television and used this opportunity to display communists' oppression and atrocities during their seventy-five years of rule. The entire administrative and bureaucratic apparatus was urged to do everything possible to turn out the right vote. The press was also heavily in favor of the incumbent President. Yet in this case the situation was more complex: Russian press was generally pluralistic and free, as well as strongly critical of the government, but the fear of Zyuganov and the communists made it rally solidly behind Yeltsin, including some publications that switched from sharp criticism to support, only to return to criticism after the election. Moreover, the communists had their advantages, too. They represented the only huge, well-organized, and territorially comprehensive political party in Russia, while Yeltsin in effect had no party of his own. Candidates could have their representatives at the polling places, but only the communists provided them everywhere. The fact was that Russians rejected communism, which they knew only too well, and also did not believe that it could become something different and truly desirable. In particular, the communists had great difficulty expanding their electorate in the second round after they had gathered the faithful and the susceptible protesters in the first. Later analyses indicated that the party relied very heavily for support on the elderly and the retired, and had little acceptance among the young.
Aleksandr Lebed, of course, also helped Yeltsin. A blunt and determined general, he attracted attention as commander of the Fourteenth Army by both protecting the interests of the Russian population and reestablishing peace in the newly independent republic of Moldova. Characteristically, in the process he went beyond his instructions. In the presidential election he stood out as a classic law and order candidate, uncontaminated by corruption and collapse around him and dedicated to setting matters straight. Lebed's main comparative weakness was that he had neither the government nor the communist party (or any party of any significance) behind him. His choice of Yeltsin over Zyuganov in the runoff probably made the outcome of the election inevitable. In fact, two days after the first round Lebed joined Yeltsin's government as the National Security Advisor. As already mentioned, it was Lebed who signed for Russia the treaty of peace with the Chechens. Not surpisingly, Lebed's government service did not last long, with Yeltsin accusing him of exceeding his authority and Lebed bitterly criticizing government policy. Striking out on his own, Lebed won in the runoff election of May 17, 1998, the governorship of the huge Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk, in the process defeating the government candidate and boosting his presidential aspirations for the year 2000. Only Yeltsin himself, Yeltsin's closest collaborator and long-time prime minister Chernomyrdin, Primakov, Zyuganov, and perhaps the energetic and successful mayor of Moscow Yury Luzhkov seemed to rival Lebed in political prominence.
Yeltsin's electoral victory in June and July 1996 was followed by other events propitious for the President and his government. Yate in August the Chechen war
finally came to an end. On the fifth of November Yeltsin underwent quintuple bypass heart surgery. In spite of many fears, the surgery proved to be successful and eventually enabled the President to return to his work with a renewed vigor. The year 1997 witnessed a stabilization of the ruble in Russia, and a great increase in capitalist activity, international and national, in the country. Many participants and observers believed that the country had finally turned the corner. On September 19 it was even announced that because of a bumper crop Russia would be able for the first time in fifty years to export grain.
Encouraged by these and certain other developments, but continuously beset by mounting indebtedness, the increasing poverty, even penury, of the people, the inability of the government to collect most of the taxes, and of industry to increase production Yeltsin turned to one more burst of economic reform. Characteristically, he dismissed his ministers, including this time even the prime minister, Viktor Chernomyrdin, who had the remarkable distinction of having lasted in that position for several years. Chernomyrdin, an old-timer, and manager of the enormous natural gas monopoly in Soviet days, with a certain relaxed manner and numerous connections in important circles, was told by the President that younger and more energetic reformers were needed, while he, Chernomyrdin, should prepate for the presidential election in the year 2000. The new leader was a relatively little- known economist Sergei Kiriyenko, who after a long battle was finally endorsed by the Duma and became prime minister in March 1998. The plan was, at last, to cut government expenses and subsidies, to collect taxes, and to streamline and modernize the Russian economy. The results, unfortunately, were worse than ever. For one thing, Russia became embroiled in the world financial crisis, which began in Asia but was spreading to other continents. Another devastating factor outside Russian control was the continuing low price of natural gas and oil, which constituted over 50 per cent in value of Russian exports. But, probably more important, Russia was paying for a failure to restructure effectively its economy and operating a kind of a pyramid scheme where only ever-new international loans kept the economic machinery going. Several such loans were indeed obtained by Chubais and others in the new crisis, but they proved insufficient. Once the ruble was again destabilized and government financial obligations repudiated in part or at least put in question, the financial world collapsed in Yeltsin's Russia in August 1998 and the months following. This time not only the mass of the Russian people was affected, but even many of the financial and business groups that had prospered earlier. As to the foreigners who were operating in the country, most of them left much faster than they had come in. Even the International Monetary Fund refused further loans. Kiriyenko was dismissed. Yeltsin again proposed Chernomyrdin as prime minister, but this time he could not push him through the Duma, because of the obvious long-term connection between the candidate and the system that had failed so disastrously.
Next an effort was made to achieve a compromise and rally support of the Duma and the people behind a new government. Foreign minister Evgeny Primakov, who had connections and an important past in the communist party and the police establishment, switched his state functions to become prime minister, while newcomers to the governing group included a number of outsiders as well as some former officials brought back to high office. Yeltsin's prestige sank lower than ever, and it was expected that he would be promptly forced to resign or at least become unmistakably a mere figurehead. Yet, although again ailing, the President apparently thought differently, and he merely assured the Russians that he would not run for office in the year 2000. (Whether he could run was a matter of dispute, depending on whether his first election would count towards the constitutional limit enacted later - eventually the supreme court decided that it would count.). But neither Primakov nor anyone else seemed to dominate the scene. In fact, the government appeared to have no clear economic policy as it promised on the one hand to continue the free-market reforms and the modernization of Russia and on the other to pay quickly its huge debts to employees and retirees and to bring the population of the country out of its penury. Nor was it going to accomplish the latter by printing all the money needed and producing another great inflation, which, in any case, was rising rapidly.
It was Gorbachev and his associates, not Yeltsin and his government, who made the historic decision to let Eastern Europe go and who ended the cold war. They also made a major contribution to the breakup of the Soviet Union itself, although in that development Yeltsin too played a prominent part. The net result was a transformation of international relations and, indeed, of the political map. Most important, the dread of an impending mutual atomic annihilation disappeared. Much as one can rightly worry about the possibility of an atomic war, for example, between Pakistan and India, or about the use of atomic weapons by some rogue government or even a private group, these dangers do not begin to compare to the Armageddon threatened by the intense, decades-long confrontation of the two superpowers. International relations lost their apocalyptic character and became more a matter of common sense and adjustment. Yeltsin and Russian foreign ministers, in particular Aleksandr Kozyrev, continued the orientation and the work of Gorbachev and Shevardnadze.
Taking into account the immensity of the change, the breakup of the Soviet Union, which resulted in the sudden appearance of fifteen independent states in Europe and Asia, where there had previously been one, occurred amazingly peacefully, in particular as far as Russia was concerned. To be sure, the bloody and tragic Chechen war must be kept in mind, although, strictly speaking, it represented a struggle within the Russian Federation itself rather than between that
Federation and other newly created republics. Otherwise, the Russian army played a secondary role in the bitter fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which came to center on Nagorny Karabakh, in purportedly supporting or even promoting the rebellion of the Abkhazians against Georgia, in guarding the southern border of Tajikistan, and in still other instances of crisis and war. Characteristically, Russian interventions were marginal both geographically and in their importance for the evolution of Russia proper.
More central were Russian relations with Ukraine and Belarus, connected with Russia by centuries of history
