Russia Votes Yes

...Vasily Selynin, a well-known radical economist who works closely with the proYeltsin Democratic Russia coalition, told me that the best campaigning for the president was done by the other side...

...The campaign was star-studded enough to match the Clinton White House: actors, musicians, and athletes appeared on pro-Yeltsin posters and fliers and figured prominently in popular newspapers like Vechernyaya Moskva and the irreverent, tabloid-style Kuranty...

...well, did they ever leave...

...on Mayakovsky Square...

...and indeed many people felt that their fate was hanging in the balance...

...Kuranty displayed a cruel picture of the "leader of the world proletariat" in his last days—paralyzed by a stroke, his face and terrible vacant eyes speaking eloquently of disintegration...

...the kiosk with its display of flamboyant liqueurs, Marlboros and Winstons, panty hose, dusty shampoo bottles, endless Mars bars, a handwritten sign reading $/DM EXCHANGE...

...At one point, Pravda resorted to printing a list of leading democratic journalists and commentators described as Yeltsin's agents in the media—complete with home telephone numbers, which resulted in threatening calls in the middle of the night...

...Also lost in the shuffle was Lenin's April 22 birthday...

...On Monday, as it became clear that Yeltsin had won a vote of confidence but had not gotten enough votes to force new parliamentary elections, there crept in a morning-after feeling of much ado about nothing—a sense that after all the nervous tension, all the campaigning, all the rally-going, all the waiting, the standoff was back to where it had been before...

...Alas, Tretyakov added, this idea was "utterly unrealistic...

...perhaps the "cult of personality" experience had taught them a lesson...

...This is not something that Brezhnev, or even Gorbachev in his glory days, would have ever read about himself...

...ost of my acquaintances, however, were appalled M by the cynics...

...his son-in-law is in business now and his wife is taking up farming) told me grimly that he wasn't voting: "I'm sick and tired of all these games they're playing with us...

...Could a word from the supervisor have had something to do with these posters...

...expletives deleted] Scum...

...Still, there were good reasons to be put off by the proYeltsin campaign, even if such reservations might be overshadowed by fear of the other side's victory...

...In Moskovsky Komsomolets, Minkin wrote about how evil and sinister Lenin's yellowed mummy looked in the mausoleum, "radiating diabolical malice...

...young men and women Not everyone was impressed...

...On the metro, I saw another National Salvation Front leaflet, with an angry woman brandishing her fist (adapted from a famous wartime poster, "The Motherland Calls...

...amidst signatures of people who were utterly unknown to me but turned out to be Russian rock stars...

...on the other...

...In Moskovsky Komsomolets, Aleksandr Minkin grumbled about having to choose between the president and the Congress, and wrote that he would have much preferred to vote for president: "I have a candidate of my choice—a man of intelligence, talent, character, renown, and integrity...

...On April 20, the Independent Gazette—virtually the only democratic publication that has consciously tried to remain non-partisan—ran a frontpage editorial by chief editor Viktor Tretyakov, appealing for calm and making a heretical suggestion: that the media should refrain from further agitation and "let people quietly think for themselves in the remaining five days...

...eferendum day R went by quietly, despite panicky rumors of terror squads and planned disruptions of the vote...

...They say the results of this referendum can't be legally enforced anyway, right...

...Dissenting voices were at least formally aired in the major media, and the opposition could publish its own papers and demonstrate in the streets...

...from the retired woman who said Yeltsin's opponents were bloodthirsty madmen, adding, "I receive a minimum pension, but I'm not going hungry—no one's going hungry, it's all lies...

...By the time he went out to join the rally a few hours later, he had sobered up andlooked all right," Davidoff told me, "but I heard the fumes were so bad you couldn't get closer to him than twenty feet...

...expletives deleted] You filthy Yids...

...Apathy" was out and rallies were in again, and people were talking politics...

...Kuranty introduced a daily front-page "My Choice" column featuring distinguished people to suit every taste, from Elena Bonner to stand-up comedian Gennady Khazanov, who said, "I will vote Yes, Yes, No, Yes so that we don't get a regime that has only one word for us: No...

...Since the speech in question was broadcast on loyal Russian TV, claims of a doctored video could hardly be sustained, but how much ingenuity does it take to think of other explanations...

...The banners urging people to take their fate in their hands and vote were gone, replaced by announcement of a series of concerts by the aging but daring rock singer, Alla Pugachova...

...He hadn't slept three nights, he had just buried his mother . . ." And a more original version: "He had just come out of a sauna and he was a little woozy from all the steam...

...1 t was hard to fault the Russian media for partisanship, given the general assumption that a Yeltsin defeat in the referendum would mean a victory for the Communist/nationalist forces (though one businessman, recounting his tribulations at the hands of bureaucrats, told Kuranty in exasperation, "They keep warning us the Communists may come back...

...It was hardly a precise analogy, of course...

...It was mid-April, and not only were the Russian Orthodox celebrating Easter—complete with three-hour TV coverage of all the pomp and circumstance of the midnight mass in one of the capital's main cathedrals, the camera often focusing on Yeltsin standing with his wife and top government officials—but democrats and anti-democrats of all stripes were consumed by referendum fever...

