Like schoolchildren playing a tense game of musical chairs, Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Chechen leader Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev jousted over their seats last week in the Kremlin meeting room. Yandarbiyev, dressed in green camouflage fatigues and wearing a tall lambskin hat, tried to sit down at the end of the table opposite Yeltsin, as a foreign head of state would. Yeltsin snapped at Yandarbiyev, saying he had broken diplomatic protocol by arriving two hours late. Then suddenly the Russian President slid around to the side of the table and invited Yandarbiyev to take the place across from him.

That the Russian President sat down at all with the Chechens was surprising enough. Yeltsin, who is running for his political life in a tight race with Communist Party leader Gennadi Zyuganov, had repeatedly said he would never negotiate directly with the Chechen "criminals" and had pursued the 18-month-old war in Chechnya with brutal determination. But his swift concession on the seating plan was only the beginning of what was the most dramatic 48 hours of the Russian election campaign so far. Yeltsin not only took personal control of the talks but within two hours was hailing a freshly inked cease-fire agreement that could win him crucial political points. "This is a historic day, a historic moment," he declared.

The next day Yeltsin fulfilled at least one of his campaign promises when he made a hasty and unannounced trip to the breakaway region. The President's security advisers had warned him against going, but for Yeltsin the six-hour drop-in was a calculated risk made runnable by the knowledge that while he was in Chechnya, Yandarbiyev remained in Moscow--a barely disguised hostage to Yeltsin's safe return.

The Kremlin accord might look to be the product of common sense--a belated realization on both sides that the Chechen problem could not be settled on the battlefield. But other calculations were at work. The prevailing view in Moscow is that Yeltsin acted with one goal in mind: to attract the huge mass of undecided Russian voters who will elect a new President in a few weeks. Opinion polls over the past year have consistently shown that the war in Chechnya is a huge negative for the President. The cease-fire put fresh wind in Yeltsin's electoral sails and wrong-footed his opponents. But Zyuganov, in an interview with Pravda, was dismissive of the pact: "Two leaders who don't control the situation signed a decree. So what?" That statement seemed prophetic when the cease- fire was quickly broken.

During his carefully scripted trip to Chechnya, Yeltsin at last admitted his responsibility for the war and the death of some 30,000 people. There were "serious mistakes and miscalculations," he told Russian troops in the region. "I do not deny my share of the blame." With one eye on the military vote in the upcoming elections, he then signed a decree reducing by six months the length of time recruits may serve in war zones. "Maybe Yeltsin finally realized what was happening in Chechnya," says Nina, a Moscow hairdresser whose nephew serves in the military. "I want to believe the war is really over."

The looming vote also helped nudge the Chechens to the table. Their assessment: if they held back and Yeltsin won the election, he would have less incentive to sign any deals and might even step up his military campaign--an undesirable prospect for outnumbered rebels ill-equipped to fight a long war of attrition. The Chechens also have reason to believe that communist leader Zyuganov, who makes much of his greater Russia nationalism, would be even tougher to deal with than a re-elected Yeltsin.

Just before his meeting with the President, Yandarbiyev said the Chechens wanted talks "that will allow the war to stop and the great power to save face." But the modest pact signed last week in Moscow made little real progress on either front. It called simply for an end to the military operations of both sides by midnight May 31, an exchange of prisoners and continued negotiations. That leaves many questions unanswered, foremost among them the future status of Chechnya. Will it become an independent state as the rebels demand, or an "autonomous" republic inside the Russian Federation as Moscow insists? A power-sharing agreement drawn up by the Russian government last week proposed only limited autonomy and is sure to be rejected by the rebels. "The Russian government cannot force the Chechens to accept anything," says Ikhlan Gerikhanov, a Chechen legal expert. "The Russians may kill us, they may conquer us, but they can't force us."

For the moment, the Russian leader may have won something of an advantage. "If this agreement holds through both rounds of the election, it could be very important for Yeltsin," said a European diplomat. "It could help win over undecided voters."

But in the end everything will depend on whether the cease-fire holds on the ground. The first indications on that front were not encouraging. On Saturday the Russian commander in Chechnya told Russian TV that he had ordered his forces to return fire when Chechens attacked them shortly after the cease-fire began.