Barnstorming With Boris

By DAVID AIKMAN/CHELYABINSK

A deserted stretch of shoreline on a radioactive lake is not the ideal place to argue the merits of building a new nuclear power plant. This may explain why V.I. Fetisov, director of the Mayak nuclear-waste processing plant near Chelyabinsk, had little to say to the large man with silvery hair and thundering voice. "It doesn't seem to me," said the presidential candidate, "that we should build a power station of the type they had in mind. Absolutely not. Do you want to stick an atom bomb right next to Chelyabinsk?"

It was vintage Boris Yeltsin. As local officials fidgeted and an accompanying press corps of 17 Soviet journalists -- and one Western reporter -- scribbled notes, Yeltsin showed how hard he could run for the Russian presidency. With five other candidates in the race and just days left before the June 12 election, one of Yeltsin's few advantages has been his position as chairman of the Russian parliament. The post permits him to set government policy and issue decrees. But it has also enabled him to order a VIP version of an Aeroflot Tupolev Tu-134 jet and stage a 12-city swing through north and central Russia.

Yeltsin has skillfully blended government business and stump campaigning on his tour. In Murmansk, Petrozavodsk and Sverdlovsk, Yeltsin signed agreements between the Russian government and the local authorities that allowed the regions much greater control over their economies and foreign trade. In his standard stump speech, he has promised that local factories and other enterprises will be able to trade freely with foreign companies and will have to hand over to the Russian government only 25% of their profits. Mikhail Gorbachev's power-sharing program, which is still in the planning stage, will call for factories to give 40%.

Yeltsin's approach has drawn mixed reactions from the officials whose regions would most benefit from the new policies but whose privileges are sewn into the Communist Party patronage quilt. "The party should work outside the workplace, that's plain," Yeltsin told 4,000 workers at a jet-engine factory in Perm as local big shots listened glumly. "I am for the departification of the army, the KGB and the factory." In Tula this message was so badly received that officials cut off power to Yeltsin's microphones for an outdoor speech, then smirked as the candidate struggled with a bullhorn. In Chelyabinsk last week, security agents were so irritated by the ecstatic welcome offered by a crowd gathered outside the opera theater where he appeared that they tried to stop Yeltsin's press corps from entering the building.

Such heavy-handed tactics serve only to strengthen Yeltsin's grass-roots support. In Perm and Chelyabinsk well-dressed local officials listened skeptically as Yeltsin addressed them. Outside the halls, however, large crowds carrying pro-Yeltsin banners and waving the white, blue and red Russian national flag cheered and applauded as Yeltsin's voice boomed from the loudspeakers. "I believe in the rebirth of Russia," Yeltsin said again and again. "How is it possible that in a country of 150 million people with such talent, such a huge territory, such rich resources, people should live so poorly?" Shouted a burly woman pressing against police lines in Chelyabinsk: "We should be in there listening to Boris Nikolaevich, not those partocrats!" Commented Valentina Lantseva, Yeltsin's main press aide: "It's like this in every city we've been in. People come out to support him. If they had a chance, they'd be demonstrating."

The "partocrats," local apparatchiks with considerable administrative authority, squirmed in embarrassment as Yeltsin forced them to listen to the grievances of local folk. "Why is your vice-presidential candidate ((Alexander Rutskoi)) a Communist?" asked a gruff peasant. "Communists can work well," Yeltsin responded. "They can in essence be honest people." In the village of Muslyumovo, north of Chelyabinsk, where the fallout from nuclear waste and a 1957 nuclear disaster still pollutes the environment, Yeltsin was clearly moved by anguished demands for greater government response to the village's medical needs. Then, like a benevolent Czar in a Russian folktale, he promised he would sign a parliamentary decree declaring the area an ecological disaster zone.

Life aboard Yeltsin's campaign plane has its perks. The Tupolev jet is several cuts above most Aeroflot planes, with a clean interior and flight attendants who actually attend. Dinner on the flight to Perm included caviar on eggs, fresh salads, half a chicken and unlimited Pepsi, tea and coffee. Yeltsin's bodyguards, Makarov pistols dangling in shoulder holsters, bantered with officials and reporters in the aisles. The Soviet reporters passed around the vodka and caught up on sleep. The phone system is so bad that Russian reporters working domestically don't bother to write on laptop computers; they can't transmit stories back to their editors anyway. One writer in Yeltsin's press corps was reduced to dictating his story over the radiophone of a motorcade police car. Since most of the accompanying Soviet journalists were sympathetic to Yeltsin, coverage of his trip was highly favorable.

Yeltsin needs more than just positive reporting to win the presidency. Early last week, pro-Communist Party newspapers claimed that Yeltsin's support had slid to 44% and chief rival Nikolai Ryzhkov's had risen to a surprisingly respectable 27%. The candidate seemed unfazed by the news. "These figures go up and down," he said in a nationally televised interview. Then, in characteristic fashion, he took off his suit jacket and conducted the rest of the session in his shirt sleeves.