Boris Yeltsin, Boris-Yeltsin.com

Now

Now it’s Boris or bust.

Yeltsin and his economic reforms are not likely to receive widespread support in an Apr 25, 1993, referendum. Many people are disenchanted and confused. Many plan not to vote or to vote in support for Yeltsin only because no other strong leaders have emerged.

Yeltsin and reform get lukewarm support in Russia’s heartland

As Russians prepare to render a verdict on President Boris Yeltsin and his economic reforms in an April 25 national referendum, Vladimir Ivanovich Shesternyov is trying to win votes for Yeltsin by appealing not to his countrymen’s hearts or minds but to their sweet tooth. The city administrator of Pereslavl, a Yeltsin loyalist, is looking for a wealthy businessman to finance the purchase of 180 tons of sugar that could be delivered to the city’s shops in time for the vote.

Shesternyov is not alone in trying to woo voters who are battered by inflation and unemployment, impatient for the fruits of Yeltsin’s costly economic reforms, weary of political squabbling in the Kremlin and divided over whether Russia needs more democracy or a strong leader. Yeltsin, who has said he will consider himself the winner if 25 percent of all eligible voters support him in the referendum, has promised aid to veterans, new services for coal miners, higher stipends for students and continued subsidies to hold down the cost of gasoline and rent.

Doubtful mandate. The Group of Seven industrialized nations, prodded by the Clinton administration, last week unveiled a new aid package that could provide Yeltsin’s Russia with $28.4 billion in new and recycled loans and export credits (box, Page 40). But the G-7 leaders who met in Tokyo gave Yeltsin a more enthusiastic endorsement than he is likely to get from his own people. An exclusive U.S. News poll (box, Page 36) suggests that while Yeltsin is more popular than his opponents, the April 25 referendum is unlikely to give him a real mandate for reform.

Pereslavl, deep in the heart of old Russia on the road from Moscow to St. Petersburg, should be Yeltsin country. But Pereslavl has seen reformers before, and the city is not easily impressed. It was here on Lake Pleshcheyevo that Peter the Great, the czar who turned Russia’s face to the West, built a toy fleet that foreshadowed his great Navy. Although they are only a three-hour drive from the capital, the city’s 43,000 residents try to keep their distance from the latest crop of Kremlin politicians.

The town’s disenchantment and confusion could spell trouble for Yeltsin at the ballot box. Many say they don’t plan to vote. Others are looking for a new strongman. Nadezhda Loginova, a retired cleaning woman, found a bust of Lenin lying face down on a snowy knoll and took it by sled to her peasant hut outside Pereslavl. “Why throw things out?” she asks. “You should remember history.” She says she will vote for Yeltsin – and also try to find some plaster to patch up Lenin’s broken face.

Lesser evil. Such contradictions are not confined to Pereslavl’s peasantry. The city architect, Vladislav Kazakov, is fed up with what he calls pro-Yeltsin propaganda on television and radio. “People laugh at it,” he says. “It looks like a caricature. The TV and radio express the opposite of what people think.” But Kazakov says he will support Yeltsin in the referendum. Like many of Pereslavl’s other influential citizens, he has resigned himself to lobbying friends and neighbors with the tepid argument that Yeltsin is the lesser of two evils in Russian politics today.

Even that could be a tough sell. Pereslavl’s lone beauty parlor is so quiet that you can hear water running through the pipes. Going to get their hair done is a luxury for the 20 women sitting every which way in metal-frame chairs. Nowadays a permanent costs 1,200 rubles; a cut with wash, 200 rubles. The average worker in Pereslavl makes 4,500 rubles (about $6.50) a week. Zinaida Rubieshieva, the parlor manager, admits prices are skyrocketing. But there is no choice, she shrugs: The cost of heat and rent is also going through the roof.

Most women who used to come once a month now come as a rite of spring before the Easter holiday. But there is none of the gaiety of a special outing here, only the listlessness of an old-age home. The blank faces brighten with interest only when hairstylist Tatiana Ivanova, as brazen as her flame-red hair, speaks up. “The politicians look nice, but when they are elected they change. They don’t know our lives and they don’t consider people’s lives. We don’t trust anyone anymore.” She predicts that many people will spend the weekend of the referendum in their garden plots and dachas, skipping the polling stations. “If they don’t plant potatoes, they won’t have anything to eat,” she says.

The women around Tatiana Ivanova recall the Brezhnev years fondly. “I can’t understand it when people criticize the |stagnation years,’” says a small woman with thinning gray hair. “We were happy, visited friends, had money to buy presents for the holidays.” When asked about the absence of free thought in those days, Tatiana hoots: “There was no need to think – there was everything on the shelves.” But after a moment of bravado, the salon lapses into sad meditation. “Sometimes I am close to panicking,” says a woman in a pale-blue blouse. “Luckily my husband can cope better. What we fear the most is that our children will be no better than us.”

Only five blocks away, life is a lot better for Alexander Malyshev. He is in his 21st year as director of the New World embroidery and sewing factory, and he is delighted. The ministries that used to tell him what to make and where to sell have collapsed along with the Soviet Union. Production is up 27 percent over last year, and he has hired some 40 new workers to keep his 76 Swiss- and German-made machines humming. But on April 25, Malyshev will vote against the president. Business, he says, needs low inflation and economic stability, which Yeltsin isn’t providing. If he could, he would vote for Yeltsin’s archrival, Vice President Alexander Rutskoi.

