To Backers’ Cheers, Yeltsin Vows to Keep Russia Steady

Proclaiming peace in Chechnya and prosperity just around the corner, President Boris N. Yeltsin unveiled a reelection strategy of both wishful and positive thinking Saturday in an address to cheering supporters at the Russian equivalent of a party convention.

The gathering in central Moscow on a bright spring day appeared aimed at hammering home the president’s message that he is the choice for stability in a country exhausted by political tumult.

Appealing to voters to let him finish the democratic and economic reforms he began five years ago, Yeltsin told Russians to back him “so there will be no change in the course, no revolutions.”

Despite a taxing travel schedule and the nagging reality of persistent bloodletting in the southern republic of Chechnya, the 65-year-old Yeltsin looked vibrant and confident as he assured the diverse delegates from the worlds of politics, business, the arts and even the occult that he will lead them to victory in the June 16 balloting.

“We will win so that the time when Russia was considered the evil empire will never return,” Yeltsin declared in a slap at his chief opponent, Communist Party leader Gennady A. Zyuganov.

“I can tell you with full responsibility that I have enough strength and will to win,” he assured his backers.

Coming from a president who suffered two heart attacks last year and has mired himself in a war he has been unable to win or withdraw from, Yeltsin’s bold proclamations might be taken for bluster if not for polls and political analysts who seem to agree.

Yeltsin dwelt in the single-digit doldrums of popular support until a month ago, when his star began to rise--some say inexplicably. A survey published Friday by the respected Public Opinion Foundation suggested that he has closed the popularity gap with Zyuganov to within two percentage points. Yeltsin was given 19% support, compared with 21% for Zyuganov. Four weeks earlier, the spread was six points, with Zyuganov at 20% and Yeltsin 14%.

“Yeltsin has been tremendously successful in this first part of the campaign,” said Michael McFaul, a professor of Russian studies at Stanford University and a senior analyst with the Moscow branch of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “He has already made it into a two-person race.”

Liberal economist Grigory A. Yavlinsky, tough-talking retired Gen. Alexander I. Lebed, ultranationalist firebrand Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky and former Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev have also declared themselves candidates for the presidency, but their campaigns have been pushed to the sidelines by the more visible clash between Yeltsin and Zyuganov.

Sergei Markov, another Carnegie analyst, attributes the lack of a serious “third force” to Yeltsin’s manipulation of broadcast media.

Still finding their way in a post-Communist atmosphere of quasi-freedom, television executives have lined up uniformly behind Yeltsin. There has been virtually no coverage of rival campaign appearances, but every speech, trip or meeting involving the president has been broadcast in full detail.

Although Yeltsin’s campaign has been on the upswing, Chechnya remains a political minefield. He announced a purported peace plan on national television a week ago, declaring an immediate cease-fire and a phased withdrawal from the demolished republic where at least 20,000 people have died in nearly 16 months of warfare.

But fighting has continued, and even the Kremlin-installed puppet government in the Chechen capital, Grozny, has complained of resumed air and artillery attacks by federal forces.

Yavlinsky, Lebed and Gorbachev drew about 2,000 protesters Saturday to Moscow’s central Pushkin Square for an antiwar rally and speeches highly critical of Yeltsin--an event that drew the attention of Independent Television.

Despite the damaging backdrop of Chechnya, Yeltsin has managed to elevate his reelection chances, McFaul said, by painting Zyuganov as a destabilizing figure likely to throw exhausted Russians into another phase of upheaval.

Zyuganov has done little to counter such implications. His party’s murmurings about resurrecting the defunct Soviet Union have alarmed newly independent neighbors. And Communist calls for state takeover of some privatized industries have chilled foreign investment and sent Russia’s new entrepreneurs rushing to contribute to Yeltsin’s coffers.

A group of luminaries known as the Russian Movement for Election Support to Boris Yeltsin has been bolstered by the decisions of several earlier rivals to give up long-shot campaigns and back the incumbent, lending his campaign a broad-based appearance.

From Academy Award-winning filmmaker Nikita Mikhalkov to popular clairvoyant Dzhuna to the moderate and maternalistic leader of the Women of Russia movement, Yekaterina Lakhova, the conventioneers Saturday at Moscow City Hall faced their leader under a huge banner declaring “President, We Are Together!”

The congress issued an appeal to Russia’s mass of undecided voters to back the incumbent, contending that “Yeltsin is the only figure of national scale who can guarantee civil peace and ensure continuity in domestic and foreign policy.”