Yeltsin Woos Voters Like an Old-Style Pol

Like any incumbent facing a tough challenge at the polls, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin is dipping deep into the pork barrel to firm up citizen support and woo voters ranging from Russia’s rebellious Cossacks to Afghan war veterans.

“I’m not hanging on to my armchair,” Yeltsin told Muscovites on the street Saturday, using an expression referring to clinging to one’s job. “But Russia must be saved.”

If promises of government money can preserve the country, Yeltsin seems well on the way to success. He wants an overwhelming show of voter support in a nationwide referendum to be held two weeks from today. To help achieve it, in a 24-hour period, the Russian leader:

* Signed a complex decree whose chief immediate effect is to roll back price increases on gasoline, which had doubled Wednesday to the general consternation of motorists.

* Ordered the monthly minimum wage raised to 4,275 rubles ($5.79) from 2,250 rubles.

* Met in the Kremlin with World War II veterans and retirees from civilian labor, the armed forces and police, and decided to earmark 1.5 billion rubles ($2 million) from the state budget or presidential reserves to create “millions” of jobs for pensioners.

* Extended greater social privileges to veterans of the Soviet military misadventure in Afghanistan.

* Promised Russian Cossacks that after the referendum, “which you, we and the rest of the Russian people must win, we will be able to remove, by joint effort, the artificial obstacles to the revival of the Cossacks’ way of life and traditions.”

* Issued a decree ordering an end to steep and haphazard increases in rental payments for government-owned apartments and ostensibly protecting Russians’ right to affordable housing.

Also Saturday, Deputy Prime Minister Boris Fyodorov said Russia’s Central Bank has agreed to put a ceiling on the loans it will issue in the second quarter of this year and raise interest rates on those loans. The action is aimed at reining in Russia’s inflation, more than 2,000% last year.

The announcement came just four days before the Group of Seven industrialized democracies--the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan--meet in Tokyo for an annual summit, in which they will discuss aid to Russia. One condition of further aid is that Russia take steps to control inflation.

Yeltsin’s political maneuvers were remniscent of political boss tactics. On Tuesday, he is supposed to head east to the grimy Kuzbass coal-mining region to court Siberian coal miners, who were among his firmest allies when he campaigned against the Soviet system but who have now fallen on hard times.

Yeltsin will not be going empty-handed. Sources on his staff said a draft government statement or presidential decree is in the works that would mandate a “revision”--read increase--in coal prices, which would hardly displease the Kuzbass miners.

To soothe the tempers of the older generation, whose members have been among those hardest hit by inflation and the collapse of the Soviet state-run economy, Yeltsin announced that U.S.-made banking equipment will be acquired to help recalculate pensions. Retirees now wait up to three months while the arithmetic is done, Yeltsin admitted.

“One can never say that enough has been done for veterans,” Yeltsin said, talking much like a candidate for the U.S. Congress addressing a local post of the American Legion.

The president’s most influential enemy in government, Parliament Chairman Ruslan I. Khasbulatov, said Yeltsin has gone wild by trying to run all facets of Russian life. He has called on voters to refuse Yeltsin the show of confidence that he wants.

Whether the government has the funds to back up Yeltsin’s actions is questionable, as is the seriousness of Yeltsin’s intent to follow through after April 25. Deputy Prime Minister Fyodorov, who simultaneously serves as Russia’s finance minister, told reporters Saturday that he opposes “purely populist measures.”