Yeltsin's Big Gamble

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The battle to be waged in the next days and weeks could decide the fate of Russia for decades. Yeltsin is asking an exhausted, impoverished people to entrust their future as a democratic, free-market country to him and to depose the neocommunist forces who cling to the politics and economics of the past. No one knows if the opposition has become too strong for him to overcome. Or if a populace worn out by political crisis would answer the President's call. Or what the Russian military, itself split, would do if the stalemate worsened.

The rest of the world has an enormous stake in a game it can influence only marginally. Yeltsin may have exaggerated when he called his opponents cold warriors eager to reignite the global arms race and return to angry confrontations with the West. But an assertive Russia under a nationalist or neocommunist banner could be a disaster for its neighbors and the West. It would force reassessment of policies thoroughly changed by the end of the cold war. The prospect of facing an unfriendly Russia once more might force the Clinton Administration not just to cancel some planned Pentagon budget cuts but to begin beefing up military spending again, dashing hopes for reducing the budget deficit.

For those reasons, the White House made up its mind to back the Russian President as strongly as it practically can. Clinton and his aides could see no alternative to Yeltsin who would not be much worse for the causes of free- market democracy in Russia and friendliness between the Kremlin and the White House. The Russian's promise of democracy as the goal of an interim semi-dictatorship gave the Administration a plausible excuse for making its support prompt and public -- though some officials confided that the backing would have been forthcoming, reluctantly, even if Yeltsin had acted more autocratically than he did.

U.S. diplomats in Moscow and other Western officials got wind of what Yeltsin was planning 24 hours in advance, and Clinton made sure to watch his fellow President's speech on a White House TV set. After several hours with his advisers, he sent communications director George Stephanopoulos before reporters to make delicately nuanced statements intended to bolster Yeltsin and the cause of reform without explicitly endorsing his particular moves. "President Yeltsin has proposed to break a political impasse by taking it to the people. That is appropriate in democracies," said Stephanopoulos. Was Yeltsin meanwhile operating outside the Russian constitution? "That is for the Russian people to decide," said Clinton's spokesman. Clinton followed up by sending Yeltsin a personal message of support, and he made clear that he still intended to hold his summit meeting with Yeltsin in Vancouver, British Columbia, as scheduled on April 3 and 4.

But would it be safe for Yeltsin to leave Russia then, amid the turmoil preceding the April 25 referendum? Could he even survive until the vote? The legislative bodies, packed with industry bosses, collective-farm managers and apparatchiks elected under the old communist system, had no intention of going quietly into what their Bolshevik forebears called the dustheap of history. The Supreme Soviet began meeting Sunday afternoon to discuss Yeltsin's actions, while the Congress of People's Deputies was likely to be called into its own session starting Wednesday.