Headache of State

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Rumors about Boris Yeltsin's health so alarmed Vladimir Trufanov that he decided a long-distance checkup was in order. The psychic healer, whose reputed restorative powers have made him a celebrity in the central Russian city of Tula, announced that he had "remotely" scanned the body of the Russian leader and concluded, "There are no grounds for concern." Trufanov did offer Yeltsin one piece of advice: It is important for the President to "protect his aura from energy attacks and other negative influences."

Yeltsin hardly needed a psychic to tell him that he was under attack last week. No sooner had the Russian President left Moscow on another of his notorious unannounced holidays -- this time to the Black Sea resort of Sochi -- than rumors filled the capital that his parlous state of health had inspired a coup plot. The crisis evaporated when the Kremlin launched a propaganda blitz to demonstrate that, at least for the moment, Yeltsin was still in command of his faculties. But the larger question of whether the Russian leader is in command of the country remains wide open.

The latest alarm was set off by a "confidential" document published in a Moscow paper supposedly describing a plot to depose Yeltsin by three prominent officials: Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Soskovets, Chief of the General Staff Mikhail Kolesnikov and Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov. According to the memo, the coup would kick off in March or April with a television broadcast documenting Yeltsin's health problems and excessive drinking. The dramatic revelations would give parliament a pretext to remove the President, replacing him with Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin until elections could be held.

The alleged ringleaders dismissed the scenario as nonsense. The document was subsequently disavowed by the Moscow paper, but it had already set off so much speculation about Yeltsin's hold on power that the Kremlin had to respond. ! Even Chernomyrdin got into the act. Breaking off an important meeting with the head of the International Monetary Fund to negotiate a $1.5 billion loan, he jetted down to Sochi on Monday to join his boss. That evening Russian television showed the two men strolling along a promenade. The next day Chernomyrdin dismissed the stories of Yeltsin's illness as "insulting" and told reporters, "I worked with him for almost four hours yesterday."

The damage control succeeded in quelling the immediate ruckus. But as fast as the Kremlin spin controllers kill one rumor, another crops up. Lately, the persistence of these stories has provoked speculation, even among supporters, that perhaps there is a flicker of truth behind all the supposed disinformation.

Certainly Yeltsin has had health problems in the past. When Gorbachev had him ousted as Moscow party boss in 1987, he suffered something resembling a nervous breakdown. In 1990, when his aircraft made a bone-rattling landing in Spain, he sustained a serious back injury, for which he still takes medication. A host of other ailments, ranging from bad colds to kidney disease, are regularly said to plague him. But the most widely whispered diagnosis is cirrhosis of the liver, a condition stemming from chronic abuse of alcohol.