THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, June 18, 1996 TAG: 9606180011
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: 53 lines
The Russian electorate has spoken, and the voices reflect deep ambivalence over the nation's lurching venture from a planned to a free-market economy. The upcoming runoff between President Boris Yeltsin and his communist opponent, Gennadiy Zyuganov, will crystallize further the stark choice between return to a stultifying past or advance into an uncertain and, for many, frightening future.
Central to the outcome is the endorsement of Aleksandr Lebed, a retired general and former war hero. Lebed won 15 percent of Sunday's vote after promising to prevent extreme forces on either the right or left from plunging the country into bloodshed. Already Zyuganov's advisers are suggesting that the hard-liner could become prime minister in their regime; Yeltsin's are discussing roles from national-security chief to designated successor to the president.
The wooing of Lebed's 10 million supporters is likely to make the courting of Ross Perot and Perotites during the last U.S. presidential campaign look amateurish.
Whoever emerges, the message of this long and historic campaign is that the seeds of democracy lie perilously close to the surface in the former Soviet Union. While many workers revel in household luxuries and a freedom of movement only dreamed of prior to 1991, many others are weighed down by soaring prices and paychecks or pensions that have a plummeting value.
Remarkably, only five years into the nation's economic revolution, half of all Russian business is privately controlled. But that advance is offset by another statistic: The standard of living of the average Russian family is only half what it was before the reforms took hold.
The promise and hope that buoys one part of the population rings hollow to another group. Zyuganov is appealing to those who have trouble seeing beyond the present chaos.
Even if Yeltsin wins, rejoicing in the West will be measured. His victory would keep Russia to the course it has set, but the destination of that journey is far from certain. With a hard-drinking past and an unimaginative program for the future, Yeltsin is hardly the hero of whom Western diplomats or Russian citizens dream.
Still, he is the only hope in this election for the preservation of democratic reforms. The 70 percent turnout, far beyond participation rates in most U.S. elections, is a positive sign that voters are becoming attached to freedoms.
The Clinton administration has concentrated its eggs in Yeltsin's basket. While there may have been little choice, the result is that a Zyuganov surge could have almost as devastating an impact for Clinton as for Yeltsin.
For both the Russian and U.S. presidents and for much of the Western world, it will be nail-biting time until the runoff election is past. For the Russian people, the tensions will continue long after the vote and in whatever way it is resolved. by CNB