Yeltsin’s Wife Reassures Public

First Lady Naina I. Yeltsin sought Friday to console Russians worried about the financial crisis that has put some banks on the verge of collapse.

“Intuition is telling me that everything will be all right,” the wife of Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin told reporters while showing the Kremlin to Antonina Stoyanov, the wife of the visiting Bulgarian president, Petar Stoyanov.

“We need time. But with our rich country and with our people, we won’t fall down a precipice,” Naina Yeltsin said, according to the Interfax news agency.

“We just need patience,” she said. “We should overcome the crisis by acting together rather than separately.”

The government is now seeking a compromise with Communists and other hard-liners in the parliament who have demanded Yeltsin’s resignation and the reversal of free-market reforms.