Boris Yeltsin: Russia's Maverick

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Like Gorbachev, Yeltsin hopes to bend the referendum to his own purposes. The second question on the ballot in Russia is whether the republic should establish a directly elected presidency. Voters are likely to say they do want to choose their own leader, and Yeltsin is likely to win an election. He will then be ready to do battle with Gorbachev on a more equal footing. With a huge power base and an electoral mandate, Yeltsin will face a national leader who has never been popularly elected but has massive institutional power at his command.

Gorbachev will portray a yes vote in the referendum as evidence that Yeltsin is defying the will of the people by obstructing the Union treaty. Though conservative deputies have forced a vote of confidence in the Russian parliament for March 28 to threaten Yeltsin's hold on the chairmanship, his position will be greatly strengthened if Yeltsin becomes an elected president. The stalemate could then be prolonged. Yeltsin, however, has limited administrative and no police power and cannot enforce Russian laws on radical economic reform, for example, if they conflict with the Supreme Soviet's legislation.

Ideally, Yeltsin would like to see the Soviet President and his Cabinet cede power to the Federation Council, a policymaking body that includes the leaders of all 15 constituent republics, though some of them are boycotting it. To force out the powerholders, who uniformly despise him, Yeltsin may be thinking of something like Czechoslovakia's "velvet revolution," street demonstrations fueled by an overwhelming wave of people power. But no matter how great his popularity, even Yeltsin will be hard put to mobilize the Russian masses in large enough numbers. They are mostly anti-Gorbachev and antigovernment, but their political inertia has been ingrained over centuries. Already their initial excitement and interest in the open politics of Gorbachev's demokratizatsiya have given way to apathy, cynicism and exhaustion.

Even worse, the fledgling democrats cannot seem to pull themselves together. Yeltsin last week urged the splintered, squabbling opposition factions to form a single, pro-democracy party. But Yuri Afanasyev, a leader of the liberal Inter-Regional Group of Deputies in the Parliament, opposed the idea. Putting everyone into the same party, he argued, was a Bolshevik approach. "It is better for us to agree on something fundamental," he said, "rather than join something anonymous and faceless."

Yeltsin has positioned himself in the role Gorbachev formerly played so well: supporter of the common folk. When thousands of coal miners went on strike in 1989, Gorbachev associated himself with their fight against management and emerged as a hero to the working class. Miners are striking in parts of the Ukraine and Siberia once again, but their leaders have turned to Yeltsin. Last week the Russian leader met with strike coordinators, who declared their full support for Yeltsin's political position and "readiness to support it with all possible nonviolent methods." Most miners are asking for higher wages, but some say their demand is purely political: the resignation of Gorbachev.