Maj. Gen. Aleksandr Korzhakov, Yeltsin’s security chief and closest confidant, wasn’t the only adviser who wanted him to postpone the election. Other aides urged Yeltsin to form a government of national unity with the Communist Party candidate, Gennady Zyuganov. But Yeltsin himself still seemed to think he could win the election outright. He said he wanted to forge an alliance of some sort with another of the 11 presidential candidates, Grigory Yavlinsky, the liberal economist and champion of democracy. Yeltsin said he hoped two other non-Communist candidates, Gen. Aleksandr Lebed and Svyatoslav Fyodorov, would join forces with him. And he promised, yet again, to end the disastrous war in Chechnya.““I will go to Chechnya myself,’’ he said, ““to sit everybody around the negotiating table.''
Korzhakov only made it more difficult for Yeltsin to postpone the election. Usually a man who operates in the shadows, he gave two interviews warning that ““more time is needed’’ before a peaceful election can be held. The ploy was so heavy-handed that Yeltsin had to come out foursquare in favor of holding the election on schedule. ““I still believe in the wisdom of Russian voters,’’ he said. When Yeltsin talked to Clinton, he sounded ““mildly annoyed’’ with Korzhakov, said a senior U.S. official.
Washington has a lot riding on Yeltsin. It emphatically does not want to see the Communists back in power, but it cannot condone a postponement of the election to keep them out. ““Our president is not afraid of democracy in Russia,’’ Strobe Talbott, the deputy secretary of state, told a visiting delegation of Communist parliamentarians. A senior administration official said Clinton made it ““unambiguously’’ clear to Yeltsin that the election must be held on time.
Clinton was beginning to feel some foreign-policy heat from his Republican opponents. Sen. Bob Dole charged in a speech that Clinton’s ““track record of weakness, indecision, double-talk and incoherence has diminished American credibility and undermined American interests.’’ In an article written for Foreign Policy magazine, Republican Sen. John McCain accused Clinton of having a ““sole focus on Yeltsin’s political survival.’’ An administration official replied that ““Russia has one president at a time. It’s not as though [Clinton] can pick and choose.’’ And of course, if Yeltsin loses to Zyuganov, Clinton can expect to be blamed for ““losing’’ Russia.
