Yeltsin Bypass Begins in Predawn Hours

Russians collectively held their breath today as President Boris N. Yeltsin handed control of this stumbling superpower to his prime minister, then slipped into the nether world of anesthesia for a heart bypass operation on which the fate of the nation rested.

The surgery began before dawn, just an hour after a black limousine flying the Russian colors and presumably carrying Yeltsin had rushed out of the Barvikha sanatorium in a convoy of government vehicles.

U.S. heart surgery pioneer Dr. Michael DeBakey, on hand as a consultant for the triple or quadruple bypass, had said after a medical conference Monday that Yeltsin would have to be moved to the Moscow Cardiological Center at least several hours before the operation.

Yeltsin had already ceded most presidential powers to Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin on Sept. 10, and he signed a decree conferring the rest--including control over Russia’s nuclear arsenal--to his constitutionally designated successor early this morning, the quasi-official Itar-Tass news agency reported.

The medical team had deemed Yeltsin in “optimal” shape for the surgery, and presidential spokesman Sergei V. Yastrzhembsky had commented that the operation could come “within days.”

But the speed with which the surgeons decided to operate after spending six weeks preparing their patient took many in this gray and wintry capital by surprise.

Yeltsin had been suffering from anemia caused by internal bleeding and an underactive thyroid, in addition to the myocardial ischemia--a restriction of the blood supply to the heart--that made the bypass necessary.

The Kremlin’s refusal to disclose the date or other details of Yeltsin’s operation had sent Russians into a fury of rumors and speculation, from conspiracy-laden theories that he would instead undergo a heart transplant to suspicions, which proved well-founded, that he would go under the knife while the West’s attention was diverted by today’s U.S. presidential election.

Knee-jerk secrecy took over in the Kremlin as final preparations for the operation were underway. Despite a decade’s having passed since former Kremlin leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev inaugurated glasnost, a policy of more openness with the people, no one in the know would discuss the president’s operation.

The order to put a lid of secrecy on the vital operation was reportedly given by Yeltsin’s daughter, Tatyana Dyachenko, who has been acting as family liaison between her sanatorium-bound father and his administration in the Kremlin.

While the information blockade may have been intended to relieve public pressures on the Yeltsin family and the president’s surgeons, it rekindled widespread suspicions among Russians that their leadership is incapable of providing the full truth.

That mistrust born of decades of Communist-era disinformation had been evident in the rumor mill kicking into overdrive.

“Everyone I’ve talked with at the Chazov center is convinced Yeltsin’s going to have a heart transplant,” one Western source with professional connections to the Moscow Cardiological Center--which is run by Yevgeny I. Chazov, the surgeon who kept Soviet-era leaders alive--said Monday.

The head of the rival Bakulev Cardiac Research Center, Mikhail M. Alshibaya, said he would have advised Yeltsin to go abroad for the operation.

“In the United States, people are more interested in keeping him alive than they are in this country,” the cardiologist said. “Even among nurses who will tend to Yeltsin, many of them might have Communist convictions, and this might have an unconscious influence on the outcome.”

Attempts by Yeltsin’s staff to cast the ailing president as still robust and in charge despite four months in seclusion have done nothing to alleviate concerns that the Russian public is getting a distorted picture.

Only two days after Yeltsin announced Sept. 5 that he would undergo surgery, the Interfax news agency--which enjoys the coziest ties to the Kremlin--reported that Yeltsin had been out hunting and had bagged 40 ducks and a boar.

The president had been fully isolated for the past week, seeing no one besides doctors and family, yet decrees and messages had been published in his name.

An opinion poll by the Mneniye organization released over the weekend suggested that only 18% of respondents believed Yeltsin was really in charge. More than 56% said some other figure was running the country, and nearly 26% said they didn’t know.

“This is classic Kremlin behavior,” one attache from a Western embassy said Monday. “They’ll lie to everyone until it’s all over.”