As in much of Russia, reaction to Yeltsin and the referendum generally breaks down between the have-a-littles and the have-nothings. Professional people in Pereslavl tend to support Yeltsin, even if only to block dangerous forces. The town’s workers and the elderly peasants who live in small wooden, painted izbi (huts) say they have little stake in the president and his reforms. “Yeltsin is a drunkard and a fool,” shouts a fisherman with flushed red cheeks.

Even 82-year-old “Granny Olga,” who is just the kind of rock-solid peasant Yeltsin used to count on, has mixed feelings. “There’s nobody else to vote for,” she says from her wooden perch in front of a green hut at 76 Right Bank Street. Olga likes Yeltsin’s “manner” but she says Russia needs young leaders. “What’s the use electing an old man for president?” she asks, sweeping her frail arms in the air. “He might die, and then we would have to have another election.”

Next door, 54-year-old Nina Yegorovna rocks her twin grandchildren in a metal swing and complains that she cannot even afford to buy them candy. “I’ve been working for 40 years and earned nothing,” she says. “I don’t know who is to blame. I only know that they have been unfair to me and my life is wasted.”

It is the future – not the past – that bothers 40-year-old Alexander Dima. In the highflying days of Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika, Dima was first secretary of the Pereslavl Communist Party committee – the most powerful man in town. Now he is the director of a broken-down technical high school, where vacant young men with poor complexions huddle near the front door and smoke cigarettes. The students, he says, will have to switch from dead-end training in chemistry to new courses in marketing and management.

Outmoded. Dima, whose crisp gray suit and black vest match the flecks of gray in his hair, is one of 150 ex-party members trying to organize a new Communist Party. But he calls himself part of a “lost generation” of young politicians and refuses to accept a leadership role in the new party. Still, Dima says, Russia needs a strong opposition party because the “ruling party” is “going down the same wrong path that the Communist Party went.” He calls Yeltsin an outmoded politician. “I doubt that Yeltsin can lead society to reconciliation, to unity,” he says.

If any of Dima’s hard-pressed graduates can find work, it will likely be at the Slavich chemical plant – the largest employer in town, with some 5,000 workers. They produce photographic equipment and tape cassettes, though the company is diversifying. The photographic-supply business is close to bust: Few Russians have cameras, let alone darkrooms. And the tape-cassette business is in turmoil. Most of the resin used for tape polish came from Byelorussia, and since the Soviet republic became the independent nation of Belarus, it has stopped coming.

Although Vladimir Chekalov, the deputy technical director, hopes to begin marketing a new line of budget-priced cassettes, he is less optimistic about the rest of the Russian economy: “The people who started perestroika don’t understand the state of affairs. They all come from the [Communist] party. And the party didn’t do anything. Those people just sat in city committees, regional committees. They are careerists, drunkards and yes men.” He says that although he respects Yeltsin, the times cry out for a young businessman as political leader. But he cannot name one he likes.

Chekalov was outraged by the president’s recent warning that Russia would fall into an abyss if he were forced from power. “There are irreplaceable scientists. There are irreplaceable artists and creators,” Chekalov says. “But presidents can be replaced. Yeltsin overestimates his abilities. It will not be the worst [without him].”

Apathy. But most of the Slavich workers appear largely indifferent. Tatyana Chelova, an assembly-line controller, says workers “are interested only in themselves and not worried about anything else.” The plant’s management has promised no layoffs, which was welcome news, but no one seems ready to pass on his gratitude to Yeltsin. Chelova thinks few of the employees will bother to vote. Adds Chekalov: “And those are the people with jobs. What about the attitude of people without jobs?”

Breaking through that apathy will be difficult. Like provincial Russians elsewhere, many Pereslavl residents simply feel the whole process – voting, referendums, politics – won’t change a thing. Indeed, the transition from communism has not changed the town much. The same officials are in power, but now they call themselves democrats. “If the wind blows another way, they will change again,” says Valery Antipov, a foreman at a nearby collective farm.

If any place in Pereslavl is a Yeltsin stronghold, it’s the Lenin School, an imposing red-brick structure on the town’s main street. The teachers express warm support for the president. As is the tradition in Russia, they are required to go door to door to remind residents about the referendum and tell them where the polling stations will be. According to one teacher, Inna Anatolievna, many townspeople might not bother to vote except for the fact that they are adamantly against the present parliament.

Russia’s sagging standing in the world is a widespread concern. Nikolai Arefyev, director of the photographic-supply company Polifot, opposes Yeltsin because he thinks the president has been giving in to Western interests. “I feel as if he is just a card for those people who want to weaken Russia,” says Arefyev. He accuses the democrats of creating a market economy that represents the worst of 19th-century capitalism. “It is like a ship sinking, and the captain says: |You are all free, save yourselves,’” he complains. Arefyev supports Gen. Alexander Sterligov, a former KGB official who is a leader of the ultranationalist Sobor (Meeting) political group.

But such certitude doesn’t cut any ice out on Lake Pleshcheyevo. “People at the top are fighting for power and they really don’t care about us,” says Sergei, a 42-year-old pig farmer who calls the referendum “useless.” He is one of hundreds of fishermen who slog through frozen mud in hip-high rubber boots at dawn to fish for perch through a hole in the thick ice.

The unshaven Sergei also thinks enviously of the Brezhnev years when, he says, a man’s paycheck could feed his family. “But at the same time, I realize there’s no going back,” he says. “Russia is different. It’s changed. It’s been sold out to entrepreneurs. Look around and see who lives better – people who are close to power.” His bemused companion, Anatoli, agrees. “I used to respect Yeltsin because I expected things to get better,” Anatoli says. “But so far, nothing good is happening. I don’t know whose fault it is.”