooses, although that might cause another circus," says Kremenyuk of the USA-Canada Institute. People are even talking in terms of a coup in Russia. They are saying that the election campaign might just be a protracted slow dance towards a civil war. As Russia, once again at a crossroads of history, gets ready for the presidential elections, no one is really sure where it is headed.Published By: AtMigration Published On: Jun 15, 1996 00:00 IST--- ENDS ---

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Russian presidential poll: Will voters allow painful reforms process to continue or choose to re-embrace communism?

The country's coming presidential election will decide whether voters allow the painful reforms process to continue or choose to re-embrace communism.

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