Yeltsin's Big Gamble

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Last week the top military brass flatly told Yeltsin they wanted order and demanded resolute action from him to end his power struggle with the Congress. But there is strong conservative sentiment in military ranks. Even if the top generals try to stay out of politics, many lower officers who are dismayed by the miserable living conditions of army units withdrawn from Eastern Europe and horrified by the economic and political chaos may feel otherwise. According to former KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin, recent army surveys show that two-thirds or more of the officers oppose the current reforms.

ON SATURDAY MORNING BEfore Yeltsin's speech, disgruntled officers of the Moscow military district met in the parliament house to pledge their support to Yeltsin's archenemy, Ruslan Khasbulatov, the chairman of the Supreme Soviet. Vice President Rutskoi, a former general who is a hero of the Afghan war and has become more bold in challenging his boss, has far more influence with the troops than does his nominal chief Yeltsin -- and has political ambitions of his own. Of course if Yeltsin is impeached he will automatically become President. If troops do go into the streets and take sides in the power struggle, that could trigger an avalanche of strikes by miners in the Siberian Kuzbas and Vorkuta regions. Civil war is a remote but not unthinkable possibility.

If the decision is to be made by ballots rather than bullets or impeachment, Yeltsin -- the first popularly elected chief of government in 1,000 years of Russian history -- is already running hard. Parts of his Saturday address sounded like a Western campaign speech. First came bitter denunciations of his opponents and the direction in which they would take Russia -- back to communist rule, according to Yeltsin. The President repeatedly accused his opponents in the parliament of creating "chaos" that was leading to "the death of Russia," and declared grimly that the country "cannot afford another October Revolution" (the one that brought the Bolsheviks to power in 1917).

That said, Yeltsin sketched a sort of platform for his own side, prudently trying to shore up his constituencies and dangle campaign promises before voters who might be won over. His top priority during the period of "special rule," he said, would be to allow large-scale private ownership of land. He promised "a simple and understandable mechanism for handing land over to citizens." By no coincidence, that is a capitalistic reform that former communists have fought most bitterly and, so far, successfully. Yeltsin's other economic pledges were a mixture of capitalism -- making the privatization of state-run industry that has already occurred "irreversible" and offering long-overdue tax breaks to small and medium-size businesses -- and good old populist pork barrel, including public works programs to combat unemployment.