RUSSIA: PALE, RESTED AND READY

SELDOM DURING HIS ALMOST FIVE years in power had Boris Yeltsin appeared more in charge. As cameras rolled in a Kremlin conference room, the glowering Russian President pounded the table and delivered a furious dressing down to a row of hangdog officers. "What am I to make of you generals?" he barked. "Are you playing games? What have you been doing instead of erecting barriers, strengthening your forces and stopping the rebels?" The generals--Defense Minister Pavel Grachev; Interior Minister Anatoli Kulikov; Andrei Nikolayev, the commander of the Border Guards; and Security Chief Mikhail Barsukov--sat in chastened silence, heads lowered, avoiding eye contact with their outraged commander in chief.

It was a vigorous Yeltsin, clearly recovered from his October heart trouble and just as clearly campaigning for the June 16 presidential elections, though he has yet to declare his candidacy. But even if he staged the event as a political-image make-over, Yeltsin had good reason to be angry. For the second time in eight months, guerrillas from rebellious Chechnya had carried out a terrorist raid on a civilian hospital. This time the attack was in Kizlyar, a town in Dagestan, a multiethnic republic in the Russian Federation three miles from the Chechen border. After killing 25 local residents and policemen and holding more than 3,000 terrified civilians in the town's hospital for 24 hours, some 250 rebels defied the Russian army by heading back to the border with 165 hostages, mostly women and children in a convoy of buses. By the end of the week, the raiders were holed up in the border village of Pervomayskaya, demanding that the Russian government guarantee them--as well as the hostages--safe conduct to Chechnya.

The raid came as Yeltsin was attempting to strengthen his political position following a two-month recovery in a clinic and a convalescent center. The 64-year-old leader had started to make a round of high-profile appearances: strolling in the Kremlin, laying ceremonial bricks for a cathedral and praying at an Orthodox Christmas Mass. He even flew to Paris in the midst of the hostage crisis to attend the funeral of Francois Mitterrand and demonstrate his fitness for office. "I am in perfect health," he told reporters. "I came here so everyone could see I was in perfect form." It was a startling contrast to the TV images of November that showed a visibly pale and wobbly Yeltsin going through the motions of meeting Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin.

"If I run in the elections," Yeltsin said last week, "it will be not for the sake of power but for the sake of Russia. I do not need power, but it is necessary to prevent a deviation from the [reform] path the country has taken." Since Russia's reformist future is clearly at risk from communists and nationalists, that statement provides a good indication that Yeltsin will be a candidate. The strongest challenge to the reformers comes from a restructured Communist Party that rose from oblivion to win the most votes in the Dec. 17 elections for the Duma, the national parliament. Although its 22% showing was not enough to control the Duma, it gave the party and its leader, Gennadi Zyuganov, a strong starting point in the race for the presidency--which is the real center of power in post-Soviet Russia.