Word: yeltsin
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When Russians went to the polls on July 3, they voted for Boris Yeltsin for one reason: the hope that he could bring some normality into their chaotic lives. But Russia today seems as unsettled as ever. The economy again appears in deep trouble, the war in Chechnya has flared up after a brief campaign-induced lull, and the Communist-dominated parliament is again flexing its considerable political muscle. Instead of taking charge, Yeltsin has taken refuge at a sanatorium outside Moscow. He has left behind a team whose members are united largely by political expediency and spend more time...
...Yeltsin's absence is deeply disconcerting. Despite his long history of mood swings, back pain, heart weakness and heavy drinking, his aides protest that nothing is wrong: Yeltsin, they insist, just needs a rest. Last week, however, a senior member of the new Yeltsin team, national security adviser Alexander Lebed, deviated from the reassuring official line. He told the Financial Times that Yeltsin was suffering from "moral, emotional and psychological exhaustion...
Sick or just tired, Yeltsin is due to emerge into the public eye on Aug. 9, the day he will be inaugurated--crowned might be a better word--in a sumptuous ceremony. The Order for Services to the Fatherland will be draped around his neck. Our President, a cantata commissioned for the occasion and performed by artists of the Bolshoi Theater, will urge Yeltsin to "bear the light of freedom down the years to the world...
That sentiment is more a feeble wish than a rational expectation. In Washington the State Department maintains, publicly at least, that Yeltsin is firmly in charge and overseeing the latest game of Kremlin musical chairs with some skill. In Moscow, however, his frequent disappearances reinforce the perception that the country has already entered the post-Yeltsin era, with the enfeebled President--like the Soviet-era leaders Leonid Brezhnev and Konstantin Chernenko--wielding power in name only. This in turn deepens the fear, often voiced in Western capitals and in Russia, that chaos in the Russian Federation is always lurking just...
GENNADI ZYUGANOV Sourly concedes election, losing by wide margin to Yeltsin in runoff vote for Russia's presidency...