IF ELECTIONS WERE HELD…

If parliamentary elections areheld later this year, the communists and nationalists are likelyto do well, and the democrats very poorly, an experts group fromthe Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs told IzvestiyaJune 23. The communists and their agrarian allies would collectabout 120 of the seats, the nationalists about 110, the centrists–whoremain divided into several groups–150 to 200, and the democratsonly 90. Moscow’s NTV reported June 25 that Yeltsin is not a beneficiaryof this unhappiness with the parliament: 79 percent of the peopleit polled said they no longer trusted the Russian president. Only6 percent said they did.