REJECTING YELTSIN

Despite Boris Yeltsin's impassioned last minute plea to the Russian people to stay the course with his market and democratic reforms rather than turn to Communists and right-wing nationalists, Russians overwhelmingly chose those candidates in Sunday's parliamentary elections. The Communists were the big winners, with 22 percent of the vote. Vladimir Zhirinovsky's nationalist party took a surprisingly strong second place, winning 11.2 percent of the votes with just under half the total reported. In the face of the surprisingly high voter turnout of 65 percent, a chastened Yeltsin spokesman said that the vote may cause the government to moderate its reform tactics: "It is necessary to draw conclusions from the results of the Sunday elections and to correct the course of reforms." Capturing an estimated 9.6 percent of the vote counted so far, Yeltsin ally and Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin's Our Home Russia party is a disappointing third in the race. Although the elections are seen by many as a rejection of the Yeltsin government, their immediate impact will be limited. Under Russia's new constitution, the President holds most of the political power in the country, meaning Yeltsin will retain his tenuous hold at least until Presidential elections next June.