This week Yeltsin, 60, caps his triumph with a trip to Washington and a meeting with George Bush. Though his visit is unofficial, he will command considerably more respect than he received during an ignominious call on the White House in 1989, when he saw the president only in passing and never made it to the Oval Office. The Bush administration still wants to do business primarily with Gorbachev; it has an arms deal pending with the Soviet president and, despite delays, a summit is still expected this year. But no one can afford to shrug Yeltsin off any longer. Some people in Moscow think the balance of power has shifted so drastically that Yeltsin is now on a par with Gorbachev; to others, Gorbachev is beginning to look like the junior partner in reform.
Yeltsin has specific ideas of what he wants to do with his mandate. And if his luck holds and his vision deepens, he may become the leader of a new kind of Russian empire: a trimmed-down Soviet Union, rid of its more rebellious national minorities and rebuilt around mostly Slavic peoples who actually choose to belong. Already, the Russian Republic contains half of the people, three quarters of the territory and most of the resources of the entire Soviet Union (map). It holds the allegiance of the military’s best and brightest and houses the Soviet nuclear arsenal. “Russia on its own would be a superpower of 150 million people - potentially the European power when it got its economic act together,” says Princeton Sovietologist Stephen Cohen. The breakup of the union could leave Yeltsin presiding over a Russian-dominated rump that is greater for having fewer parts.
Yeltsin’s victory was the highlight of an anti-Communist sweep in the Russian elections. Reformists Gavriil Popov and Anatoly Sobchak were elected mayor of Moscow and Leningrad, respectively. And 55 percent of Leningrad’s residents voted to drop the Soviet Union’s founding father and return to the original name of the czarist capital: St. Petersburg.
Afterward, Yeltsin tried to dampen expectations. “I must tell the Russians their life will not improve right now, probably not before the end of 1992,” he said, repeating a familiar refrain from his campaign. Yeltsin has promised a more democratic multiparty political system, a more workable free-market economy and a foreign policy based on Russia’s own interests. He also promises to stop the flow of Russia’s riches to the 14 other Soviet republics. “Russia isn’t going to hand over another kopek” was one of his favorite applause lines during the campaign.
Many Russians share his grievances and believe his promises. But Yeltsin may have become a prisoner of his own Russia-for-the-Russians populism. In every speech of the presidential campaign, he stressed pork-barrel issues, and in every region he visited, he promised special tax breaks and foreign-investment privileges. During his term as chairman of the Russian legislature, the republic raised pensions and student stipends, shortened the workweek from 41 hours to 40 and increased the minimum wage. Yeltsin did little to prepare the Russian people for the unemployment, higher prices and other hardships that will come with a market economy.
Yeltsin promises to present at his inauguration later this month a plan of action for his first 100 days in office. Aides say he will call a special parliamentary session to push for constitutional changes. As chairman of the Russian legislature, Yeltsin engineered the passage of 140 new laws, including the creation of private farmland, but he was powerless to implement most of the measures over the resistance of the Communist bureaucracy. Now he wants executive power to enforce the laws. He also will continue to demand changes in Soviet tax policy, seeking to keep a much larger share of Russia’s revenues at home. And he will continue to urge large enterprises to transfer from Kremlin control to Russian jurisdiction.
As he cast his vote last week, Gorbachev remarked: “I cannot imagine a union without Russia. But Russia needs the union in much the same way.” That remains to be seen. In April, Gorbachev agreed with Yeltsin and the leaders of eight other republics on a vague plan to restructure the Soviet Union. The fragile compromise promised the republics more authority but allowed Gorbachev to go on calling many of the shots. Gorbachev apparently believed he could co-opt the republics into support for his cautious, partial reform from the top down. After Yeltsin’s emphatic victory, it isn’t clear who will co-opt whom. For now, the republics appear to have the momentum as they press for more radical reforms and more decentralization of power.
