Looking for Mr. Good Czar

By JOHN KOHAN MOSCOW

At a high-rise apartment block in Moscow's Perovsky district, residents gather in the parking lot to chat about the latest events of a country in seemingly perpetual shock. These garage-door gossips have exchanged plenty of heated words about Boris Yeltsin -- but that was before the Congress of People's Deputies put the question of impeaching Yeltsin to a vote. Now all of them back the Russian President.

Yeltsin has more than enough enemies. To fanatical nationalists he is the Judas who sold his country to the West for 30 silver dollars. Russians disgusted with politics claim they see no real difference between Yeltsin and his parliamentary rivals. Still, the worrisome events at the Congress have turned many fence-straddlers overnight into ardent Yeltsin supporters.

It is not that life under Yeltsin has been particularly good for his newfound fans. Some in the Perovsky district cannot make ends meet on the salaries they earn at state-run hospitals or research institutes. Most are concerned that their life savings will be devoured by hyperinflation and do not know what to do with the fancy new vouchers the government gave them to help privatize the economy. But they were beginning to believe better times lay ahead. Now they fear that without Yeltsin as President, the suffering will start over again. Their consensus on the Congress: Throw the bums out!

Yeltsin is betting that tens of millions of ordinary Russians share these sentiments and will turn out to back him at the ballot box. By tradition and temperament, Russians have little patience for the parliamentary gab sessions they have been watching on television for a year now. They know that as long as the talk continues, nothing will be done to fix the economy. Moscow commentators have compared events in Russia with the corruption scandal shaking the political system in Italy. But if you ask Russians, they would gladly endure the turmoil going on in Rome -- as long as they could enjoy the Italian standard of living.

Parliamentary chairman Ruslan Khasbulatov and his army of Yeltsin-baiting Deputies may not realize it yet, but they have done the President a favor by their vote on impeachment. Before the crisis, his popularity was slipping. The moment the Congress attacks began, his approval rating began to climb. "Going after Yeltsin was like waving a red flag at a bull," says a middle-aged chauffeur at the Perovsky garage. "Whatever we may have thought about the President before, he now has our 100% support. It's in the Russian character to stick up for the underdog."

Russians have always had a soft spot for Yeltsin, who faced down the tanks of the old regime in August 1991. Their enthusiasm began to fade only when he successfully elbowed his way into Mikhail Gorbachev's Kremlin office later that year. This week the besieged President is a populist hero again. The Moscow rumor mill churned out one pro-Yeltsin story after another -- and no one much cared if they were highly exaggerated or totally wrong. How turncoat Vice President Alexander Rutskoi pinched a copy of Yeltsin's unfinished decree on "special rule" and gave it to the opposition. How Constitutional Court chairman Valeri Zorkin brazenly handed the grieving Yeltsin a copy of the court's negative verdict at his mother's funeral.

But can the President turn sympathy into solid political support? History is on Yeltsin's side. Says Moscow journalist Yuri Shchekochikhin: "People are fed up with this sense of drift and powerlessness at the top. They want a good czar to put things in order." As good czars go, Yeltsin seems genuinely committed to democratic reforms -- not that his ideological leanings seem to matter to supporters who admire him more for his combative spirit than his views on market economics. The White House may believe it is helping Yeltsin by praising him as Russia's sole democratic hope, but he can suffer from being identified with the West in a country that has been traditionally xenophobic.

Moscow politicians venerate the Russian constitution these days as if it were the work of Alexander Pushkin. But it is doubtful whether Russia has progressed in its legal thinking from the days of the failed Decembrist uprising against Nicholas I in 1825. Soldiers protested then under the slogan FOR CONSTANTINE AND CONSTITUTION -- believing that "Constitution" was the wife of their candidate for the throne, Grand Duke Constantine.

Yeltsin knows he must hang tough, if he wants the people to support him. Throughout Russia's troubled history, compromise has always been considered a sign of weakness. In 1905 Czar Nicholas II bowed to public pressure and established a duma, but the nominal parliament proved so rebellious that he dissolved it twice and finally altered election laws to keep out radicals. The communists took a no-nonsense approach to the Constituent Assembly popularly elected in November 1917. After the first day of debate ran into the early hours of the morning, a sailor, fed up with the proceedings, sent the Deputies home with the comment, "The guard is tired." The communist leaders never allowed them to meet again. As parliamentary leader Ramazan Abdulatipov observed, "When Russians say they have reached an agreement, what they really mean is that the other side has accepted their position."