TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/061791/0617002.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.9 KB | 120 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 38

Barnstorming With Boris


Travel aboard Yeltsin's campaign plane is not all caviar and Pepsi

By DAVID AIKMAN/CHELYABINSK


    A deserted stretch of shoreline on a radioactive lake is
not the ideal place to argue the merits of building a new
nuclear power plant. This may explain why V.I. Fetisov, director
of the Mayak nuclear-waste processing plant near Chelyabinsk,
had little to say to the large man with silvery hair and
thundering voice. "It doesn't seem to me," said the presidential
candidate, "that we should build a power station of the type
they had in mind. Absolutely not. Do you want to stick an atom
bomb right next to Chelyabinsk?"

    It was vintage Boris Yeltsin. As local officials fidgeted
and an accompanying press corps of 17 Soviet journalists -- and
one Western reporter -- scribbled notes, Yeltsin showed how hard
he could run for the Russian presidency. With five other
candidates in the race and just days left before the June 12
election, one of Yeltsin's few advantages has been his position
as chairman of the Russian parliament. The post permits him to
set government policy and issue decrees. But it has also enabled
him to order a VIP version of an Aeroflot Tupolev Tu-134 jet and
stage a 12-city swing through north and central Russia.

    Yeltsin has skillfully blended government business and
stump campaigning on his tour. In Murmansk, Petrozavodsk and
Sverdlovsk, Yeltsin signed agreements between the Russian
government and the local authorities that allowed the regions
much greater control over their economies and foreign trade. In
his standard stump speech, he has promised that local factories
and other enterprises will be able to trade freely with foreign
companies and will have to hand over to the Russian government
only 25% of their profits. Mikhail Gorbachev's power-sharing
program, which is still in the planning stage, will call for
factories to give 40%.

    Yeltsin's approach has drawn mixed reactions from the
officials whose regions would most benefit from the new policies
but whose privileges are sewn into the Communist Party patronage
quilt. "The party should work outside the workplace, that's
plain," Yeltsin told 4,000 workers at a jet-engine factory in
Perm as local big shots listened glumly. "I am for the
departification of the army, the KGB and the factory." In Tula
this message was so badly received that officials cut off power
to Yeltsin's microphones for an outdoor speech, then smirked as
the candidate struggled with a bullhorn. In Chelyabinsk last
week, security agents were so irritated by the ecstatic welcome
offered by a crowd gathered outside the opera theater where he
appeared that they tried to stop Yeltsin's press corps from
entering the building.

    Such heavy-handed tactics serve only to strengthen
Yeltsin's grass-roots support. In Perm and Chelyabinsk
well-dressed local officials listened skeptically as Yeltsin
addressed them. Outside the halls, however, large crowds
carrying pro-Yeltsin banners and waving the white, blue and red
Russian national flag cheered and applauded as Yeltsin's voice
boomed from the loudspeakers. "I believe in the rebirth of
Russia," Yeltsin said again and again. "How is it possible that
in a country of 150 million people with such talent, such a huge
territory, such rich resources, people should live so poorly?"
Shouted a burly woman pressing against police lines in
Chelyabinsk: "We should be in there listening to Boris
Nikolaevich, not those partocrats!" Commented Valentina
Lantseva, Yeltsin's main press aide: "It's like this in every
city we've been in. People come out to support him. If they had
a chance, they'd be demonstrating."

    The "partocrats," local apparatchiks with considerable
administrative authority, squirmed in embarrassment as Yeltsin
forced them to listen to the grievances of local folk. "Why is
your vice-presidential candidate ((Alexander Rutskoi)) a
Communist?" asked a gruff peasant. "Communists can work well,"
Yeltsin responded. "They can in essence be honest people." In
the village of Muslyumovo, north of Chelyabinsk, where the
fallout from nuclear waste and a 1957 nuclear disaster still
pollutes the environment, Yeltsin was clearly moved by anguished
demands for greater government response to the village's medical
needs. Then, like a benevolent Czar in a Russian folktale, he
promised he would sign a parliamentary decree declaring the area
an ecological disaster zone.

    Life aboard Yeltsin's campaign plane has its perks. The
Tupolev jet is several cuts above most Aeroflot planes, with a
clean interior and flight attendants who actually attend. Dinner
on the flight to Perm included caviar on eggs, fresh salads,
half a chicken and unlimited Pepsi, tea and coffee. Yeltsin's
bodyguards, Makarov pistols dangling in shoulder holsters,
bantered with officials and reporters in the aisles. The Soviet
reporters passed around the vodka and caught up on sleep. The
phone system is so bad that Russian reporters working
domestically don't bother to write on laptop computers; they
can't transmit stories back to their editors anyway. One writer
in Yeltsin's press corps was reduced to dictating his story over
the radiophone of a motorcade police car. Since most of the
accompanying Soviet journalists were sympathetic to Yeltsin,
coverage of his trip was highly favorable.

    Yeltsin needs more than just positive reporting to win the
presidency. Early last week, pro-Communist Party newspapers
claimed that Yeltsin's support had slid to 44% and chief rival
Nikolai Ryzhkov's had risen to a surprisingly respectable 27%.
The candidate seemed unfazed by the news. "These figures go up
and down," he said in a nationally televised interview. Then,
in characteristic fashion, he took off his suit jacket and
conducted the rest of the session in his shirt sleeves.