President Yeltsin, since the first round of the Russian presidential election, has given a dazzling display of the macho talents and reflex footwork that bought him to power and kept him there for the last five years. If this runs counter to the accident prone, fumbling reputation that has dogged him for most of his term of office, it suggests that survival skills are more important at the current stage of Russian democracy than policy or administrative acumen. Mr Yeltsin has much in common with the Abbe de Sieye's whose main achievement in the French Revolution was to keep his head on his shoulders.
Chechnya, where the peace agreement earlier this month has not yet taken root, is a factor that could still sink him, just as Afghanistan helped to undo President Gorbachev. As the man in office, he has had to bear the brunt of voter hostility to the harsh living conditions of economic transition. There is a marked similarity, however, between his fortunes in the months preceding the election and those of President Walesa last autumn in the run up to the presidential election in Poland both men started with single figure support in the opinion polls, as a result of general dissatisfaction among voters, but steadily reversed the trend to come within striking distance of victory by the time the first round votes were cast.
The difference is that Mr Walesa lost by a narrow margin to his left wing rival and Mr Yeltsin now seems likely to defeat the communist candidate, Mr Gennady Zyuganov, in the second round of the election on July 3rd. The lesson, in both cases, seems to be that there is no surge to support candidates with a communist past, however they change their style and policies. After nine months of President Kwasniewski, however, Mr Walesa could hardly hope to make a come back even if he had an opportunity to try.
Mr Yeltsin can afford to take nothing for granted. His appointment of Gen Alexander Lebed, who won 14 per cent of the first round vote, as the head of Russian security council, bore all the signs of a carefully prepared coup de the atre it may spell trouble for him in future as Gen Lebed is now in a position of power to challenge him in the time honoured fashion of Kremlin heirs apparent, but gives the best possible indication to voters that crime and corruption are high on his agenda. The ruthless sacking of the defence minister, Gen Pavel Grachev, and several of Mr Yeltsin's oldest cronies, who were followed yesterday by seven more generals allied with Gen Grachev, and the announcement of an alleged military plot to bring pressure on the president, have consolidated Gen Lebed's influence as the key man in Mr Yeltsin's post election strategy.
Mr Zyuganov's efforts to build a broad front against Mr Yeltsin, involving some liberal elements, has an air of desperation, and even allowing for the notorious inexactness of opinion polls in Russian conditions, his star appears to be fading. in this final week of the campaign, that could still change, and the most unpredictable factor of all the turn out, because Mr Yeltsin will suffer if not enough Russians bother to vote can only be assessed when the polls close.