Yeltsin’s strong showing in last week’s referendum-57 percent of the voters said they trusted him, and 54 percent supported his economic policies, despite the attendant hardships-gives him his best chance yet to move ahead forcefully with reform, and thereby qualify for billions of dollars in foreign aid. He quickly proposed a new constitution that would establish a strong presidency and replace the Parliament with two newly elected houses. It wasn’t clear how Yeltsin would install the new constitution-legally, through another time-consuming referendum; or more or less illegally, through executive flat. If he dissolves the Congress of People’s Deputies, violating the old, Soviet-era Constitution, Yeltsin could split the country, and Washington could find itself in the awkward position of supporting a dictator. Yeltsin’s opponents were far from finished. Parliamentary leader Ruslan Khasbulatov charged that the voters had been brainwashed. And in Moscow on May Day, pro-communist demonstrators pelted riot police with stones, bricks and pieces of wood in the worst street violence since the abortive communist coup nearly two years ago.
If Yeltsin quickly presses ahead with his market-style economic reforms, Clinton may be able to persuade Congress to approve most of the additional $1.8 billion in aid that he has proposed for Russia. As soon as the referendum results were in, the administration began a new round of lobbying in Yeltsin’s behalf Strobe Talbott, the Clinton friend who serves as ambassador at large to the states of the former Soviet Union, told a business group in Washington that the “basic story of what is going on in that part of the world is actually quite simple. It’s a historic struggle that pits those who brought down the Soviet communist system against those who would like to preserve its vestiges, if not to restore its very essence … In short, it pits reform against reaction. And that struggle is going to last for a very long time, certainly for decades. We have an immense stake in the outcome of that struggle.”
Clinton has bipartisan support for aid to Russia; in the Senate, Republican potentates Bob Dole and Richard Lugar strongly back it. But partisan setbacks to Clinton’s domestic program are a problem. As one State Department official puts it, “We hear Democratic congressmen saying: ‘If we can’t create summer jobs here, why should we create them in Russia?’”
Talbott conceded last week that “Russian politics is not a black-and-white picture.” Yeltsin himself seemed to be operating in a gray area. He ignored Parliament, presenting his draft constitution to regional leaders. “The one we have is an old one with patches stuck on it,” he told them, “and it is pulling us backward.” He removed a key adversary, Vice President Aleksandr Rutskoi, as chairman of the anti-corruption commission and assigned the job to himself. He promised to stabilize the ruble and accelerate the privatization of state-owned industries. He also considered replacing the head of the central bank, who has stoked inflation by subsidizing inefficient state enterprises. Russia’s president told the regional leaders that his opponents would have to support him or “they will confront the people directly.” He warned against any further “internal resistance” to economic and political change. “We need to get rid of those who are not on the same path as us,” he said.
His critics charged that Yeltsin’s proposed constitution would put him on the path to dictatorship. “This isn’t a presidential constitution, it’s an imperial constitution,” complained Gennady Zyuganov, head of the revived Russian Communist Party. Yeltsin’s legislative rivals published a draft constitution of their own, including more checks on presidential power. And they asked Russia’s chief prosecutor to investigate Rutskoi’s allegations of corruption in the Yeltsin camp.
The opposition could take some comfort from the fact that only 66 percent of the Russian electorate turned out for the referendum, reducing Yeltsin’s majority to less than half of the eligible voters. If he decides, in the face of such uncertain support, to push his constitution through by extralegal means, the resulting struggle could divide the country still further, slowing reform and jeopardizing financial assistance from overseas. But if Yeltsin does not exercise his mandate, such as it is, political and economic reform is certain to falter. Either way, Yeltsin and his rivals could end up with two governments, two constitutions-and no country.
