Coming To America

During his eight-day odyssey through the land of the free, he lurched from speech to speech more like a back-of-the-pack presidential contender than an aspirant to the mantle of Lenin. But if jet lag, fatigue and generous helpings of Jack Daniel's occasionally took their toll, Boris Yeltsin, 58, the former Moscow party boss who has achieved unusual visibility and enormous popularity as one of Mikhail Gorbachev's most acerbic critics, still impressed Americans with his charm and appreciation of the U.S. His knack for an ingratiating riposte was apparent at John and Vicki Hardin's hog farm in Danville, Ind. "Would Mr. Yeltsin like to see some pigs?" the host asked. "I'd prefer to see some Americans," Yeltsin cracked, "but pigs will do."

Behind Yeltsin's down-home humor was a stark message about the Soviet Union. The U.S.S.R., he warned, had barely a year, or less,to put its house in order. "We are on the edge of an abyss," he told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City, "and if we go over the edge, it will lead to a cataclysm, not only for the Soviet Union but for the whole world."

Yeltsin, who won an astonishing 89% of the Moscow vote in his election to the Congress of People's Deputies last March, reported the pitfalls facing perestroika to President Bush, Vice President Dan Quayle, Secretary of State James Baker and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, as well as thousands of ordinary Americans. And he had plenty of prescriptions for improvement: clean the deadwood from the Politburo; subordinate the party to the People's Congress; open up foreign investment.

But Yeltsin's main target was what he called the weak leadership of Gorbachev. And for that, his campaign-style trip to the U.S.seemed to offer one solution: himself.