Exit Polls Point to Win for Yeltsin : Referendum: Surveys show apparent victory for Russian president and his reforms. But low turnout could thwart his efforts to end power struggle with hard-line Congress.

Russians solemnly cast their first ballots of the post-Soviet era Sunday in a referendum on Boris N. Yeltsin and his free-market reforms. But a low turnout made it doubtful that the exercise will end the power struggle between the president and the Communist-dominated Parliament.

Surveys of voters leaving the polls indicated that Russia’s first democratically elected president would achieve a clear vote of confidence in his leadership and narrower approval for his controversial reform program. Both endorsements require a majority of the ballots cast.

Russia’s Interfax news agency said today that more than 60% of the country’s 105.5 million eligible voters cast ballots across 11 times zones from the snowy Kamchatka Peninsula to the balmy Black Sea, after 16 months of wrenching changes that have made most Russians freer but poorer. It reported no official returns.

“It’s not the kind of triumphant day for Yeltsin that his election was” in June, 1991, said Maria L. Koroleva, a history lecturer in charge of voting at School No. 1278 in downtown Moscow, summing up the stoic mood at the polls. “The feeling of high hope for the future is gone.”

Yeltsin’s supporters admitted that Sunday’s turnout, 15% lower than for his 1991 election, appeared too small to give him the votes needed to force early elections of Parliament and rewriting of the constitution--both holdovers from Communist rule.

Two nationwide exit polls indicated that majorities rejected early elections of the president and favored them for Parliament--the formula Yeltsin’s supporters had campaigned for. But those two proposals required “yes” votes by a majority of the eligible voters, regardless of the turnout, and appeared to fall short.

Yeltsin’s term expires in 1996, Parliament’s in 1995.

One survey of 8,000 rural and urban voters by Voter Research and Surveys, reported by CNN, showed 65% expressed confidence in Yeltsin and 58% approved of his reforms; 44% voted for early presidential elections and 76% for early parliamentary elections.

Those trends were echoed in a similar poll of more than 5,000 voters by the Russian Center for Public Opinion, commissioned by the Associated Press. It reported 64% for Yeltsin, 56% for his reforms, 29% for early presidential elections and 69% for early parliamentary elections.

Public opinion specialists cautioned that exit polls are new in Russia and must be regarded as pioneering and experimental efforts. The wide differences between the two polls on the results of Questions 3 and 4 are a case in point and could indicate higher margins of error than those reported by the pollsters--4% in the first survey and 3.5% in the second.

Even so, early unofficial returns from eastern Russia pointed to a significant victory for Yeltsin on the central question of confidence. In several Far Eastern and Siberian cities, support for his leadership exceeded 70% of the vote.

“The results on the first question (confidence in Yeltsin) are very good,” said Lev A. Ponomarev, a leading Yeltsin supporter in Parliament. “It will enable him to go forward more decisively.”

While predicting insufficient votes for new parliamentary elections, Ponomarev said Yeltsin will keep working to achieve them.

Russia’s Central Electoral Commission said it will not even begin announcing official returns until Tuesday, leaving the outcome of the four-question referendum subject to bitter dispute for days.

The president’s hard-line foes in the National Salvation Front refused to accept the pro-Yeltsin vote as a clear mandate, saying returns “are being rigged and falsified throughout the country.” But they gave few examples.

“My forecast is that 35 to 40 million people voted in favor of the president,” said Communist leader Gennady A. Zyuganov, speaking for the Front. “The referendum has done nothing to stabilize the political situation.”

The most frequently reported irregularity was a lack of signatures by election officials on the blank paper ballots, which created havoc at scattered polling places. Officials instructed voters to use them anyway.

Parliament Chairman Ruslan I. Khasbulatov, Yeltsin’s chief opponent, charged that “false ballots” were “manufactured in large quantities” in the Far East.

The 62-year-old president, who offered to resign if he lost the confidence vote, turned up at a polling place near his Moscow apartment in good spirits. A statue of V. I. Lenin, symbol of the Communist legacy he seeks to sweep away, loomed over the simple wooden ballot box.

