Is Yeltsin the Democrat becoming Czar Boris I? Since his defeat of the hard-line Russian Parliament early last month, he has made a disturbing series of dictatorial moves. He dissolved elected legislatures all over the country. He shut down opposition newspapers and extremist political parties. He resumed enforcement of a Soviet-era residence-permit system and used it to expel some 10,000 people from Moscow. The expulsion was popular but clearly racist; most of the deportees were darkskinned people from the southern Caucasus region.
Such measures were supposed to be temporary, designed to restore stability pending parliamentary elections on Dec. 12 and a presidential vote six months later. Yet for weeks now, Yeltsin aides have been hinting that he might call off the June election. Yeltsin also told the editors that he did not want to run for another term in 1996. “It is too much for one man,” he was quoted as saying. According to Interfax, he said his main task now will be “finding and educating” a candidate to succeed him. Yeltsin is still the country’s most popular politician; his dictatorship is widely viewed as benevolent. But Russia’s economic problems are so severe that even Boris the Good might have trouble winning an election next June.