...All one had to do was look at some of the posters issued by Yeltsin supporters...

...she beamed, and I asked, a little gingerly, what side that was...

...My driver Volodya (whom the constant reader may recall from "Hard Times," TAS, February 1992...

...And yet, whatever you say, there is something appealing about the man—somewhat coarse but candid, straightforward, sincerely devoted to Russia...

...screamed white-and-blue banners all over downtown Moscow...

...V echernyaya Moskva had a daily one-hour direct line for callers to express their opinions on the referendum, with comments published the next day—from the Jewish engineer who said that she and her mother lived in fear of fascism and were voting for Yeltsin to avert this threat...

...Veteran TV sportscaster Nikolai Ozerov, currently the head of the Spartak soccer fan club, made a bathetic statement refuting the claim of the Communist newspaper Sovetskaya Rossiya that the club sympathized with the anti-Yeltsinites, and affirming his loyalty to the president and to the red, white, and blue of democratic Russia...

...Perhaps the Independent Gazette's Tretyakov would say that this was the best possible outcome...

...And not a single Yeltsin partisan did I encounter who would even entertain the possibility that the president had taken as much as a drop...

...You're for Yeltsin, aren't you...

...I vote Yes, Yes, No, Yes—that's it...

...Minkin also recalls stumbling on a 1990 order of the Soviet Council of Ministers approving a program of "ideological-aesthetic education" through monuments and memorials, including not only a Sholokhov (Quiet Flows the Don) and a Ho Chi Minh but a total of fifteen Lenins: "Just imagine—in 1990, he was still breeding...

...The most common one was fatigue: "Drunk...

...from a nameless lady who said, "We'll tie your Yeltsin to the railroad tracks, and all of you too...

...An ad in Moskovsky Komsomolets"Think and Choose: Do You Want a Normal Life in a Strong Democratic Russia (Vote Yes, Yes, No, Yes) or the Pseudodemocracy of the Soviets, Civil War, and Sausage Rationing Cards (Vote No, No, Yes, No)"—was framed by stark cartoons: a wolfpack lurking behind a peasant on a horse-drawn sled, the pack leader saying, "Communists, forward...

...My old school pal Rita, too, chuckled over such a "disgrace," with no memory of how, three years ago when Boris was her man, she heatedly assured me that tapes of one of his American speeches had been doctored by the Soviet media to make a jet-lagged Yeltsin appear drunk...

...Well, then, why should I bother...

...The popular evening daily Vechernyaya Moskva ran a front-page report about Communist death squads lying in wait for Yeltsin...

...The media did little to help calm their nerves...

...Others praised the headline for conveying a proper sense of urgency...

...a weatherbeaten notice on a wall of APARTMENT FOR RENT (DOLLARS ONLY...

...For lighter fare, there was a futuristic tale of the year 2000: under a "red-and-brown" dictatorship that has banned cars and made the wearing of traditional Russian bark sandals mandatory, a citizen doing time in a labor camp rues his failure to vote in the '93 referendum that Yeltsin lost by a single vote...

...I waited for someone to say that if people did smell liquor on the president's breath, he had only used it as mouthwash but didn't swallow...

...Passing by in a gypsy cab around that time, I glimpsed three or four hundred people gathered under a curious assemblage of flags—the red of the Communists and the white and light blue of the monarchists...

...Looking around as I stood on (unrenamed) Komsomol Avenue, I was thinking that at least 75 percent of what I saw—from the store sign bluntly proclaiming PRODUKTY ("Food") in block letters to the squat, ugly Palace of Youth building with mosaics of robust and merry on the walls—was exactly as in 1980, only shabbier and dirtier, with more garbage on the sidewalks and more jagged holes in the pavement...

...But all too often they did protest too much...

...He was exhausted, that's all...

...Several papers had a "countdown to the referendum" (which reminded me of those "only 12 more shopping days till Christmas" blurbs...

...In all the commotion about the referendum, the opening of the coup plotters' trial on April 14—interrupted on the same day, when one of the defendants had a heart attack—was barely noticed...

...pasted on the wall across the tracks from the platform...

...Once, I picked up a National Salvation Front leaflet, printed on a piece of paper unevenly cut from what had been (on the reverse) a proclamation of the "Brotherhood of the Slays of Russia...

...On April 19, the newspaper peevishly complained about being unfairly accused by some readers of biased selection of opinions, and resorted to listing all the calls of the previous day...

...With the Congress, I doubt it...

...The worker had a decidedly Soviet, brave-common-man look about him...

...As two middle-aged women passed by, I caught a snippet of conversation: "Well, no one can hear us now—do tell me how much it costs...

...Kuranty may have been somewhat unfair to run a photo spread of young Russian neo-Nazis, marching in black uniforms and working out, under the headline "The Fascists Prefer Khasbulatov"—particularly since the only evidence in the accompanying text of the neo-Nazis' affection for the speaker was that they wanted Yeltsin to lose...