“I don’t know why Naina Iosefovna is taking so long,” he joked to onlookers, waiting as his wife lingered in the curtained booth. “She’s probably voting against me.”

“No! No! I’m voting for you,” she called from the booth.

Yeltsin’s free-market reforms, launched in January, 1992, have met fierce and growing resistance from the Supreme Soviet legislature and its parent body, the Congress of People’s Deputies. The reforms have freed prices for most goods, filled the shops with imported consumer items and put more than 6,000 state-owned enterprises up for sale.

The lawmakers, elected to five-year terms in 1990 under Communist rule, claim the reforms are destroying Russian industry while breeding corruption, crime and inflation.

As Russia’s economy shrank 20% last year, millions of Russians became small-scale entrepreneurs, but tens of millions of others, about one-third of the population, now live below the official poverty line of 8,500 rubles ($10.90) per month.

Voters interviewed leaving the polls were sharply divided on the reforms.

“Yeltsin was at one point a god for me, but time flew and I realized I was robbed of my best feelings and my scant wealth,” said Antonina N. Sabayeva, a 67-year-old pensioner in Moscow.

But many who have suffered said they were willing to wait for the reform effort to bear fruit.

“Industry has to be changed and turned toward humanity,” said Suren R. Azaryan, 41, who just lost his job as a clerk with the state housing bureau but voted “yes” for Yeltsin and his policies. “I am prepared to bear the hardships because I know it is temporary.”

Few voters expressed much hope in the $28.4-billion aid package Russia won earlier this month from the world’s leading industrial democracies. Aware of skepticism that the money would help, Yeltsin barely mentioned it, or his successful summit with President Clinton three weeks ago, during the monthlong referendum campaign.

On the eve of the vote, however, he promised Russians that the worst of times are past.

To some voters, that promise carried the risk of disillusionment down the road.

“I still trust Yeltsin, but if I don’t see any improvement by the end of the year, this will be the last time I help him,” said Vasily B. Bochkov, 60, a construction machinery operator in Moscow.

Yeltsin first called for the referendum last December, when a hostile Congress forced him to replace the architect of the reforms, acting Prime Minister Yegor T. Gaidar, with a conservative more to the deputies’ liking.

From the start, the referendum questions and voting rules were subjects of bitter dispute. Yeltsin wanted a stark popularity contest between himself and Parliament, in which the winner would gain more power and the loser would face early elections.

Congress first agreed to the idea of a referendum but rejected Yeltsin’s “me or them” choice. Then, after weeks of verbal sniping and negotiations, the deputies voted March 12 against any kind of poll.

The president’s reaction stunned the nation and set off a constitutional crisis. He announced March 20 that he was assuming “special powers” to rule by decree and force a referendum. The Constitutional Court ruled the gambit illegal and Yeltsin backed down, but the 1,033-member Congress met again to try to impeach him anyway. It fell just 72 votes short.

Before adjourning, however, the Congress finally agreed to Sunday’s referendum.

Still, Yeltsin’s foes predicted that voters would reject his reforms even if they supported the president himself--an ambiguous outcome that would allow them to claim victory and continue thwarting him.

Interviews with voters Sunday indicated that the opposition strategy was risky. Although some Yeltsin supporters said they voted against the reforms, most of them backed him on both questions.

“He’s not an ideal leader, and our material status leaves us nothing to boast about, but do we have a better choice?” said Alexandra V. Nikhitina, 24, an engineer who voted in the capital. “Let him finish what he started.”

Yeltsin’s foes, who favor a slower pace of economic change and a stronger state role in managing the economy, tried to focus the pre-referendum campaign on alleged corruption and dictatorial plots in Yeltsin’s inner circle.

Vice President Alexander V. Rutskoi, who leaped into the opposition camp last month, accused presidential aides of benefiting from lucrative foreign trade deals and selling military hardware and other state property at bargain prices. Khasbulatov charged that Yeltsin was planning to win the referendum through “riggings, endless intrigues and pressure.”

