Yeltsin's Big Gamble

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Even so, Yeltsin might be hard pressed to win a popularity contest. His ratings have risen slightly -- 36% of Muscovites polled last week approved of his job performance, up 6 points from February -- but he is not as well liked as he was two years ago. Even more worrisome, only 42% said they would vote in a referendum. That is bad news for Yeltsin; he has to attract more than 50% of the electorate to the polls if the tally is to be considered valid. And he must win a heavy majority of that majority to be unmistakably the people's choice. Says Stephen Sestanovich, director of Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington: "A one-vote victory is no victory at all."

If an appeal to the people is a long-shot gamble, it is all that he has left. The great worry among Western and some Russian experts is that Yeltsin waited too long and compromised too much before firing this last desperate shot. If he had promulgated his decree on private ownership of land a year ago, says one Moscow intellectual, "he wouldn't be in the mess he is now." Robert Legvold, director of the Harriman Institute at Columbia University and a supporter of Yeltsin, says, "He's in a very deep hole, so his plan is not likely to work. It's an act of extraordinary desperation. He let the situation get away from him."

Some Kremlinologists worry that the U.S. and its allies may be running a grave risk in backing Yeltsin so strongly. If he loses, as he well might, the winners of the Kremlin power struggle will be even angrier at the West for opposing them than they would be otherwise. Others doubt that; they think ; Yeltsin's successor, no matter who it is, will have to deal pragmatically with the West.

Clinton's policymakers fervently believe Yeltsin is the only player worth backing. They feel that there is no other figure in Moscow ready and able to carry reform forward. Democracy and free markets in Russia aside, they wonder how the West could abandon a leader who has tried to be a friend and instead embrace nationalists who have assailed Yeltsin in part because they see his foreign policy as a kind of kowtowing to Uncle Sam. For foreign admirers the choice is between Yeltsin and chaos; for Russians the outcome is all too likely to be chaos no matter who rules the country.

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CAPTION: WHO GOVERNS RUSSIA: A CONSTITUTION UP FOR GRABS