2 Opposition Parties Swept Out as Yeltsin Cleans House

The Justice Ministry banned two of Russia’s most popular opposition parties Friday as President Boris N. Yeltsin’s sweeping political crackdown continued.

The suspension of the centrist Free Russia People’s Party and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation raised further serious questions about whether parliamentary elections Yeltsin has called for December will be truly democratic.

“The legal opposition has been effectively eliminated,” Gennady A. Zyuganov, leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, told reporters Friday before he even knew his party was being banned. “There are no legitimate institutions of power left in Moscow.”

But Yeltsin’s chief of staff, Sergei A. Filatov, maintained that no group that sided actively with defiant lawmakers against Yeltsin in the bloody conflict that left nearly 200 dead this week should be allowed to take part in the balloting.

“Our country has had enough of this craziness,” he said. “Enough.”

If Yeltsin’s prosecutors decide to pursue a hard line, the seven main leaders of the Parliament’s battle against Yeltsin may be charged with treason, a crime punishable by death, the Itar-Tass news agency reported Friday, citing investigators.

Yeltsin argues that he failed once by losing the momentum of his victory against the reactionary coup attempt in August, 1991, and that he does not want to repeat his mistake. Now is the moment for him to push forward with his plans for reform, he says--even if it involves riding roughshod over democratic norms.

Filatov said that the president may make such quick progress that a new constitution, Yeltsin’s political priority and an abiding source of frustration, may be rammed through in time to be presented to voters at the December elections.

Moscow authorities said it is likely that emergency rule in the Russian capital, which was supposed to end Sunday, will be extended for at least another week as police and troops continue to round up militants who fought government troops and common criminals. An 11 p.m. curfew remained in force.

The commandant of Moscow issued a no-nonsense warning to any opposition protesters contemplating pickets or marches for this weekend, threatening that they would be “decisively stopped with the use of all available means and forces.”

An independent telephone poll among Muscovites found them overwhelmingly receptive to the clampdown, with about 85% agreeing that “the Russian government must take emergency measures to restore order,” Itar-Tass reported.

Yeltsin had already banned several extremist groups implicated in the clashes and closed down a string of opposition newspapers, including Pravda. He also introduced censorship of all Russian newspapers but lifted it almost immediately in the face of loud protests from the press.

The suspensions of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and the Free Russia People’s Party were bound to provoke yet more controversy, because the parties had distanced themselves from Yeltsin’s main rivals in the conflict and had not made any calls to arms.

Zyuganov had defended the Parliament after Yeltsin ordered it dissolved Sept. 21 and had visited its headquarters in the White House often, but he insisted that he never spent the night there and did not consider himself one of its defenders.

The Free Russia People’s Party had been led by former Vice President Alexander V. Rutskoi, who tried to assume the presidency and commanded the military side of the anti-Yeltsin rebellion. But the party had disowned him--albeit a bit late--and had been planning to prepare for elections without him.

“Unfortunately, I have to admit that our party must have been banned by the authorities for just one self-evident reason: someone’s desire to isolate us from the elections to the Parliament,” party leader Vasily Lipitsky said. “Our ideal of fair and democratic elections is even farther from reality . . . now that even the so-called centrist parties are being banned.”

Russian news agencies said that the Justice Ministry based the ban on materials provided by the Moscow commandant and prosecutors--an apparent reference to films or documents that could implicate the parties in the violence at the White House or the Ostankino television center.

Yeltsin has assured world leaders that the elections will be fully democratic and that foreign observers are welcome to monitor them.

But Helsinki Watch, a U.S.-based human rights monitoring group, has protested rights violations in Russia and urged Yeltsin to cancel the state of emergency.

On Thursday, Yeltsin shut down the Constitutional Court, Russia’s highest judicial body, accusing it of helping to bring the country to the edge of civil war. He said it should convene again only after Russia has a new constitution.

He has also replaced the Russian equivalent of attorney general, dissolved the Moscow City Council and told regional and local councils that they should dissolve themselves and participate in the upcoming elections.

Filatov said responses from councils around the country remained mixed and that Yeltsin would wait a couple more days to decide what to do--an apparent hint that he might issue a decree dissolving them as well.