SELF-PORTRAIT OF THE PEOPLE’S CHOICE : AGAINST THE GRAIN An Autobiography <i> by Boris Yeltsin, translated by Michael Glenny (Summit Books: $19.95; 263 pp; 0-671-70055-3)</i>

In assuming the newly created presidency of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev chose to forgo the benefits of popular endorsement of his rule in order to avoid the “inconvenience” and “distractions” of competing for the office in a general election.

One reason for this choice was almost certainly Gorbachev’s fear that his erstwhile protege, Boris Yeltsin, might run against him. Given the enormous political resources he commands, the odds doubtless would have favored Gorbachev in such a contest. But it would have been a close race with an unexpected outcome.

After five years of continued economic stagnation and mounting political turmoil, Gorbachev no longer can count on the widespread support he enjoyed when he first came to power. Although still greatly admired abroad, his domestic approval rating has fallen precipitously. Yeltsin, on the other hand, is immensely popular and seems to become more so with each new attempt by his highly placed enemies to discredit him.

Yeltsin’s popularity was vividly demonstrated a year ago, when the voters of Moscow elected him to the U.S.S.R. Congress of Peoples’ Deputies by a 9 to 1 margin. It was confirmed this March, when he was elected to the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Republic by 85% of the voters in the city of Sverdlovsk. These landslide victories were the more remarkable because Yeltsin had formerly headed the party organizations in both Moscow and Sverdlovsk and hence was more than ordinarily vulnerable to the throw-the-rascals-out psychology of the newly enfranchised electorate.

Aided in part by his own blunders and peccadilloes, as well as by the mudslinging and gossip-mongering proclivities of several foreign journalists, including a New Republic columnist and a reporter from the Washington Post, efforts to discredit Yeltsin have been far more successful abroad than at home. To the degree that he has any name recognition outside the Soviet Union, he is known, above all, for his allegedly heavy drinking and his supposed womanizing. Presumably, a desire to rectify this situation is one of the motives behind the publication of this political self-portrait, composed with the acknowledged assistance of a professional “spin-control” artist on Yeltsin’s staff.

For a variety of reasons, it seems highly unlikely that “Against the Grain” will in fact succeed in winning Yeltsin much of a foreign following. Certainly, it will not have anything like the international impact of Gorbachev’s far more polished effort, “Perestroika.” All else apart, the absence of any discussion of Soviet foreign policy will limit its appeal. Nevertheless, “Against the Grain” deserves careful reading for the fascinating insights it provides into the political struggles that are taking place in the Soviet Union, and also into the personalities of some of the major combatants.

Yeltsin uses three techniques to get his message across to foreign readers. First, he presents excerpts from a diary that he purportedly kept in the weeks preceding the 1989 election. In these, Yeltsin describes the travails of creating a campaign organization in a country that had not held a competitive election in almost 70 years. He also complains about the dirty tricks that were employed by Moscow officialdom in what turned out to be highly counterproductive efforts to block his candidacy and derail his campaign. And he records the hopes and anxieties with which he awaited the final returns.

Unfortunately, none of these subjects is treated in much depth. However, the reader does come away with at least some sense of the enthusiasm with which Muscovites greeted their first opportunity to be genuine participants in something approximating real politics, as well as of the panic that gripped the powers-that-be as they realized that their authority was non-existent and their privileged positions were at risk.

The second technique that Yeltsin employs to tell his story is to reproduce challenging and provocative questions that he was asked by Moscow voters and answer them at greater length than was possible at the time. In the process, he provides an abundance of grist for the mills of would-be psychobiographers.

Among other things, Yeltsin discusses his love-hate relationship with his distant and abusive father, his feelings about the loss of two of his fingers as an adolescent, his compulsive risk-taking, his struggle to overcome a nervous breakdown, and his constant fear of assassination. In addition, he discloses a good bit of previously unknown information about his behind-the-scenes dealings with Gorbachev, whom he obviously identifies with his father, and with his archenemy, Yegor Ligachev, whom he holds personally responsible for the humiliation to which he was subjected in the course of his dismissal as Moscow party secretary and his ouster from the Politburo in November, 1987. What he does not disclose, regrettably, is anything new about the still highly secretive processes through which decisions are made in the Kremlin.

The third way in which Yeltsin tries to win over his readers is to discuss the platform on which he ran in the March, 1989, election and the prospects for its legislative implementation. Writing in August, 1989, Yelstin clearly did not anticipate early action on his calls to end the Communist Party’s constitutional monopoly of power, authorize private ownership of land, and make large, additional cuts in military spending. Although he expressed confidence that Gorbachev privately favored such action, he was skeptical that Gorbachev would risk a confrontation with the conservatives in the leadership by saying so in public.

Presumably, Yeltsin would now be willing to concede that he underestimated Gorbachev’s political courage. He would undoubtedly insist, however, that the burden of proof is still on Gorbachev. Influenced, one suspects, by the late Andrei Sakharov and other liberal parliamentarians with whom he began to collaborate following the 1989 election, Yeltsin’s own outlook has undergone a substantial change. In particular, he has become convinced--as he was not convinced at the time he wrote this book--that the Soviet Union needs a multiparty system, a market economy and a federation from which the constituent states can freely secede. These convictions are reflected in his 1990 campaign platform and in the speeches and interviews he gave in the course of his 1990 campaign.

Whether Gorbachev will once again move in the direction in which Yeltsin is leading him, as he did in the aftermath of last year’s election, remains to be seen. What Yeltsin’s latest landslide victory clearly demonstrates is that there is a much larger constituency for radical reform in the Soviet Union than was generally supposed. In consequence, if Gorbachev fails to follow Yeltsin’s lead, it will be much harder for him or his apologists to claim that he was held back by the opposition and resistance of the unenlightened, backward-looking Russian people.

Yeltsin deserves a great deal of credit for depriving Gorbachev of this excuse. It is a shame that he did not wait until this became clear before writing what one hopes will not be his final autobiography.