Ex-Vice President Launches Bid to Replace Yeltsin

With the roar of angry hard-liners behind him, ousted Vice President Alexander V. Rutskoi launched a campaign Monday to replace Boris N. Yeltsin as president of Russia.

In his first major public appearance since he stood on the balcony of the Russian Parliament building in October, urging a mob to storm the Ostankino television tower in a bid to overthrow Yeltsin, Rutskoi spoke to 7,000 to 10,000 anti-Yeltsin demonstrators at a Victory Day rally marking the Soviet Union’s 1945 triumph over Nazi Germany. He predicted his archenemy Yeltsin would be tossed out of power--without bloodshed--before Victory Day next year.

“The 50th anniversary of the victory over fascist Germany will be celebrated in completely different conditions,” Rutskoi declared in a comeback blitz that borrowed themes from ultranationalist Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky. “The police, anti-people regime will no longer exist.”

Rutskoi, crisply dressed and shorn of the Old Testament beard he had grown during four months in prison, was chauffeured to the starting point for the march in a lilac Mercedes-Benz. But his team of bodyguards discreetly dropped him off near the subway station, making it look as if the humble candidate had arrived by public transportation.

The former Afghan War hero was introduced to the cheering crowd as “the acting vice president of Russia”--a title unused since Yeltsin fired, then jailed, his former running mate after the Parliament was stormed Oct. 4. Rutskoi was released in February under a controversial amnesty.

“Long live President Rutskoi!” chanted the crowd. One placard read, “We Beat Fascism, We Shall Beat Yeltsinism.”

Rutskoi called on the fragmented Russian opposition--an array of nationalist, Communist, fascist and monarchist splinter groups united mainly by virulent anti-Semitism--to pull together under Rutskoi’s new movement, “Great Power.”

In a leaflet distributed by supporters, Rutskoi called for the re-establishment of a Russian superpower within the borders of the former Soviet Union, a return to law and order and a halt to the impoverishment of huge segments of the population. “Today everyone must choose,” Rutskoi wrote. “Either the road to a colonial future with mafia-criminal lawlessness, or superpower status and a dignified life.”

Yeltsin, meantime, marked Victory Day by planting a tree in a new park dedicated to veterans on the western outskirts of Moscow, where the invading armies of Napoleon and Hitler faltered.

In keeping with the nationalist tone he has been striking more often since Zhirinovsky scored big election gains in December, Yeltsin reminded the world that Russia must always be treated with respect. He praised the stoicism of the Russian people in 1993 and promised to revive Russia’s grandeur and dignity in 1994. “We were united in the Great War,” Yeltsin said. “We can be united now in civil peace.”

Yeltsin has generally ignored Zhirinovsky and scoffed at the dozen other men who are believed to harbor presidential ambitions for 1996. Yeltsin has said he will not run for reelection, but aides have hinted otherwise.

Polls show Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin could be a strong candidate. Another possible candidate is centrist Nikolai Travkin, who founded the Civic Union bloc with Rutskoi before breaking with the then-vice president last April. Travkin was named to Yeltsin’s Cabinet on Friday, but in characteristically disorganized fashion, Travkin’s post has not been specified. Several hard-liners have also hinted they may run.

But Rutskoi seems to get under Yeltsin’s skin as no other rival can. In dueling interviews last month, Rutskoi told the Pravda newspaper that Yeltsin and his government are “crooks, political rogues and nouveaux riches, people who have destroyed the Soviet Union, spilled the blood of the country, destroyed the economy and the army and humiliated a great nation.”

In his retort, in Newsweek, Yeltsin said: “Rutskoi cannot rise again as a politician. He will hamper us in minor things, but that’s all he can do. People will not accept him, and he himself, psychologically, is not a man who stands firmly on his feet.”

Victory Day celebrations elsewhere in the former Soviet Union were also marked by controversy.

In Sevastopol, the Crimean port that is home to the Black Sea Fleet, Russian officers goose-stepped to the beat of the Ukrainian navy’s marching band. But conflict over how the two nations will divide the strategic fleet spilled over into jeers and hisses when the Ukrainian national anthem was played.

In Riga, a ceremony was held at the monument to the Soviet soldiers who liberated the city from the Nazis, but Latvian officials did not attend. The last Russian troops, whom Latvians consider an occupying army, are to be withdrawn before Aug. 31.

Lithuania did not celebrate Victory Day at all. President Algirdas Brazauskas released a statement noting only that Lithuania was “more than once seized by different occupants,” as it was invaded and re-invaded by Germany and the Soviet Union in World War II.