THE HEART OF THE MATTER

By PAUL QUINN-JUDGE/MOSCOW

After months of denying the obvious, the Kremlin finally came clean last week. Well, partly clean. Declaring his commitment to a "society of truth," but speaking in a painfully slow, sometimes slurred voice, Boris Yeltsin told an interviewer on prime-time TV that he would be having heart surgery at the end of the month. The news was greeted calmly in Moscow and with quiet relief by Western diplomats, who have long said they would like to see either a healthy President or a new one. Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin and National Security Adviser Alexander Lebed, the two most prominent candidates to be Yeltsin's successor, were deferentially silent. In the background, however, it was not difficult to hear the sound of knives sharpening as the two men prepared for the next round of their personal struggle for primacy.

Yeltsin's press handlers hailed his interview as a historic break with the Soviet past, when doddering Kremlin leaders were described as having head colds until they suddenly expired. Last month the same officials indignantly denied a TIME report that Yeltsin might go abroad for surgery. Yeltsin's announcement was at best a victory for semi-glasnost. He gave the impression that his heart problems had just been discovered. But he has been a sick man for years, and his need for heart surgery has been apparent to foreign specialists for months. He did not say exactly what the operation would be, though a prominent Russian heart surgeon later told the Interfax news agency the President would have a bypass. Yeltsin aides said he may consider temporarily surrendering his powers to Chernomyrdin, as the constitution requires in the event of extended incapacitation.

While most Moscow papers and commentators praised the Kremlin's openness, the highbrow daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta noted that "had the news been known before the presidential elections, the results would have been substantially different." This may be precisely what Yeltsin and his entourage had in mind. At the price of frequent political embarrassment and perhaps some cost to Yeltsin's chances of recovery, they suppressed news of his ill health long enough for the country to enter what is by Russian standards something akin to political normality. Six months ago, after all, the favorites to succeed Yeltsin were people like Communist Party leader Gennadi Zyuganov or nationalist extremist Vladimir Zhirinovsky. The main contenders now, Chernomyrdin and Lebed, or perhaps Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov, are less menacing to Russia's post-communist ruling class.

This fact will not prevent a tough and perhaps nasty fight to succeed Yeltsin. In the short term at least, Chernomyrdin and Lebed will probably fight it out, as Luzhkov watches warily in the wings. Chernomyrdin seems to enjoy Yeltsin's confidence: he is the only government official who has been allowed a face-to-face meeting with the President in recent weeks.

During the political semiparalysis caused by Yeltsin's disappearance, however, Lebed all but monopolized the media with his Chechnya peace mission. Last week he disclosed chilling new casualty figures for the 20-month war: 80,000 people "plus or minus 10,000" had been killed in the fighting. Three times that number had been maimed or injured, he said, and 60% of the dead were civilians. These figures mean about 30% of Chechnya's 1 million people have been killed or wounded in Yeltsin's vain attempt to impose his will on the tiny republic.

--By Paul Quinn-Judge/Moscow