NATIONALIST BLOC THREATENS TO REVISE CONSTITUTION AND CANCEL "ILLEGAL" PRIVATIZATIONS.

The Congress of Russian Communities (KRO), which is expected to do well in Russia’s upcoming parliamentary elections, will act in the Duma to "cancel all illegal decisions of the government in the privatization sphere." The statement was made at an meeting in Moscow by Sergei Glazyev, the economist who is KRO’s third-ranking leader. (9) There is widespread resentment among the Russian population over Russia’s rapid privatization of state property, which is seen as having unjustly created an immensely rich "new class" of property-owners at the expense of the rest of the population. Glazyev said his party’s move would primarily concern enterprises in the oil and gas sector, Russia’s largest hard-currency earners. He added that the KRO expects to cooperate on this issue with Communist and Agrarian deputies in the new Duma. Meanwhile, the KRO’s second-ranking leader, General Aleksandr Lebed, told voters that another KRO priority, once in the Duma, would be to amend the constitution to reduce the powers of the president. Whether the communists or the KRO, both of whom hope to run their own candidate in next June’s presidential elections, would really see it as in their interests to follow up on this promise is another matter.

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