As Supporters Rally in Moscow, Yeltsin Visits Striking Miners

As thousands of his supporters rallied in Moscow, Russian Federation leader Boris N. Yeltsin flew to Siberia on Monday to propose the suspension of a two-month-old strike by miners.

Yeltsin is seeking to boost his authority with a popular mandate and create the image of a leader capable of resolving the Soviet Union’s dire economic problems.

About 15,000 demonstrators, gathered on a wet night near the walls of the Kremlin to launch a radical campaign backing Yeltsin in the June 12 Russian presidential election, raised a sea of hands in favor of the man they see as a savior.

“This meeting begins the election campaign to choose the president of Russia. . . . Our candidate is the present leader of the Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin,” Arkady Murashov, a leading radical democrat, told the crowd.

“I don’t think any other political figure can put up real competition for our candidate,” he added as the crowd of warmly wrapped supporters cheered and waved red, white and blue Russian tricolors.

The umbrella movement Democratic Russia, which claims 1.3 million supporters and organized the rally, chose Yeltsin as its presidential candidate Saturday.

Yeltsin went to the Siberian mining city of Novokuznetsk on Monday with proposals that could bring about suspension of the strike by hundreds of thousands of coal miners that has crippled much of Soviet heavy industrial output.

Alexander Smirnov, a strike committee member in the sprawling Kuzbass field, said by telephone that Yeltsin denied he was trying to persuade the miners to return to work.

Smirnov quoted him as telling a meeting of about 600 miners: “It is up to the miners themselves when to decide to end the strike.”

But Smirnov said Yeltsin, the country’s most popular politician and archrival of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, carried a draft document on the basis of which miners were expected to suspend their action, possibly by this weekend.

Miners in some other areas have already gone back to work after moves to place their pits under the jurisdiction of the Russian republic rather than the central Soviet government.

The Kuzbass miners, among the most militant, said they disagreed with some points of Yeltsin’s document but a special commission would try to thrash out the differences.

Yeltsin is scheduled to address the miners Wednesday, which is May Day, in Novokuznetsk, shunning official celebrations in Moscow, where speakers at Monday’s rally urged a boycott of the traditional Red Square parade.

“Yeltsin--President of Russia” and “Down with the Soviet Communist Party,” read some of the banners held aloft on Manezh Square.

Yeltsin, criticized by some radical leaders for signing a pact with Gorbachev and eight other republics last week, wanted to explain his position to the miners.

They have been demanding Gorbachev’s resignation and the dissolution of the Soviet federal Parliament as well as steep pay rises and better conditions.

Referring to the agreement and charges that he bowed to Gorbachev by signing it, Yeltsin said the Soviet leader had responded to the wishes of republics seeking greater political and economic autonomy.