After his spectacular victory on 3 July, in the second round of the Russian presidential election, with 54 percent of the vote to Gennady Zyuganov’s 40 percent, Boris Yeltsin has been recuperating in the Barvikha sanatorium outside Moscow. He is said to be suffering from colossal weariness and would need at least two months to recuperate. This has cast a spell of gloom over the Russian political landscape.
In January this year, only some 8 percent of the electorate rated that Yeltsin would win. However, he fought off ill-health, widespread disenchantment with reform, and a vigorous challenge from a communist-nationalist alliance, to win the first round of the presidential election on 16 June by 35 percent to 32 percent against Gennady Zyuganovv, with nine other candidates trailing behind.
In spite of two heart attacks during the previous year, Yeltsin criss-crossed Russia in a gruelling and relentless campaign, dancing the twist at rock concerts to attract the youth vote. The state-controlled Russian television and radio were unashamedly on his side, he had the support of the US state department and president Bill Clinton. And he clawed his way back up in the rating to win both the first and the second round votes. Sheer physical exhaustion has evidently taken its toll.
The health of a major world leader is of strategic importance. President Yeltsin’s health is a matter for concern world-wide and especially to the West. It is reported that he takes painkilling medications for an old back injury which resulted from a hard landing in a helicopter. This makes him puffy-looking and slow moving. He is said to be suffering from ischemia, a shortage of oxygen reaching the heart, and is said to be a candidate for heart-bypass surgery.
He may have suffered a mild stroke.
Yeltsin is well known to drink heavily. When he appeared on 9 August for his second inauguration, held in the Grand Kremlin Palace rather than in the open cathedral square, as previously arranged, there was none of the flourish that prevailed at his first inauguration five years ago. He walked stiffly to the podium looking pale and gaunt, took his oath of office in a slurred monotone and then walked back without making the customary inaugural speech.
While the guns in Moscow boomed to herald Boris Yeltsin’s second term as the President of the Russian Federation, guns were being fired in the troubled oil-rich state of Chechnya. The resurgence of fighting there has been described as being extremely dangerous’. Chechen rebels have surrounded Russian troops in the centre of Grozny and civilians are reported to be fleeing the city. After nearly twenty months of war in Chechnya in which more than 30,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed, there does not seem to be an end in sight to the war which began in December 1994.
Yeltsin has placed his national security adviser, Alexander Lebed, in charge of the Chechen campaign. This would be a personal challenge to Lebed and it would be interesting to see how he would fare in his first important assignment. It is reported that a cease-fire has been arranged but it is not certain that this would last.
The deteriorating economic situation in Russia needs Yeltsin’s immediate attention. It is thought that major economic problems would surface during the autumn. Observers say that it would take at least two years for the economy to turn around. The general forecast is that communism will no longer have a serious chance in Russia and that the market economy and private property will remain.
Even Pravda’, the voice of communism’, founded by Lenin 84 years ago, now comes out not as a broadsheet but as a tabloid concentrating on crime, youth, fashion and other aspects of modern life, devoid of ideological commentaries.
There are other problems that demand Yeltsin’s urgent attention. A strike of coal miners in the Far East has not been settled. Industrial unrest elsewhere is bound to arise when demands are made for the implementation of some of the extravagant offers that Yeltsin made to woo diverse elements in the electorate during the election campaign.
Public spending will have to be curbed. And yet, this will be difficult after the rash election promises estimated to cost around $10 billion. Some Russian workers have not been paid over the past six months.
In the longer term, measures will have to be taken for a drastic overhaul of land ownership. A new investor-friendly tax code will have to be introduced. There is a tax revenue problem with only 60 percent of the taxes being collected. Privatisation has to be got moving. Monopolies in industries and in various utilities need to be broken up. An independent judiciary and a smaller, properly paid, corruption-free and more professional army is needed.
Yeltsin himself has called upon his new defence minister, Igro Rodionov, reputedly close to Alexander Lebed, to conduct deep-seated military reform. Crime and corruption resulting from the reforms initiated by Yeltsin are rampant and drastic measures will have to be taken against organised crime. Contract killings have increased dramatically and only 58 percent of murders were solved in 1995. To what extent the communist and nationalist dominated Duma will co-operate in implementing reforms remains to be seen.
Boris Yeltsin has appointed Viktor Chernomyrdin as the prime minister and the new government’s programme will be discussed in the Duma (the lower chamber of parliament) in the coming weeks. The Duma has relatively little power under Russia’s constitution and may not feel inclined to oppose Yeltsin’s programmes so early. The National Patriotic Bloc led by Zyuganov, which is in a majority, is likely to agree to the government’s proposals by striking a deal.
Unless they do this, Yeltsin will have the option of disbanding the legislature and forcing new parliamentary polls which are normally due only three years hence. But Yeltsin will have other problems with the members of the new team that he has put in place, especially Alexander Lebed.
Alexander Lebed, who was placed third in the first round of the presidential election, was appointed chief security adviser by Yeltsin in a bid to attract Lebed’s support for the second round. Lebed has been aspiring to a more prominent role. He is not content with his substantive duties in fighting corruption and would like to be involved in reshaping the economy.
In this connection Yego. T. Gaigar, a former prime minister, has commented: let him first study a little bit about the economy; in fact. I would not like to command a paratroop division. (Lebed was a commander of a paratroop division before announcing his candidature for the presidency.)
Placed in overall command of the Chechen war, Lebed will have to bring about peace in Chechnya either by crushing the rebels or by granting Chechnya a large measure of autonomy, even independence.
The West looked on with some doubt and a certain apprehension while Yeltsin was battling to win the election. His victory has raised hopes that Russia would settle down soon with her partners to tackling questions like the expansion of NATO and co-operate more on international issues such as Bosnia and arms control. Russia would, of course, pursue her own interests but the relationship with the West, it was felt, would be smoother and more settled than if the communists had gained the presidency.
Russia has been strongly opposed to NATO expansion but, under Yeltsin, may not be averse to some east European states being allowed to join. A NATO decision on who will join, and when, is expected early next year.
Yeltsin’s continued ill-health is already raising questions as to who will succeed him. If Yeltsin died in office or is incapacitated, then prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin will become president until another presidential election is held. The constitutional position is not clear according to the reports available; some say that this will have to take place within three months.
Amending the constitution is not easy. The requirements for major changes are reported to be: a three-fourth majority in the upper house, the federation council, a two-third majority in the Duma and simple majorities in local legislatures at least across two-thirs of Russia.
Yeltsin’s recovery will be a crucial factor in Russia continuing on the path of democracy and market reform, which is evidently what the majority of the people seem to want at this moment. If Yeltsin is unable to give proper leadership in guiding Russia at this crucial time, the future may well develop into an intense and divisive struggle for supremacy among the different political groups.
Russia is as unsettled as ever and Yeltsin’s absence is deeply disconcerting. One cannot ignore the realities of a divided country beset with social and economic problems. After all, 65 percent of those who voted in the first round of the presidential poll did not support Yeltsin and communist Gennady Zyuganov’s leftist coalition of National Patriotic Forces won 40 percent of the poll in the second round.
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