...This was especially touching to those who remembered Ozerov on TV in the old days, faithfully presenting every Soviet athletic victory as a triumph for Communism and every defeat as a result of evil anti-Soviet plotting by judges or referees...

...The leaflet reminded Muscovites of galloping inflation and the collapsing economy, urging them to "go to the referendum and say NO TO YELTSIN and his policies of looting and exterminating the people" and also to join a "March of the Outraged People" on Friday, April 23, starting at five p.m...

...a suit-clad skeleton at the parliamentary podium reciting the familiar Soviet slogan, "Lenin Is More Alive Than All the Living...

...With Yeltsin, I'll get to vote for that man someday...

...Besides, most Yeltsin backers pointed out that their support for the president was not uncritical and that they acknowledged his numerous flaws: "A hot temperament that lapses into impulsiveness, and sometimes, paradoxically, into procrastination and delayed action," wrote S. Lezhnevsky in Vechernyaya Moskva...

...I tried out a little objectivity test, asking several people about the day Yeltsin took the podium at the Supreme Soviet in an unmistakable state of inebriation...

...Indeed, reading such things as the Kuranty report on Yeltsin's visit to Russia's first, brand-new breakfast cereal factory—"The workers met Boris Yeltsin with posters that said, 'We Support the President's Policies' and 'We Say Yes to Reform' "—one couldn't help getting a strong sense of deja vu...

...Another poster of a smiling Yeltsin, clenched fist held up, flatly declared, A PRESIDENT MUST ALWAYS WIN (a motto that would delight certain folks in Washington, D.C...

...M any of my pro-Yeltsin acquaintances took pains to stress that they were not idolizing, or idealizing, their president...

...Why, the good side—the president's side...

...But your recent headline, 'Vote for Yeltsin if You Want to Live,' was awful...

...What is this supposed to mean—if you're against, you'll be killed...

...the NSF must be short on paper...

...Just like the good old days, with a parade of factory workers and distinguished milkmaids and honored artists solemnly declaring that they support the party and the government...

...There were skeptics among the more sophisticated as well—such as Tamara, a literary translator, and her husband Sandro, a science professor, who were disgusted by the crude "Soviet-style" pro-Yeltsin propaganda campaign in the media and felt that both sides were almost equally loathsome...

...Tamara held her nose and voted after all, resigning herself to being needled by Sandro...

...continued on page 30) Victor Davidoff, a former Soviet political prisoner and current U.S...

...The caption read, Never trusted them one bit...

...citizen who went back to Russia in 1991 to help build capitalism and is now launching that country's first press syndicate, told me he was sickened by the deluge of propaganda: "It's as if you had a presidential election with the media covering only one side of the campaign...

...Sure," I nodded, taking advantage of my unaccented Russian...

...Walking in the crowded Arbat metro station behind two women in their forties, I heard one say emphatically, "These idiots get here to Moscow and think that just because they're deputies they can do anything—if he likes, he can decree that from this day on, Arbat will be spelled with an 0." I couldn't help chuckling, and the woman turned to me eagerly: "We're telling it like it is, right...

...You're on our side too...

...I racked my brains over this puzzle—one would need a sixfoot-long arm at the least to accomplish such a feat—until afriend suggested that it had probably been put there after hours by a metro employee...

...I said I was, and we parted all smiles...

...VOTE IN THE REFERENDUM...

...However, the fact that the "red-and-browns" were campaigning hysterically against Yeltsin did little to dispel the perception, lamented by some moderate Yeltsin critics, that the choice was between Yeltsin and Red fascism...

...Oh, come on...

...Occasionally, there were voices of hesitancy, such as one Galina Aleksandrovna: "I'm still undecided...

...pro-Yeltsin callers outnumbered anti-Yeltsin ones by four-to-one...

...One showed a grinning, cocky worker in overalls and a visor cap holding four ballots marked Yes, Yes, No, Yes, the politically correct answers to the four referendum questions (confidence in Yeltsin, approval of his policies, new presidential elections, new parliamentary elections), while four snake-like microphones representing deputies in the Congress hissed at him menacingly...

...But here and there, one could spot something to alarm a Rip Van Winkle from the Brezhnev era: a Kodak sign...

...The Yeltsin foes, the disaffected, and the cynics gleefully asserted that he had been dead drunk, barely able to put two words together...

...He suggested that to please everyone, the mausoleum should be left standing but the body inside buried and replaced with a wax model: it shouldn't be any less sacred to the Leninists (after all, Christians have no problem with paintings and statues of Christ), and all others will breathe a sigh of relief...

...RUSSIA'S FATE IS IN OUR HANDS...

...a large poster saying, in lacy old Slavonic letters, HAVE A HAPPY HOLY EASTER on one side and CHRIST IS RISEN...

...toward the end, some were running daily front-page reminders of how to vote, along with unpaid-for, full-page ads from the Citizens' Committee for the Referendum...

...There was a "Rock for Yeltsin" concert on Red Square, too...