Historic Day for Russia, Reassurance for the West

Russian voters by an impressive margin have given Boris Yeltsin four more years, though many of them no doubt are wondering whether the president’s uncertain health will allow him to complete his second term.

Yeltsin’s compelling victory over neo-Communist Gennady Zyuganov gives most Russians as well as Russia’s neighbors and the West assurance that the clock won’t be turned back to Soviet-era centralized controls and international confrontation. Whether it also assures that Russia can progress toward a stable, free-market economy is another matter. Communists and other enemies of liberalization still dominate the Duma, the lower house of Parliament, where they can obstruct much of what Yeltsin might seek to do. Even without a hostile Duma, Yeltsin’s second administration faces the critical challenges of a soaring national debt, falling revenues, rampant criminality and official corruption. Many of these problems can be traced directly to reckless or indecisive policies in Yeltsin’s first administration.

Alexander Lebed, the retired general who finished a strong third in last month’s presidential primary, says he has plenty of ideas for dealing with Russia’s ills. Lebed was quickly co-opted by Yeltsin as his national security advisor, from which platform he daily offers tough if often startlingly uninformed notions on many matters besides national security. Among other things, Lebed questions what he sees as the too-rapid pace of economic privatization and Russia’s heavy reliance on foreign loans and outside investors. Yeltsin, perhaps only as a gimmick, has mentioned Lebed as a possible successor. Lebed, ignoring the qualifier, clearly considers himself ready to fill that role. His recent proposal for an expansion of his own powers has to have Yeltsin wondering whether the man he brought into his tent intends to be a loyal subordinate or a dangerous rival.

In a postelection statement Yeltsin hinted at an interest in forming a broader coalition government that could include some Communists. Such a move to the left would balance his earlier turn to the right, beginning last January when he adopted a more nationalistic tone and brought in former KGB official Yevgeny Primakov to replace the conciliatory Andrei Kozyrev as foreign minister. None of this caused particular alarm in Washington or diminished enthusiasm for Yeltsin’s reelection. As a high State Department official said Thursday, “the United States has a lot at stake” in seeing Russia continue along the path Yeltsin has set it on, including continuing cooperation on arms control, nuclear nonproliferation and global peacekeeping efforts.

Russia made history this week with its first free election as an independent state in a thousand years, an achievement Russians can be proud of and the world can hail. But in the end an election offers only a chance to govern. The visibly ailing Yeltsin must now show he has the energy and the will to lead an effort that will effectively confront the many critical problems and choices that Russia faces.