Close 1st Vote Seen as Helping Yeltsin in Runoff

That President Boris N. Yeltsin’s drive for reelection is a race too close for comfort may prove the key to his success in a second-round showdown with Communist Party challenger Gennady A. Zyuganov.

Complacency and overconfidence are Yeltsin’s biggest foes in the runoff that will determine the face and fate of Russia as it enters the 21st century, and supporters conceded Monday that the president’s skimpy three-percentage-point lead will encourage him to keep stumping before next month’s vote.

A lower-than-expected voter turnout of 69% for Sunday’s first round of balloting hurt Yeltsin the most, his strategists said, noting that the rival Communist constituency is more reliable in its commitment to voting.

Nearly final but still unofficial returns gave Yeltsin 35% over Zyuganov’s 32%, and the strong third-place showing by retired Gen. Alexander I. Lebed is expected to pay off more for the president than for his runoff opponent.

Yeltsin’s campaign manager and former chief of staff, Sergei A. Filatov, urged the incumbent to keep up his grueling campaign pace of visits to restless rural electorates and to unite the fractured democratic forces, securing Lebed first among them.

A courtship of the popular law-and-order candidate got underway before all the ballots were counted, with Zyuganov appealing to the 46-year-old former general to join his campaign team and Yeltsin calling the kingmaker to the Kremlin for a discussion of “possible cooperation.”

Zyuganov has publicly proposed making Lebed his prime minister in the event of a Communist victory--a post for which the career soldier who retired last year has little to recommend him. Yeltsin holds more charms for the war hero in that he can offer him a Kremlin post overseeing security affairs immediately and set him up as presidential heir apparent.

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Lebed kept a low profile Monday as he huddled with aides and advisors, but he told Russian television in the wee hours when the results were first disclosed that he was ready to get to work strengthening the security of Russia “right from tomorrow.”

“I need a position with decision-making authority,” Lebed said shortly after his surprising finish became apparent. He said he hoped for a post “in which I can organize the fight against crime and prevent extremists from both left and right from plunging the country into an abyss of bloody chaos.”

A parliamentary deputy close to the Yeltsin camp, Alexander N. Shokhin, told journalists at the president’s election press center that a special post might be created for Lebed that would combine the roles of national security advisor and deputy prime minister in charge of police, defense and security forces.

Yeltsin could put Lebed to work on reform of the demoralized federal army, which has bogged down in the David-versus-Goliath war against breakaway Chechnya and lost the luster and respect it enjoyed during the superpower days of the Soviet Union.

The current Kremlin hierarchy obviously hopes to lure Lebed’s backers--who cast 15% of the votes in Sunday’s first round--to clinch victory in the runoff.

But Zyuganov pointed out that securing popular support is more complicated than political horse-trading. Many Lebed supporters may balk at advice to cast their runoff ballots for the embattled Yeltsin, he said, voting for the Communist Party instead or not voting at all.

“The voters are not serfs, and one cannot pass them down like an inheritance,” warned Zyuganov.

During a news conference to discuss the first-round results, Zyuganov took a swipe at Yeltsin’s lavish campaign spending and his tardiness in paying government wages. “If he spent less money on rock concerts and more on paying people’s salaries, I think his results would be better,” the Communist grumbled.

Yeltsin, who briefly appeared on television to thank supporters and urge their continued backing in the runoff, moved swiftly to capitalize on what little momentum he has after the first round. He sent a proposal to the lower house of parliament and the Central Election Commission calling for a July 3 runoff date and declaration of that Wednesday as a holiday to enhance turnout.

The Monday morning quarterbacking by Yeltsin’s reelection team blamed the tendency of voters to stay away at their country dachas for the weekend for cutting into the first-round turnout they had expected to be as high as 85%.

The runoff can be set any time within two weeks of publication of the official first-round results, which election commission deputy chairman Alexander Ivanchenko said would be done Wednesday. That is also when a decision on the date for a runoff is expected.

Whether Yeltsin can win will depend on how well he does in galvanizing his natural constituency of the burgeoning business community, young people and those with sharp memories of Stalinist repression. But he must also win over enough of the 34% of Russian voters who chose unsuccessful contenders or did not vote for any of the 10 candidates to retain his edge over Zyuganov.

In addition to Lebed’s constituency, the votes for liberal economist Grigory A. Yavlinsky and ultranationalist Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky are now theoretically up for grabs.

Most of Yavlinsky’s 7.5% support is expected to go to Yeltsin if those voters turn out for the second round, whereas the 6% who backed Zhirinovsky are expected to be encouraged by their failed candidate to support Zyuganov.

Although Yeltsin’s slim lead over Zyuganov was a disappointment for his campaign staff, some noted that it may prove effective in marshaling the second-round vote.

“Two points is about right,” anchorman Nikolai K. Svanidze of Russia’s NTV independent television said in an interview. “The president had to come in first, but if he had too much of a lead it would encourage his supporters to be lazy and think victory doesn’t depend on them.”

Yeltsin’s chief strategist, Vyacheslav A. Nikonov, accused the campaign staff of “carelessness” in creating an atmosphere of overconfidence about an outright win.

U.S. Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering also saw the closer-than-expected first round as a consequence of inflated expectations. But he described the president’s current standing as apparently on the narrow island of safety between complacency from too strong a first-round finish and desperation over falling too far behind.

“Complacency might have settled in if there was a very large difference” in the president’s lead over Zyuganov, he told journalists at a briefing. “I think that is not a bad thing, psychologically. It could have gone in either direction--either complacency or despair could have settled in.”

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An exit poll conducted by U.S. pollster Warren Mitofsky and a Russian organization on behalf of Western media in Moscow, including The Times, has forecast a Yeltsin victory in next month’s runoff--52% for the president to 39% for Zyuganov.

But that same poll considerably overestimated Yeltsin’s share of votes in the first round, adding to concerns that the president’s supporters could be demobilized by unrealistically high expectations.