In recent months Mr. Yeltsin has positioned himself as a tradition-oriented politician looking back to basic Russian values and lamenting the destruction of the Russian village. His electoral platform and the movement that supported him -- Democratic Russia -- represents an inward-looking Russian nationalism that promotes Russia's sovereignty against the state apparat and has little in common with Russian imperialism. On May 4, while visiting Spain, Mr. Yeltsin criticized Mr. Gorbachev's blockade of Lithuania. A Spanish newspaper reported that he also called for the emergence of "an independent Russian republic" that "as an independent state would sign agreements with other republics, also as independent states." In Mr. Yeltsin's view, it would then be up to the various sovereign republics to determine whether they should be part of a federation or confederation, or fully independent. Among non-Russian peoples fighting for economic and political sovereignty, the Yeltsin victory is greeted with unalloyed delight. One leader of Sajudis, the Lithuanian independence movement, anticipated Mr. Yeltsin's success when I met him in late April. "He'll sign a trade agreement between Russia and Lithuania. He'll challenge the blockade," the Lithuanian leader predicted. Just three months ago, in an interview in an Estonian daily, Mr. Yeltsin came out four-square for "maximum independence" for the republics. Independence-minded Georgians and Azerbaijanis, too, regard Mr. Yeltsin favorably. He is on record denouncing the brutal murders of non-Russian demonstrators by Soviet troops in 1989 and 1990, and has gone after Marshal Dmitri Yazov, who, says Mr. Yeltsin, "must answer for Tbilisi and Baku." Mr. Yeltsin's victory shows how far the process of democratization and radicalization has gone in the past 15 months. It also shows Mr. Yeltsin's keen political sense. Mr. Yeltsin and his reformist cohorts scored their electoral victory in March elections to Russia's Parliament by playing to a major shift in Russian public opinion, which is warming to the idea of surrendering domination of non-Russian peoples. There are many important signs of this turn inward. A public-opinion poll conducted in late February by the Soviet Academy of Sciences' Institute of Sociology in cities across the Soviet Union indicated that 52.4% of those polled supported the right of union republics to secede. Another 14% partly endorsed this right and only 7% were clearly opposed. Ethnic Russians are opting out of the empire with their feet and leaving the non-Russian republics in droves. Between 1979 and 1989, nearly two million citizens -- most of them ethnic Russians -- left the non-Russian republics to return to the Russian republic. As president of a republic of 147 million, Mr. Yeltsin will be confronted with a new constituency -- the 25 million Russians who live in the non-Russian republics. Mr. Yeltsin realizes that this group could represent a force for the maintenance of empire. But, to diffuse this time bomb, Mr. Yeltsin, according to reports in the Soviet press, favors a "law of return." Such a law would, in effect, include a transitional program for the orderly withdrawal of worried Russians from the non-Russian republics. On the political front, Mr. Yeltsin will be an advocate of a multiparty system and an opponent of Lenin's principle of "democratic centralism." He already has called for dismantling the Communist Party's vast salaried apparat and supplanting it with a party based largely on volunteers and democratically accountable officials. He also will work for the "depoliticization" of the army, the Interior Ministry and the KGB "by eliminating the political organs in them" and breaking officer links with the Communist Party. On the economic front, Mr. Yeltsin's thinking is a bit fuzzier. He opposes half-hearted reforms that impose austerities on Soviet workers. His economic prescriptions include a rapid transition to currency convertibility from the current three-tiered monetary structure. In Mr. Yeltsin's view, enterprises that produce goods in excess of state orders could sell their products on the free market. Any proceeds from sales would be in the form of a single currency with which enterprises could improve wages, increase capital investments and purchase needed consumer goods for workers and for workplace-related educational facilities. Whether Mr. Yeltsin is the leader of the future, however, remains to be seen. While he is popular with the Soviet public, the new Russian president is regarded by younger radicals, who backed his bid for office, as a man of limited ability. He may well turn out to be a Soviet version of Imre Posgay, the radical Hungarian Communist reformer who laid the groundwork for democracy in his country in 1989 and then was defeated in his quest for his country's presidency by an ungrateful electorate. This is the second time that Mikhail Gorbachev embarks on a U.S. visit while facing a challenge from a formidable political rival. The last time he was here that rival was the arch-conservative Yegor Ligachev, whom Mr. Gorbachev would later outmaneuver and defeat. This time, with Boris Yeltsin, he may not be as lucky. But at least he's prepared. Just a couple of weeks ago, the Soviet Parliament passed a law guaranteeing a pension, "dacha" and private limousine for retired Soviet presidents. --- Mr. Karatnycky is director of research at the AFL-CIO's department of international affairs.
The election of Boris Yeltsin as president of the Russian republic is a stunning personal defeat for Mikhail Gorbachev. Yeltsin is certain to strike a triple blow against Gorbachev's political line by (1) challenging the Soviet government's referendum on economic austerity; (2) opposing the policy of imperial centralism; and (3) challenging the legitimacy of Gorbachev's presidency, perhaps to the point of forcing a new Union- wide election. On the political front, Yeltsin will favor a multi-party system and oppose Lenin's principle of "democratic centralism." He favors dismantling the Communist Party, as well as "depoliticization" of the Army, the Interior Ministry, and the KGB.