RUSSIA'96: THE PEOPLE CHOOSE

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These tactics are partly designed to compensate for Yeltsin's lack of organization. While the Communists retain a hard core of 500,000 committed members divided among hierarchical cells, Yeltsin has no political party and nothing resembling so spirited a corps of campaign workers. Instead he has regional administrators who he hopes will deliver on election day. But many of these local officials have proved lackluster. Indeed, they failed miserably last December, when the Communists and their allies won a plurality of seats in the parliament.

By American standards, many of the Yeltsin campaign's tactics are pretty crude--and none more so than God Forbid, a six-page newspaper warning of dire consequences if Zyuganov wins. On the front page of the first issue, which has already flooded 10 million Russian homes, a fabricated plea from Stacy Edwards urges voters to choose Yeltsin over the Communists. Edwards plays Holly on Santa Barbara, an American soap opera widely watched on Russian television. Inside, a full-page color photo portraying Zyuganov has been retouched to show him in a surgical gown, holding a sickle poised to slice into two eggs. In Russian the word for eggs is also slang for testicles.

The Yeltsin campaign denies involvement with God Forbid, but TIME has obtained a directive from the government agency responsible for distributing all printed matter in Russia that describes how the paper should be handled. It also "draws your attention to the fact that local representatives of the client will supervise control over the delivery of this newspaper," a rather unsubtle hint that Yeltsin's lackeys will be watching.

In ticking off all that he has done to improve Russian life, Yeltsin never fails to mention that "we already have free television, free radio and a free press." And what a free press it is! In February, Yeltsin fired the head of Russian state television and radio, whom the President perceived as too critical. Since then, Russia's TV news has become an unapologetic Yeltsin booster. Zyuganov rightly rants about the lack of coverage, but he does get some--all of it negative. Meanwhile, day after day, Russian television reports on Yeltsin glowingly. The President's Yaroslavl visit, for instance, was presented as a triumph rather than a disaster, and Yeltsin's revealing remarks to the city's local TV station weren't covered at all.

"I make no bones about what we're doing," says Nikolai Svanidze, a popular news anchor. "Zyuganov says the press must be in line with the society, which means government control if he gets in. We have no right to be objective now." As a tactical matter, Svanidze says, "frontally saying Zyuganov is bad would be counterproductive. So we coordinate with Yeltsin's staff and make sure to use good camera angles when showing the President. I'd like to show him drunk, but not now. Honesty will have to wait till later."