Headache of State

By Kevin Fedarko

Rumors about Boris Yeltsin's health so alarmed Vladimir Trufanov that he decided a long-distance checkup was in order. The psychic healer, whose reputed restorative powers have made him a celebrity in the central Russian city of Tula, announced that he had "remotely" scanned the body of the Russian leader and concluded, "There are no grounds for concern." Trufanov did offer Yeltsin one piece of advice: It is important for the President to "protect his aura from energy attacks and other negative influences."

Yeltsin hardly needed a psychic to tell him that he was under attack last week. No sooner had the Russian President left Moscow on another of his notorious unannounced holidays -- this time to the Black Sea resort of Sochi -- than rumors filled the capital that his parlous state of health had inspired a coup plot. The crisis evaporated when the Kremlin launched a propaganda blitz to demonstrate that, at least for the moment, Yeltsin was still in command of his faculties. But the larger question of whether the Russian leader is in command of the country remains wide open.

The latest alarm was set off by a "confidential" document published in a Moscow paper supposedly describing a plot to depose Yeltsin by three prominent officials: Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Soskovets, Chief of the General Staff Mikhail Kolesnikov and Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov. According to the memo, the coup would kick off in March or April with a television broadcast documenting Yeltsin's health problems and excessive drinking. The dramatic revelations would give parliament a pretext to remove the President, replacing him with Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin until elections could be held.

The alleged ringleaders dismissed the scenario as nonsense. The document was subsequently disavowed by the Moscow paper, but it had already set off so much speculation about Yeltsin's hold on power that the Kremlin had to respond. ! Even Chernomyrdin got into the act. Breaking off an important meeting with the head of the International Monetary Fund to negotiate a $1.5 billion loan, he jetted down to Sochi on Monday to join his boss. That evening Russian television showed the two men strolling along a promenade. The next day Chernomyrdin dismissed the stories of Yeltsin's illness as "insulting" and told reporters, "I worked with him for almost four hours yesterday."

The damage control succeeded in quelling the immediate ruckus. But as fast as the Kremlin spin controllers kill one rumor, another crops up. Lately, the persistence of these stories has provoked speculation, even among supporters, that perhaps there is a flicker of truth behind all the supposed disinformation.

Certainly Yeltsin has had health problems in the past. When Gorbachev had him ousted as Moscow party boss in 1987, he suffered something resembling a nervous breakdown. In 1990, when his aircraft made a bone-rattling landing in Spain, he sustained a serious back injury, for which he still takes medication. A host of other ailments, ranging from bad colds to kidney disease, are regularly said to plague him. But the most widely whispered diagnosis is cirrhosis of the liver, a condition stemming from chronic abuse of alcohol.

Yeltsin has been haunted by stories of excessive alcohol consumption ever since his 1989 visit to the U.S., when he popped up at Johns Hopkins University smelling of bourbon and behaving erratically. Another unsettling incident came in March 1993 when Yeltsin made an unexpected appearance before the rebellious congress late one Saturday afternoon. His hair was plastered to his forehead, his eyes looked glazed, and his speech was filled with long pauses and slurred words. Those watching assumed that Yeltsin was drunk.

All of which raises the question, Is Yeltsin an alcoholic? Officially, the subject is taboo, and no one close to the President talks about it. But some Yeltsin watchers claim to see a pattern in the President's political gaffes -- like the recent emotional outburst when he refused to see visiting former U.S. President Richard Nixon -- that might dovetail with weekend drinking bouts. Russian journalists claim they have been prevented from covering the President's return to Moscow from trips because he is too inebriated to meet the press after a long flight of tippling. The widespread impression Yeltsin has made on a nation renowned for its fondness for vodka was perhaps summed up best by his chief rival, Alexander Rutskoi. Last September, during a speech denouncing Yeltsin before the national assembly, Rutskoi flicked his index finger into the side of his neck several times. It is a gesture recognized even by schoolchildren to indicate an excessive fondness for the bottle.

Whether that image is fair or not, there is clearly a physical change in a politician who cemented his power in 1991 by boldly scrambling atop a tank outside the besieged White House. These days Yeltsin appears increasingly lugubrious; the spring is missing from his step when he shuffles down the long red carpet at the Kremlin, and there are embarrassing pauses when he answers off-the-cuff questions. These subtle signs only heighten the sense, already gaining credence in Moscow from Yeltsin's political struggles, that the President is slipping.

Yet it may be premature to start writing the Russian leader's political obituary, given his remarkable aptitude for recovering from both political and physical reversals. Anyone who doubts those abilities need only ask an opponent who knows what it is like to do battle with Boris Yeltsin and lose: Mikhail Gorbachev.

With reporting by David Aikman/Washington and John Kohan/Moscow