Beyond those denunciations, displayed in anti-Yeltsin news media and even on state-run television, the president’s opponents failed to mount a vigorous campaign.

Meanwhile, Yeltsin countered with a blitz of spending promises to benefit students, soldiers and the poor and slick television ads and celebrity endorsements.

But the exuberant populist who barnstormed the country and plunged into crowds during his 1990 and 1991 election campaigns spent most of this one in Moscow. His only public appearances were in carefully controlled events.

On the eve of Sunday’s voting, a visibly self-assured Yeltsin went on national television and outlined a proposed new constitution, saying a vote in his favor would offer “a chance to reinforce our state in a peaceful, legal way.”

The Yeltsin constitution would sweep away the unwieldy Congress, replace it with a smaller two-house legislature and give the president power to dissolve it and call new elections.

Whatever the outcome of the referendum, Russia faces new political tension and uncertainty.

Constitutional Court Chairman Valery D. Zorkin said Sunday after casting his ballot that if Yeltsin remains in office, he and Parliament must find ways to work together.

“If they are incapable of living in this way, early elections will be required,” he said, even if voters do not mandate them. “Any other solution--presidential rule, or other such things--would mean the breakup and death of Russia.”

Sergei L. Loiko and Beth Knobel of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.

At the Polls

The questions asked in the referendum were:

1. Do you have confidence in the president of the Russian Federation?

2. Do you approve the socioeconomic policies carried out by the president of the Russian Federation and the government of the Russian Federation since 1992?

3. Do you consider it necessary to hold early elections for the president of the Russian Federation?

4. Do you consider it necessary to hold early elections for the People’s Deputies of the Russian Federation?

*

1. Vladimir F. Piskovatsky, 59, an invalid and pensioner. (He voted 1. Yes, 2. Yes, 3. No, 4. Yes.): “Communists turned my life into a misery. They took away all my best years and ruined my health. When I realized that the Communist Party was a gang of cheats and criminals in 1958, I threw my party card into the face of my party boss and never since then have I had to bow to them. If Yeltsin loses, they will come back and start killing and torturing people again. We can’t let it happen! Anything--but not the return of the cruel Communist regime!”

2. Igor V. Semenovsky, 38, a designer. (1. No, 2. No, 3. Yes, 4. Yes.): “Long ago, I lost all trust in the branches of power. They are all former party apparatchiks. We need new elections urgently. We need totally new people to run the country. The president is yesterday’s man. So is the Parliament chairman and the Parliament itself. Now, each new year is an epoch in the history of this country. So all these people belong to a hopelessly ancient political epoch. They need to be replaced.”

3. Tatiana I. Volodina, 39, a publishing house editor. (1. Yes, 2. Yes, 3. No, 4. Yes.): “I am voting for the sake of my child. I am not so naive to think that the economic situation will quickly change visibly for the better. But I know there is light at the end of the tunnel we are moving through now. And I am voting for Yeltsin and his policy so that my child can see that light. I trust Boris Yeltsin completely. He is the only man now who is capable of turning the tide so that our children can live in a normal country with a normal economy.”

4. Alexander N. Andreyev, 56, an engineer. (1. No, 2. No, 3. Yes, 4. No.): “Yeltsin and his entourage have robbed me and my family. Isn’t it humiliating that an engineer like me can’t afford to buy a suit anymore? My mother is very old and sick. I don’t know where I will get the money to bury her if the worst happens. What kind of economic marvel is it that an engineer can’t afford funeral expenses to bury a relative? The first step to improve that plight of millions of people like me is to remove Yeltsin.”

5. Andrei V. Ustinov, 46, an engineer. (He took the ballot papers away and refused to vote.): “This economic policy is wrong because it is not based on the needs of the people. The only way to make our leaders think hard about changing their policy is to ignore the referendum in the active way I did. I came to the polling station and took the ballot papers away with me so that they cannot be used behind my back. The lack of the needed turnout will really make our leaders face the real situation. If more than 50% of the registered electorate comes to the polls, the leaders will find ways to interpret whatever the results will be in their own favor.”