The great unanswered question is whether the Soviet Union will actually break up - and, if so, in what manner and at what speed. Yeltsin favors full independence for republics that want it. Six of them - Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Moldavia, Georgia and Armenia - have elected non-communist, pro-independence governments. Those six republics account for only 20 million people and may be too weak to stand on their own. If they leave, Yeltsin hopes to build a new, looser union around a Slavic core group consisting of Russia, the Ukraine, Belorussia and the part of Kazakhstan inhabited by a Russian majority. If the four other Central Asian republics cast their lot with the new union, the result would be a confederation of 270 million people. Many Russians want to be rid of the backward Central Asians, but those republics may have nowhere else to go.
A new union treaty is in the works, but the key issue of sovereignty has not been resolved. A draft circulated last week proposed changing the country’s name to the Union of Soviet Sovereign Republics. Otherwise, the 16-page paper was confusing and contradictory. “They use the term ‘government’ without ever defining it,” complained Arno Almann, an official of the Estonian parliament, which has no intention of signing any new treaty. “We’re supposed to be subject to a single constitution, but how can a sovereign government subject itself to a foreign constitution?”
Whatever Russian-dominated federation emerges from the current confusion may not be much of a menace to its neighbors. Historically, Russian nationalism has taken both expansionist and inward-looking forms. Initially, at least, any new Russian-led state will have to concentrate on solving its internal problems, not on acquiring new dominions. It will possess a huge nuclear arsenal but will have no logical enemy to threaten with it.
The leaders of any new federation will want to reduce the size of the armed forces significantly, if only to save money. Will Soviet generals and the KGB accept the breakup of the union and massive cuts in their own budgets? A coup is possible, but most experts think it unlikely. The military brass cannot count on junior officers and enlisted men to support a hard-line coup; many of them back Yeltsin. Any attempt to seize power could start a civil war, which no one wants. And the military has no program to cure the nation’s ills.
To protect himself, Yeltsin has set up his own security force. The national KGB saw which way the wind was blowing and did not object. If Yeltsin can transfer power from the Kremlin to the republics, he could take over effective control of the Soviet Army - and its nuclear arsenal, most of which is already on Russian soil. His aides say the armed forces would still be loyal to Gorbachev, but only in the sense that the British Army regards the queen as its commander in chief. “In our context,” says a Yeltsin adviser, “Gorbachev ultimately becomes the queen.”
The Soviet president hasn’t yet been relegated to figurehead status. “We still have a lot of superpower business to conduct, and Gorbachev is the man we do business with,” says a senior U.S. official. The administration will do nothing this week that might encourage Yeltsin to think he can cut his own deal with the West. For Yeltsin, the photo op with Bush may be reward enough for the visit.
Washington is moving in Yeltsin’s direction, however, by adopting a more neutral stance on his rivalry with Gorbachev. “Playing them against one another is a formula for losing your pants,” says a top Bush aide, “because you’re bound to upset somebody, and it may be the wrong somebody.” Gorbachev’s advisers say he was stung by the quick U.S. decision to receive Yeltsin. And Washington’s continuing loyalty to Gorbachev could be tested if he fails to move rapidly on reform. “If [Yeltsin] asks the West for direct assistance for the kind of market reforms we’ve urged Gorbachev in vain to make, we’ll face a difficult decision,” says a U.S. official.
First Yeltsin has to make peace in his own house. The Russian Republic has more than 100 ethnic minorities, 16 of whom live in supposedly “autonomous republics.” Some are restless. Tatarstan, 460 miles east of Moscow, declared itself independent last summer and threatens to become what some people call “Yeltsin’s Lithuania.” Russia is so big, its roads and communications so poor and its lifestyles so diverse that it may be difficult for Siberian villagers and European city dwellers to develop a strong sense of community. So far, no ideology, secular or spiritual, has taken the place of failed communism. Yeltsin himself was baptized as a child but doesn’t believe in God. “I had the rules of atheism drummed into me for too many decades,” he says. The one thing he professes to believe in passionately is Russia itself. “I have firm faith that Russia will come alive again,” he says. The rebirth has only just begun, and it may be years before anyone knows what Yeltsin can bring forth.
By itself, the Russian Republic would still be the world’s largest country. It covers 11 time zones and links Europe to Asia and the Mideast. It has half the Soviet population and the largest share of natural resources and industry.
