Communist comeback in Russia? Election strategizing: U.S.-backed Yeltsin needs reformists' support.

AS RUSSIA'S JUNE 16 presidential election draws closer, the specter of a communist comeback is rising. Although President Boris N. Yeltsin has surged in recent polls, the reconstituted Communist Party's candidate, Gennady Zyuganov, is favored to win. Just five years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the sickle and hammer may soon be re-established as Russia's symbols.

This possibility has produced some intriguing political scrambling in Moscow.

As nearly always since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Russia's reformist democrats are split and feuding. Some, led by former Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar, have decided to back President Yeltsin's re-election. Others, including human rights activist Sergei Kovalyov, support Grigory Yavlinsky, a Harvard-trained economist, who is trying to forge an election alliance with retired Gen. Alexander Lebed, a tough-talking conservative.

Such an alliance may look attractive on paper. But it would seem to lack sufficient strength to beat Mr. Zyuganov. Far more troubling is that a Yavlinksy-Lebed ticket might siphon off enough votes to defeat Mr. Yeltsin and elect Mr. Zyuganov.

Meanwhile, the new captains of Russia's industry and economy have been meeting with Mr. Zyuganov. They are confused about his contradictory policy statements and worried that if the communists return to power, the former Soviet leaders would begin rolling back the free-market economic reforms implemented under President Yeltsin.

What is fascinating about the Zyuganov talks is the fact that, despite outward privatization, many of Russia's top corporations were created by the now-defunct Soviet Communist Party to safeguard its wealth. The apparatchiks and privileged nomenklatura of the old order may have avoided confiscation of their institutions' wealth but they are now worried about what might happen if the reconstituted communists come to power.

This concern is a legitimate one: Although Mr. Zyuganov's own position is unclear, many of his staunchest supporters are unreconstructed Marxist-Leninists. They would like nothing better than settling scores with the Gorbachev and Yeltsin era reformers, whom they hold responsible for the dismantling of the Soviet Union and the loss of Russia's pre-eminence in world affairs.

Pub Date: 5/05/96